Cezary Podkul

Club Lunch: Book Talk – SCAM: Inside Southeast Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds (2025)

Join us at @fcchk.bsky.social next Monday for a club lunch with Ivan Franceschini and Ling Li, two of the co-authors of SCAM, a new book about Southeast Asia's #cybercrime compounds and what they learned from years of research on this important topic. Details ⬇️
www.fcchk.org/event/club-l...

The Big Trace Newsletter “For the love of money is the root of all evil” - 1 Timothy 6:10 Thank you for your interest in my forthcoming book! The Big Trace will pull back the curtain on a devastating global phenomenon: the r...

26/ And if you are interested in #pigbutchering scams and want to find out more about how this #fraud is perpetrated and abetted, sign up for my newsletter for my forthcoming book titled "The Big Trace." Details 👇 on how to sign up:
buttondown.com/cezary

Contact Cezary Get in touch with Cezary Podkul, author of the forthcoming book 'The Big Trace' or follow him on Twitter at @Cezary

25/ Kevin got his $134,000 wire payment back in May. If you know someone who may have wired tens of thousands to a bank account at Chase for a company called Middlesex, send me a message here 👇. Maybe they can get their money back, too
www.thebigtrace.com/contact-cezary

24/ Chase said that it has policies to identify and verify the identities of its customers, and that it followed those guidelines when opening the Middlesex account. The bank also said it continually evaluates and enhances its customer onboarding processes, systems and controls

23/ Middlesex Truck and Coach is a family-owned truck repair shop whose identity was stolen by a motorcade, which then opened a fake Chase account in Middlesex’s name. Here’s what unfolded when Brian Maloney Jr., one of the owners, went to Chase 👇

22/ There was a silver lining for Kevin - not because of any action banks took but because of his own determination to get his money back. When he sued the ten shell companies used to defraud him, it turned out that one of them was a real business, and it was willing to help him

Banks' Statements to ProPublica Replies from banks to questions from ProPublica about pig-butchering scams and money laundering.

21/ The @ABABankers acknowledged that “with more than 140 million bank accounts opened every year bad actors can sometimes get through despite determined and ongoing efforts to stop them.” You can read more of the banks’ replies to my questions here 👇:
www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

How Foreign Scammers Use U.S. Banks to Fleece Americans Asian crime syndicates’ online scams have reached industrial proportions, cheating victims around the world out of more than $44 billion a year. U.S. banks have been unable to stop them.

20/ The above ad isn’t an anomaly. I discovered that from the U.S. to Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong, banks have consistently failed to keep pig-butchering scammers from accessing their accounts. Even some of the world's largest banks have enabled this #fraud
www.propublica.org/article/pig-...

Telegram's Statement to ProPublica Reply from Telegram to questions from ProPublica about pig-butchering scams and money laundering.

19/ Telegram said that it “expressly forbids money laundering, scams and fraud and such content is immediately removed whenever discovered.” You can read more of the company’s statement here 👇:
www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...

18/ It’s surprisingly easy to hire a motorcade. If you’re a criminal in, say, #Cambodia, looking to get a bank account with no pesky formalities, it’ll only take minutes to find one on Telegram. Here’s one ad that cites “firsthand” control of U.S. bank accounts for scammers:

Four Individuals Charged with Laundering Millions from Cryptocurrency Investment Scams Known as ‘Pig Butchering’ Three Southland residents and a fourth defendant have been named in a seven-count indictment charging them with participating in a scheme to launder the proceeds of cryptocurrency investment scams and...

17/ The man recruited to open these accounts, Hailong Zhu, is one of several operatives charged with money laundering offenses for their alleged roles assisting pig-butchering scammers. Zhu did not enter a plea and was listed as a fugitive as of March 2025
www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr...

16/ In one case, a Chinese operative of a motorcade juggled seven different accounts at four different banks using two shell companies set up in his name: Sea Dragon Trading and Sea Dragon Remodel. Here’s how easy it was for him to get around banks’ defenses 😲

15/ Don’t think just because you’re wiring funds to a big bank that you’re protected from fraud. Motorcades are good at side-stepping banks’ anti-money laundering protocols and they exploit the fact that banks are reluctant to share suspect bank account info with each other

14/ And the only reason they don’t want you to mention #crypto to your bank is because they don’t want the bank to talk you out of wiring the funds. That’s how Kevin, a lifelong saver and small business owner in New Jersey, lost $716,000 that he wired to scammers in 2023.

13/ Don’t buy it. The strange-sounding companies are just shell entities the motorcade used to open bank accounts (examples from court records👇). They ask for a screenshot of your wire so they can credit your brokerage with fake $ and take the real money soon as you send it

12/ At this point you’ll wonder why you’re being asked to wire funds to some strange-sounding company other than the fake brokerage you’re dealing with. The scammers will tell you that’s just how crypto works and instruct you not to tell your bank you are “investing” in crypto

11/ This is what it looks like in practice. The fake online brokerage you’re dealing with will give you a “recharge account” to wire funds to along with a request to send a screenshot when you’re done wiring the money, which then appears in the fake brokerage

10/ Here’s how motorcades operate. Once a scam gang in, say, #Cambodia, has identified a fraud target willing to wire funds, they hire a motorcade that controls a U.S. bank account. The motorcade gives the account details to the scammers, who send them along to the victim.

Moving Bricks: Money-Laundering Practices in the Online Scam Industry Jingjing invited me to her office and asked me to wait for her to finish work before we headed out to dinner together.[1] At the time, she was working in a third-party payment company—what, in the jar...

9/ Turns out there’s a parallel money-laundering industry that helps scammers do just that. They’re called “motorcades” (车队) in Chinese and they’re incredibly efficient at helping fraudsters collect and move stolen funds. More info about that 👇:
globalchinapulse.net/moving-brick...

8/ But wait a second: An international scam operation can’t just have a checking account in its name. And how would these scammers move tens of billions of dollars of stolen money across borders without raising alarms?

7/ Scammers prefer to deal in cryptocurrency, but since their typical victim doesn’t own crypto, many pig-butchering scams still unfold with consumers tapping their bank accounts to wire money to fraudsters’ accounts.

Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims Into Cyberscamming Tens of thousands of people from across Asia have been coerced into defrauding people in America and around the world out of millions of dollars. Those who resist face beatings, food deprivation or wo...

6/ Important #humanrights note: Many of the workers are also victims of #humantrafficking who’ve been tricked into working inside these #fraud factories. Here’s 👇my 2022 report on the crushing cycle of victimization involved in pig-butchering scams.
www.propublica.org/article/huma...

5/ The scam is so successful that one estimate pinned its annual take at more than $44B. That’s just for scammers based in Asia, who often operate out of huge, fortified compounds in #Laos, #Cambodia and #Myanmar like this one 👇 that I visited in 2022

4/ Any kind of person can fall for this con. I’ve interviewed dozens of victims from all walks of life: a C-suite executive, PhDs, a scientist, small business owners, a parking lot attendant and everyone in between. It’s a hugely potent and financially devastating scam

3/ This helpful chart from @globalantiscam explains the four stages of a pig-butchering scam:
www.globalantiscam.org/about

What’s a Pig Butchering Scam? Here’s How to Avoid Falling Victim to One. Thousands have lost huge sums after being lured into fraudulent online investment schemes by seemingly attractive strangers who strike up online conversations with them. Here’s a guide to spotting the...

2/ Quick recap: A #pigbutchering #scam is a sophisticated, long-term con in which scammers present themselves as attractive, successful people to befriend you, win your trust and get you to deposit huge sums to fake online brokerages.
www.propublica.org/article/what...

How Foreign Scammers Use U.S. Banks to Fleece Americans Asian crime syndicates’ online scams have reached industrial proportions, cheating victims around the world out of more than $44 billion a year. U.S. banks have been unable to stop them.

1/ You’ve probably gotten random texts and DMs from strangers looking to befriend you. It's likely just a stealth opener to a "pig-butchering" scam but it's also a small piece of a global fraud machine that exploits some of the world's largest banks 🧵
www.propublica.org/article/pig-...

Thanks for following my work and stay in touch!

The Big Trace Newsletter “For the love of money is the root of all evil” - 1 Timothy 6:10 Thank you for your interest in my forthcoming book! The Big Trace will pull back the curtain on a devastating global phenomenon: the r...

For more info and to be the first to hear about "The Big Trace," my forthcoming book on #pigbutchering #scams, sign up for my newsletter and get updates from the reporting trail:
buttondown.com/Cezary

Human Trafficking’s Newest Abuse: Forcing Victims Into Cyberscamming Tens of thousands of people from across Asia have been coerced into defrauding people in America and around the world out of millions of dollars. Those who resist face beatings, food deprivation or wo...

In 2022, I wrote one of the first longform investigations into the industrial-scale fraud industry in Southeast Asia and its troubling reliance on forced labor to perpetrate #pigbutchering #scams. Here's that story, which inspired me to keep reporting on this issue www.propublica.org/article/huma...