Andy Greenberg

An FBI ‘Asset’ Helped Run a Dark Web Site That Sold Fentanyl-Laced Drugs for Years A staffer of the Incognito dark web market was secretly controlled by the FBI—and still allegedly approved the sale of fentanyl-tainted pills, including those from a dealer linked to a confirmed death...

The FBI secretly controlled a staffer at a dark web drug market that did $100 million in sales. The informant allegedly approved the sale of drugs even after warnings they were tainted with fentanyl—including from a vendor whose pills led to a confirmed fatal overdose. www.wired.com/story/an-fbi...

An FBI ‘Asset’ Helped Run a Dark Web Site That Sold Fentanyl-Laced Drugs for Years A staffer of the Incognito dark web market was secretly controlled by the FBI—and still allegedly approved the sale of fentanyl-tainted pills, including those from a dealer linked to a confirmed death...

The FBI secretly controlled a staffer at a dark web drug market that did $100 million in sales. The informant allegedly approved the sale of drugs even after warnings they were tainted with fentanyl—including from a vendor whose pills led to a confirmed fatal overdose. www.wired.com/story/an-fbi...

How to Organize Safely in the Age of Surveillance From threat modeling to encrypted collaboration apps, we’ve collected experts’ tips and tools for safely and effectively building a group—even while being targeted and tracked by the powerful.

I don’t think I’ve ever had so many people writing to me to ask about encrypted/secure/private tools for comms, collaboration, and organizing. So @lhn.bsky.social and I talked to experts and assembled this: the Wired guide to organizing in an age of surveillance. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

Huntress Labs is hosting the whistleblower, named Mohammad “Red Bull” Muzahir, in a webinar(?) on Feb 24:

www.huntress.com/trafficking-...

His background story:

Crypto-Funded Human Trafficking Is Exploding The use of cryptocurrency in sales of human beings for prostitution and scam compounds nearly doubled in 2025, according to a conservative estimate. Many of the deals are happening in plain sight.

Crypto transactions for human trafficking—both forced laborers in scam compounds and sex trafficking—grew by at least 85% in 2025. Now measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Almost all these deals are being carried out on Chinese-language Telegram channels. www.wired.com/story/crypto...

Thank you Runa...I think there's ongoing debate though as to whether it was actually Sandworm (GRU) in this case or the FSB group known as Berserk Bear or Dragonfly.

(That group does get a mention in the book as well...they've been deeply penetrating US power grid networks for years.)

A couple fascinating things I learned reporting this:

1. Much of the plant life on the field was people in costume.
2. The finale required 9,852 theatrical pyrotechnics.
3. That was a real couple that got married during the Lady Gaga number.

So many more details here in the piece. Go read!

Reminder that the Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers, more than most outlets will ever have, after its decision not to publish an endorsement in the last election. www.npr.org/2024/10/29/n...

That kind of cowardice, not AI or whatever, is what's "drastically reshaping" readers' expectations.

This is such a travesty, I'm sorry. You'll do great work elsewhere but infuriating this has happened to you and tragic to see WP self-immolate and lose so many of its best reporters.

thank you Nadim, but I think the best we can realistically hope for is the FIFA journalism prize

Senator Maggie Hassan has responded to our story about Bondu’s lack of security around kids’ AI toy chat transcripts by sending a letter to the company asking 10 detailed questions about its privacy practices. She calls its exposure of kids’ data “devastating.” www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cach...

Here's our 25-min video news-documentary version of the story of Red Bull, the whistleblower who leaked me the secrets of a crypto scam compound while trapped as a forced laborer inside it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOcN...

Hope you'll watch and consider the immense scale of this global crisis.

How to Film ICE Filming federal agents in public is legal, but avoiding a dangerous—even deadly—confrontation isn’t guaranteed. Here’s how to record ICE and CBP agents as safely as possible and have an impact.

NEW: The @wired.com Security desk put together a comprehensive guide to filming ICE—with tips for reducing risk at the forefront. No paywall, but please consider subscribing to help find these kinds of resources. And stay safe out there. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

www.wired.com/v2/offers/wi...

For those who read our piece about crypto scam compound whistleblower Red Bull, I've verified that this is his real Bluesky account below.

Thank for your incredible courage and all your work to achieve justice, @mohammadmuzahir02.bsky.social.

An AI Toy Exposed 50,000 Logs of Its Chats With Kids to Anyone With a Gmail Account AI chat toy company Bondu left its web console almost entirely unprotected. Researchers who accessed it found nearly all the conversations children had had with the company's stuffed animals.

The AI-chat-enabled stuffed toy Bondu invites little kids to have intimate conversations with it, like an LLM imaginary friend. It also exposed virtually all their chats on a web interface with no security. Anyone with a Gmail account could log in and read transcripts. www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

An AI Toy Exposed 50,000 Logs of Its Chats With Kids to Anyone With a Gmail Account AI chat toy company Bondu left its web console almost entirely unprotected. Researchers who accessed it found nearly all the conversations children had had with the company's stuffed animals.

The AI-chat-enabled stuffed toy Bondu invites little kids to have intimate conversations with it, like an LLM imaginary friend. It also exposed virtually all their chats on a web interface with no security. Anyone with a Gmail account could log in and read transcripts. www.wired.com/story/an-ai-...

A greenbergian banger sounds like some kind of jewish Roald Dahl monster but I'll take the compliment, thank you Patrick

He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story.

A lot is happening right now. Hope you'll still take a moment to read WIRED's story of Red Bull's incredible work as a whistleblower, our analysis of the evidence he shared, the details of his ordeal inside a modern slavery operation, and how he finally got home. /end www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

Red Bull's leaks to me were never detected. But when he tried to escape, this story became a nightmare. He was caught by his bosses, beaten, kicked, drugged and then starved for weeks. Only when the compound had to move to evade an impending police raid would he seize an opportunity to get free.

Revealed: Leaked Chats Expose the Daily Life of a Scam Compound’s Enslaved Workforce A whistleblower trapped inside a “pig butchering” scam compound gave WIRED a vast trove of its internal materials—including 4,200 pages of messages that lay out its operations in unprecedented detail.

Red Bull later shared hours of screenrecordings as he scrolled through the compound's internal WhatsApp groups. We at WIRED converted the videos into 4,200 pages of screenshotted chats that reveal the daily operations of a scam compound at a level never seen before. www.wired.com/story/the-re...

Red Bull was determined to expose everything he could about his captors: their scamming systems, scripts, guides, org chart, photos, even videos he secretly recorded. This clip inside the office shows colored flags on teams of workers' desks, connoting whether they met their scam quotas that month.

Crypto romance scams are the most lucrative form of cybercrime in the world today, stealing tens of billions of dollars a year from victims. But the scammers, workers enslaved in Chinese-mafia-run compounds, are victims too.

My new source was one of them. He asked me to call him Red Bull.

He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story.

Last year, a human trafficking victim trapped in a crypto scam compound in the Golden Triangle region of Laos contacted me. He then proceeded to leak to me a huge collection of the compound's internal materials.

Then he had to get out alive. This is his story.

🧵👇 www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

in Chakobsa

and Dune references

Here's the Company That Sold DHS ICE's Notorious Face Recognition App Immigration agents have used Mobile Fortify to scan the faces of countless people in the US—including many citizens.

NEW: The firm behind the Mobile Fortify app, which ICE and CBP use for running facial recognition scans on the public, was revealed today to be NEC, according to DHS docs reviewed by @wired.com. NEC makes its of face rec platform called Reveal. @regret.bsky.social & @dell.bsky.social with the scoop:

Thank you for saying so!

Thank you! Probably the most harrowing story I’ve ever been involved in

Thank you Jaina!!

Thank you Kashmir…it was definitely a crash course for me.