An excerpt from the book Number Go Up traces “wrong number” texts to Chinese gangs in Cambodia and Myanmar using forced labor to run pig butchering Tether scams
of human trafficking. Thousands of people across Southeast Asia are lured with the promise of good jobs, then trapped and forced to scam. Zeke Faux / @zekefaux : It turns out people really do lose millions of dollars to scams like this. It's called “pig butchering,” because the victims are fattened up with fake romance before their money is stolen in one fell swoop. Zeke Faux / @zekefaux : Ever wonder what's up with those weird wrong-number texts? The story behind them is darker than I could have imagined. An excerpt from my book NUMBER GO UP: INSIDE CRYPTO'S WILD RISE AND STAGGERING FALL https://www.bloomberg.com/... Yueqi Yang / @yueqi_yang : @ZekeFaux tracked down a spam text message he received in NY, which led him to uncover a human-trafficking town in Cambodia, where many Chinese and Vietnamese were forced labor for crypto scam operations https://www.bloomberg.com/... @muyaoshen : timely published excerpt from @ZekeFaux new book. I was just watching a documentary coming out of China last night featuring Chinese victims of the “pig butchering” scams who escaped out of Myanmar. The truth is scarier than what we heard https://www.bloomberg.com/... via @BW Max Abelson / @maxabelson : A gift from the journalism gods: New @BW cover story excerpting @ZekeFaux's crypto book. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurl https://www.bloomberg.com/... Max Chafkin / @chafkin : Drop what you're doing and read this excerpt from @ZekeFaux's wonderful new book in the new @bw https://www.bloomberg.com/... Bill Bishop / @niubi : My Crypto Hell Journey Started W a Wrong Number Scam Text - Bloomberg In an exclusive excerpt from Zeke Faux's forthcoming book, “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall,” he uncovers a crypto-powered human-trafficking ring in Cambodia. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Julia Black / @mjnblack : je.sus. christ. nightmare fuel. incredible reporting by @ZekeFaux https://www.bloomberg.com/... Mark Milian / @markmilian : This excerpt from Number Go Up by @ZekeFaux is shocking, tense and maddening. Can't wait to read the rest of the book https://www.bloomberg.com/... Annie Massa / @antoniabmassa : Those scammy “wrong number” texts everybody receives have dark ties to crypto and human trafficking in Southeast Asia. @ZekeFaux investigates in this excerpt from his new book https://www.bloomberg.com/... Evan Weinberger / @reporterev : I spent a summer working at the Phnom Penh Post. Covered big stories on corruption in banana plantations, fishing rights. So it was exciting to see cryptocurrencies allow the Cambodian elite to get involved in new and exciting worlds of corruption. https://www.bloomberg.com/... M. Scott Havens / @msh200 : Scary, but fascinating, must read about organized crypto scamming that I bet many of you have been targeted by... https://www.bloomberg.com/... Caleb Hannan / @calebhannan : I consider @ZekeFaux a friend so sometimes I'll think to blindly RT something he's written. I always read, though, because it usually takes only a few paragraphs to realize he truly does find the wildest stories that exist today. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Ashlee Vance / @ashleevance : As always, @ZekeFaux delivers. My gawd. Excerpt from his new book. https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image] LinkedIn: Kelvin Low : The many circles of hell underlying crypto: the supposed future of finance. — One of the best questions I got at the recent debate organised … John Coffey : Finally, the truth about crypto — For all crypto evangelists out there, please read this book extract and hang your heads in shame. … Forums: r/Buttcoin : Behind “pig butchering,” author finds a “crypto-powered hell” & human-trafficking ring in Cambodia
Context & Ripple Effects
The account connects commonplace wrong-number outreach to a fraud model that earlier coverage described as romance-and-investment “pig butchering”: victims are cultivated before being directed into bogus investments.
It also places the scams’ crypto component alongside a coercive labor system. Later reporting on a survivor forced to scam from Myanmar reinforces that the operators’ workforce, not only their targets, is harmed.
First-order effects
- Victims who respond to the texts face a more targeted form of investment fraud, while people recruited with job promises can be trapped into operating it.
- Tether is placed in the public narrative as a payment instrument used in these schemes, increasing scrutiny of how stablecoin rails can be exploited without establishing culpability by the issuer.
Second-order effects
- Exchanges, stablecoin intermediaries, and messaging services face stronger pressure to detect scam-linked flows and recruitment or outreach patterns, rather than treating each fraudulent account as an isolated incident.
- The linkage between trafficking and crypto fraud complicates consumer trust in crypto products, especially where a victim’s apparent investment activity masks an organized scam.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern persists, anti-scam enforcement will increasingly need to join financial tracing with labor-trafficking investigations across borders, rather than separating online fraud from organized exploitation.
- The case is part of a broader crypto legitimacy gap: systems designed for rapid digital transfers can be drawn into illicit operations when identity, monitoring, and cross-border enforcement do not keep pace.
The trend: Pig-butchering fraud is evolving from a consumer-protection problem into an interconnected challenge spanning crypto oversight, platform safety, and forced-labor enforcement.