📣 I interrupt your newsletter trivia for free cash!
I'm giving away $250 every single day in February. That's $7,000 total. One winner per day. If you're reading this, you're already entered. You don't need to do a thing so long as you're a subscriber to my newsletter.
Here's how it works:
Every morning, I pick one subscriber at random.
Winner gets a $250 Amazon gift card.
If you do win, you'll see your unique claim code in a red box at the top of a newsletter. No red box, you did not win.
Open your email everyday through February to see if you won.
Click the button, enter your code, and claim your $250.
You have 30 days to claim it before the code expires.
This is real. Forward this to someone. More people = more fun. They can enter at WinFromKim.com. Your daily trivia question resumes tomorrow. I'm sorry I interrupted your routine with $7,000 in free cash. How dare I. — Kim
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TODAY'S DEEP DIVE
Informant in the lion's den
Image: ChatGPT
⚡ TL;DR (THE SHORT VERSION)
An engineer contacted a Wired journalist from inside a Southeast Asian scam compound.
Over 40 days, he secretly documented the operation while dodging surveillance, beatings and death threats.
After a failed escape led to torture, he talked his way out and fled with evidence.
📖 Read time: 3.25 minutes
Picture this: Brooklyn rooftop, summer rain clearing, rainbow over the skyline, kids splashing in a pool. A journalist (paywall link) is scrolling on his phone when an email arrives from hell.
"I am a computer engineer being forced to work here. I want to help shut this down."
Eight thousand miles away, in a concrete compound deep in Laos' Golden Triangle, a 23-year-old bet his life on a total stranger.
🎭 He got conned
Mohammad Muzahir grew up in Kashmir, the eighth of eight children. He walked 6 miles to school each day, shoes worn through, a rope for a belt. He taught himself computers on a $200 secondhand laptop, the most precious thing he'd ever owned.
When a friend of a friend mentioned a great IT job in Laos paying big money or about $1,700 a month, Mohammad saw his golden ticket out. The interview went fine, he got the position and when he showed up for work, his bosses revealed his real job. He was going to be a scammer, trained to steal money from people just like me and you. And there was no escape.
His passport vanished. He was imprisoned in a compound with other human trafficking victims. Mohammad worked 15-hour shifts running "pig butchering" romance scams using AI deepfakes to pose as wealthy women, convincing lonely Americans to invest on fraudulent crypto platforms.
A gong in the office rang whenever someone stole over $100,000.
Victims sent desperate messages: "I've always dreamed of having a girlfriend like you." "Please help me get my money back. I cannot live like this." One man sent a video of himself sobbing after losing six figures. The office passed it around as a joke.
🔥 40 days in scam hell
Mohammad knew computers better than his bosses did. For 40 days, he played spy, code-naming himself Red Bull, disguising a slew of secret Signal (get a free book about it now, more below) calls as chats with victims, making hidden recordings, gathering 4,200 pages of evidence.
But his hands weren't clean. Under threat of beatings, Mohammad scammed people, real people with real lives. He stole $504 from one, $11,000 from another.
Then he forged a police summons to trick his way out. His captors caught him. Four days of hell: beaten, starved, forced to drink drugged water. If Mohammad could come up with $2,800, they'd let him go.
No one paid. The Wired journalist couldn't, ethics forbade it. Human rights groups suspected it was all an elaborate scheme. The Indian Embassy went radio silent.
😨 Mohammad made himself worthless
He came up with a new strategy to escape. He begged, argued he was deadweight. Finally, they drove him to the border and dumped him in flip-flops, because they wouldn't let him grab his shoes. Hidden on his cracked phone: 10 GB of damning files.
Today, Mohammad's back in India, working construction, barely sleeping. He's haunted by the colleagues still trapped and by the people he robbed.
He wants you to know there are tens of thousands more like him, people working right now to steal from you, not because they want to but because the alternative is being beaten, drugged, raped or killed.
🫤 Be skeptical
Your empathy won't save them. Your money will fund the operation that's torturing them. Never:
Send money to someone you've only met online
Download investment apps from links in messages
Share your bank info, crypto wallet, or personal details
Believe screenshots of profits (they're fake)
Think "this one is different" (it's not)
The romance is fake. The investment platform is fake. The profits are fake. The only thing real is the person on the other end, probably in a compound like Mohammad's, probably terrified, definitely trying to steal money from you.
If you think you're being scammed right now: Stop. Don't send another dollar. Contact the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov or call 1-877-FTC-HELP.
👉 If this story hit you the way it hit me, share it. Use the icons below for LinkedIn, X, Facebook, email, wherever your people are. Most people have no idea this world exists. Now you do. Pass it on.
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Your smart speaker is listening. You didn't know. I cover why Google paid $68 million to settle eavesdropping claims. Then I talk to Aaron, a student from Baton Rouge who turned in his final paper and got flagged for AI cheating, even though he didn't use AI. Plus, how one island got rich from the .ai domain boom and the AirTag 2 launch.
/🎧 Or search "Komando" wherever you get your podcasts. I'm everywhere.
WEB WATERCOOLER
📈 Big Tech earnings week could wreck your portfolio. Monday: Disney reports. Tuesday: AMD, Merck, Pfizer, PayPal. Wednesday: Alphabet and Eli Lilly. Thursday: Amazon. Friday: jobs report drops. Microsoft already tanked after cloud numbers disappointed. Too much data hitting too fast for anyone to make smart decisions. Don't panic-sell. Don't FOMO buy. Let the chaos settle. These reports will move the entire market. Make your moves when you can actually think straight.
LG officially quit making 8K TVs. Join Sony, TCL, and Hisense who already bailed. Samsung's the last one standing, desperately selling $10,000 TVs nobody wants. The problem? Zero 8K content exists. Netflix is 4K. YouTube is 4K. Your eyeballs literally can't tell the difference anyway unless you own a wall-sized screen. LG tried since 2019 with an $30,000 88-inch model. Spoiler: people don't want to pay luxury car prices to watch upscaled 4K. Shocking.
🛑 Don't wait for the warning signs. Stiff knees, brittle nails, thinning hair and wrinkles happen when your collagen drops as we age. I take NativePath every single day to keep my joints healthy and my skin looking smooth. It dissolves instantly in my morning tea and has zero taste. It's the easiest way to support your body from the inside out. Get up to 44% off plus free shipping and free gifts right now.**
AI uprising: Don't fall for it.Those viral screenshots of AI bots conspiring against humans on Moltbook? Fake. The viral apocalypse posts spreading panic across X are people roleplaying as rogue AI. Classic internet.
🦈 "Sharktober" is real. Scientists analyzed 30 years of Hawaii shark data. 20% of all bites happen in October, 2 to 4 times higher than any other month. The culprit? Pregnant tiger sharks giving birth in shallow water. After 15-month pregnancies and 30 pups each, exhausted moms are starving and aggressively hunting. They're not attacking. They're hangry. Ancient Hawaiians knew this centuries ago and avoided the water October through December. This is bad. What did the shark say when he ate the clownfish? This tastes a bit funny.
Perfect for busy days when you can't wait for your oven.The TurboBlaze heats from 90°F to 450°F for crispy, even results. Plus, its ceramic coating makes cleanup a breeze.
Image: Cosori
🥣 Mix it up: These stainless steel mixing bowls(37% off, $38, five sizes) nest neatly, won't slip, and come with airtight lids. Meal-prep win.
Stand and deliver: A thick kitchen mat(37% off, $19) will cushion your sore feet while you cook, wash dishes or even work at a standing desk.
😋 High and dry: Snag four clear storage containers(18% off, $40) so you can easily spot what's inside. No more pantry guessing games.
Pour to perfection: This wide-mouth funnel set(39% off, $8) comes with four spouts and two strainers for mess-free refilling.
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Digging through menus on your phone? Stop that already. On iPhone, swipe down from the middle of the Home Screen to open Spotlight Search and type what you're looking for. You can find settings, apps, web results or photos using natural language. Newer Androids have this, too. Tap the search bar on the Home Screen. Bravo.
🔑 Stop writing passwords on sticky notes: It's asking for trouble. If you reuse the same password for every site, one data breach exposes your bank, email and social media. I use NordPass. It generates strong, unique passwords and fills them in automatically. I only have to remember one master password, and NordPass does the rest. Get 52% off plus an extra month for only $1.43 a month.*
📝 Edit documents for free: Need to edit a Word document while you're out of office? Download Google Docs on iOS or Android and email the file to yourself. Then open it with the Google Docs app on your phone. Bonus: If you know you won't have internet later, tap More, select Make available offline and find it under Menu > Offline. I use this all the time because plane WI-Fi is so unreliable.
Stop letting Instagram butcher your photos: Set your aspect ratio BEFORE you shoot. iPhone: Open Camera, swipe up from bottom, tap Aspect, pick 1:1 (square), 4:3 (standard), or 16:9 (wide). Android: Camera > Settings > Aspect Ratio, choose what you need. Takes 3 seconds. Now social media can't randomly crop out your kid's face or chop off the top of your dog's head. You control the frame, not the algorithm.
💥 Do the math: Professional data recovery costs $3,000 or more. Carbonite costs pennies a day. If your hard drive crashes tomorrow, do you have that kind of cash lying around? I use Carbonite to back up my files automatically to the cloud. Don't wait for a disaster to protect yourself. Get my exclusive 50% off deal today.*
Save data on YouTube: YouTube sets video quality to auto when you're off Wi-Fi, which can burn through your plan fast. If videos keep buffering or your data's disappearing, this is likely why. Open the YouTube mobile app on iPhone or Android > Settings > Video quality preferences. Under Video quality on mobile networks, select Data saver.
✈️ Book your spring break flights this week or pay double: Expedia's data shows the sweet spot for domestic flights is 34-86 days out. Wait until March and you're paying $200+ more per ticket. Do this now: Google Flights or Hopper. Set price alerts for your dates. The second prices drop, book. Airlines are already raising prices. Family of four flying to Florida in March? The difference between booking today versus waiting two weeks could be $800. That's your spending money gone before you even pack.
SUNDAY TO-DO LIST
📕 Get this limited time FREE book about Signal now: My buddy Guy T. Kawasaki (Chief Evangelist for Canva now but had the same gig at Apple) texted me that his book is free on Amazon today only. So if you've ever wondered about the encrypted messaging app Signal, what it does and how to use it, grab his free book while you can. Use this link. Don't miss out on this one! Guy's a great guy.
Watch ships pass through the Panama Canal: Stare at massive cargo ships squeezing through locks in real time. It's weirdly hypnotic. Watch the Miraflores Locks live. My new boat is coming from Florida through these locks in a few weeks. So excited!
🚗 Drive through cities with local radio playing: This is wild. Pick a city, Tokyo, Paris, Istanbul, and watch dashcam footage while their local radio plays. It's the road trip you didn't know you needed. Start driving.
🍋 Love these mini cubes: I picked over 100 Meyer lemons off my tree this year. I juiced every one and poured the juice into these silicone ice trays. Game changer. Now I pop a cube into my tea. Toss two into homemade tomato sauce. Drop one into a marinade. I told my assistant Jackie about them, and now she freezes fresh herbs the same way, parsley, cilantro, basil. Just add a little olive oil, freeze, and you've got flavor bombs ready to go. You need to check these out. (Btw, these have 4.4 stars from 4,900+ reviews.)
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: Aerobag
🚴♀️ Airbags on two wheels
Helmets protect your head. Nothing protects the rest of you when some guy in a Suburban doesn't see you and you eat pavement at 30 mph.
Aerobag hides in a vest and deploys in under 100 milliseconds. Nine motion sensors scan 200 times per second. The second you're going down, it inflates around your neck, spine, and chest. Then deflates so paramedics can actually reach you.
It's reusable. Swap the CO₂ cartridge, wash it, ride again. Costs around $500. This is such a great invention.
LOGGING OUT …
🔜 Tomorrow: Resume builders are tracking every job you apply to. That free template you downloaded? It's got invisible trackers. HR systems share your application data with other companies. Some will flag you as job hopping if you apply to competitors. Tomorrow's email could be the difference between getting hired and getting ghosted.
Plus, be sure to open tomorrow's newsletter to see if you're my next $250 Amazon gift card winner. Good luck! 🤞
🎶 Did you know? Spotify has 100 million songs. If you played a different song every 3 minutes, 24/7, it would take you 570 years to hear them all once. And by then, they'd have added 50 billion more. Nobody will ever hear all the music. Not you. Not anyone. You are falling behind by 99,520 songs every single day. Wild.
What kind of music do balloons like? Pop music. (Ouch, that even hurt me!)
🌟 Today's a good day to do something great. Don't let it pass you by. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.
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