posted nothing, but connected with exactly one person: his own cousin.

Dozens of call center employees included RX Limited's call cen- ters and corporate shells on their public-facing social media pro- files. When I contacted them, they often had no idea whom they had once worked for, or that there had been anything dubious about it at all. "We thought it was an outsourcing company for some- thing in the States," said one Israeli American who had worked at RX Limited's Tel Aviv call center. "We took it as a customer service job. Both me and my roommate worked there, we kept laughing at how hilarious this company was. Maybe looking back there were some red flags we should have noticed, but I was an eighteen-year- old kid."

Stranger still were the employees from the mercenary side of Le Roux's business who proudly listed shell companies like La Plata Trading or Southern Ace as their former employers. One former team member advertised his work for Le Roux as "protective se- curity operations for Clients in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ecuador and Peru." I discovered later that his work in Papua New Guinea included setting fire to a rival timber operation. "You're the second journalist to contact me," replied another contractor, a former South African police- man named Marcus, when I emailed him to ask about Le Roux after finding Southern Ace on his online résumé. "Maybe I should change my LinkedIn profile." His duties, it turned out, consisted primarily of assassinating employees and business associates who Le Roux believed were cheating him.

For years I pinged these people with messages, and the ones who were willing to talk often insisted on moving to secure email services and encrypted chats. Some initially voiced suspicion that I was working for the U.S. government, part of a sting operation designed to trick them into admitting wrongdoing. Others as- sumed I was one of Le Roux's minions, arriving to intimidate them or seek vengeance. "What's your real name?" one Filipina former