The following post contains spoilers of Reply All episode #102: Long Distance , which was released on July 27, 2017. If you don't wish to know what happens in that episode, read no further.

Here at Ars, we are no strangers to online tech support scammers. For years now, we have played along with scammers, cajoled them, and called them out on their tricks . Such scams are notoriously difficult to shut down.

But we never even dreamed of doing what the podcast Reply All has done in an amazing episode that was released Thursday morning: doggedly pursue corporate records, find Facebook profiles of at least one company executive, and even manage to have extended conversations with one of them before trying to confront him. In person. In India.

The story begins in January 2017 when Alex Goldman, one of the hosts of the show, got a cold call on his cell. The automated message told him that his "iCloud may be compromised" and to please call a certain 1-800 number.

The episode features audio of that recording, which was an authoritative robotic British male voice saying: "We seriously recommend you to call us on one eight double-four double-eight five double oh double-one. We request you do not use your computer or other Mac devices before speaking to our certified technicians."

"I was having a hard day of tracking, and so I thought 'why don’t I blow off some steam?'" Goldman told Ars recently. "The person was like: 'we're calling from Apple, and your Apple has been compromised, and your account has been accessed from Germany and Jordan.'"

Goldman saw through the ruse right away, but he decided to dive into the rabbit hole to see where it led. So he called the 800 number.

Here's what went down in the episode:

"Thank you for talking to Online Support," an Indian-sounding male voice from the other side said. "My name is Alex; how can I help you?"

"What a coincidence! My name is Alex!" Goldman gleefully told the "technician." "I got a call that said—" Goldman briefly continued before Alex jumped right back in.

"No, your name is Michael Gold. Man."

"My middle name is Alex," Goldman admitted. "I go by Alex."

"OK, you go by Alex? OK, Alex, how can I help you?"

"I got a call that there was some suspicious activity going on on my iCloud," Goldman explained.

"OK, what kind of activity? How do you know about that?"

"I got a call from you guys."

"You got a call?"

"Yeah."

"Alex, we have seen that your IP address has been compromised from other countries in the last two days. Have you been to some other countries with your devices over there?"

"No."

"Do you have any computer like a laptop or desktop with you?"

"Yes I do."

"Alex, the thing is that we need the help of a computer so we can rectify this kind of issue. Is that possible you can access a computer, please?"

"Yeah, I’m sitting right in front of it," Goldman continued. "Just to be clear, are you guys from Apple?"

"Yes, sir, I’m a certified technician to support Apple, that's right."

Goldman then asked for some sort of way that he could "cross-reference" that the call was, in fact, coming from Apple.

After some back and forth and Goldman persistently asking "who are you?", it became clear that he didn’t believe that Alex was from Apple. That's when Alex proclaimed: "We are Anonymous. We are legion. Expect us."

"You're Anonymous?" Goldman asked, practically withholding a guffaw. "You're legion? Expect you? Are you coming for me?"

"We will be demolishing all your social identities."

"Me personally?"

"You have broken some laws on the Internet," Alex continued, flatly. "You have been looking at some porn sites, some sort of—showing porn. We have detected some issues, and we have detected where your devices are, and we will be demolishing your social identities and leaking them on the porn sites themselves."

"I want to be perfectly clear, here. You're saying that you are going to, first of all, destroy all of my social media stuff, and then you’re going to leak it onto a porn site?"

"That's right."

"Cool. I'm recording this. I hope that you like being on YouTube because this is going on there."

Goldman then asked Alex how much they were selling their bogus antivirus software for. Amazingly, Alex answered: $400.

"How many sales do you make in a day?"

"We are around 50 or 55 people. I personally make six or seven sales a day."

The two Alexes went back and forth for a while about the philosophy of scamming.

"You guys have a lot of money," Alex explained, seemingly referring to Americans.

Eventually, Alex—who then gave his "last name" as "Martin"—hung up on Goldman.

Normally, this is often where the story ends. But Goldman didn't give up. He tried calling back again and got a different person.

“ZEUS TROAN”

This time, a new staffer named "Charlie" went through the whole faux diagnosis and walked Goldman through how to engage remote access to his Mac. The staffer instructed Goldman to go to a "technical website."

Eventually, Charlie opened up Goldman’s Terminal and ran netstat.

"Then he suddenly makes the Terminal window incredibly small, so that he could still use it, but so that I couldn’t see what he was doing," Goldman explained in the episode. "And then he made it big again, and written in it was something like 'ICLOUD COMPROMISED SSED HACK,' and what it meant to say was 'ZEUS TROJAN DETECTED,' but what he really typed was 'ZEUS TROAN.'"

It was a clear fake.

Again, Goldman tried to engage with Charlie, ask him questions about the company he was calling from, and what it was all about. Charlie hung up.

Still undeterred, Goldman kept calling back and realized this time that he wanted to play out the entire script. Amazingly, he reached Alex Martin, the man who answered his very first call. But to keep his plan on the sly, Goldman gave his name as "Rusty Savage."

Alex Martin went through the entire rigmarole again. Eventually, to "fix" the problem, he needed to speak with a "technician, Level 9." That "technician" referred Goldman to a website: QuickPCResolve.com (which was taken down later on Thursday after the Reply All episode was released). At that point, the technician explained that this "fix" would cost a few hundred bucks. (Many others online have called this site out as being a scam for years now.)

Goldman confronted Alex Martin and said that he wasn't going to pay.

"Do you just have a really low opinion of Americans in general?" Goldman asked earnestly.

"Yes."

"Why do you have a low opinion of them?"

"You guys are conservative-minded people. You are fighting over who is black and who is white. Everybody is a human being. But you are doing terrible things to your brothers, people who are in your country, and you are killing them, and you are robbing them, and you're saying that you are very honest."

"I'm going to be very honest with you—I agree with you—but I am a human being."

"You were also a human being when you dropped an atom bomb in 1947 or 1945, on Japan. Have you heard about that?"

"I have heard about that."

Eventually, the pair hung up.

But a few minutes later, Goldman's work phone in the Gimlet Media studios in Brooklyn, rang.

"Hi, is this Alex Goldman? You're a liar!" the other Alex said, seemingly with a smile. "Why did you say your name was Rusty Savage?"

The two bantered back and forth for a few moments before Alex Martin quasi-jokingly insulted Goldman, calling him "fat," "gay," and having a "weird smile."

Goldman largely brushed the taunts aside and asked what Alex did for fun.

"I'm a hacker," he said. "Whoever pisses me off, I hack it."

"Are you going to hack me?"

"Why would I do that? You haven't pissed me."

The two men then got into a breezy conversation about video games, with Alex Martin saying that he was "hella good" at Counter Strike.

Then, suddenly, Alex Martin said that he had to go and that he would call back shortly. He didn't call back.