There’s a new financial scam in town.
Did you receive a friendly note from a stranger over the holidays? Perhaps an old colleague you’ve completely forgotten, or someone who messaged you because your number is “in their contacts.” If this sounds familiar, you aren’t alone — and if you’ve been talking to them since, you should almost certainly end the conversation, stat.
We’ve all heard of the cryptocurrency market, and the vast sums of money made and lost on it. But if we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us don’t really understand what cryptocurrency is, or how trading with it really works. Now, a sophisticated network of scammers is taking advantage of our collective ignorance with a cruel, highly-evolved racket known as “pig butchering”.
How does this scam work?
Pig-butchering scammers “fatten up the pig by getting the victim to think that they’re investing in something and get them to move money into cryptocurrency,” Santa Clara County, California, district attorney Jeff Rosen tells CNN.
The concept is simple: The scammer contacts the victim out of the blue and engages in relaxed conversation with them. Typically, the scammer will have a fake profile set up, using stolen photos to create an attractive image. As the victim divulges more and more details about their life, the scammer will feed back their own “relatable” stories — usually ones that suggest they can empathize with the victim’s situation. According to Rosen, per CNN, scammers are sometimes trained by psychologists to manipulate victims into the most vulnerable position.
After gaining the victim’s trust, the scammer turns the conversation to money. They describe their own incredible investments, often with the aid of impressive-looking screengrabs, and assure the victim that they know exactly how to help them make the same returns. Often, this will involve downloading a legit-looking app — such as MetaTrader, which was removed from the Apple store in October — and instructing the victim as to how they can pour money into what they believe are lucrative investments. These start small, then as the victim gains confidence, they’re encouraged to transfer more and more cash into crypto wallets, and ultimately, the money fake brokerage — fattening the digital “pig”. Once it becomes clear that the victim has hit their financial ceiling, the scammer vanishes, taking the money with them. And thus, the pig is slaughtered.
Factory-scale fraud
This process has proven so lucrative so many times that now, even the “butchers” themselves are often victims. People are trafficked in Southeast Asia — countries like Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar — and forced to carry out online scams on a mass scale. As Forbes notes, this human trafficking introduces a further complication — the rights of those carrying out the fraud. It’s “like they’re doing fraud in a factory,” Jan Santiago, the deputy director of advocacy group Global Anti-Scam Organization, told the magazine.
‘Tis the season to be scamming
One reason this racket has been on the uptick is that the holiday season is a major window of opportunity for scammers, who prey on those feeling lonely during this time of year and switch up their tactics to blend in amidst all the extra shopping.
In one scam, “somebody calls you and purports to be from Amazon or another wholesaler distributor, and they say there’s a problem with your credit card,” Frank Fisher, a public affairs specialist at the FBI’s Albuquerque division, tells CNN. They then ask you for your new card details, which they can use to access your accounts. In other cases, scammers might pretend there’s been suspicious activity on your account and ask you to make a “purchase” to get your account up and running again. When victims are hesitant, scammers pretend they’re on the brink of calling the police.
Amazon’s website says that Amazon will never ask for your personal information via phone, text, or e-mail, and that the site will never ask users to update payment information that is not linked to an Amazon order they’ve placed or an Amazon service they’ve subscribed to. It will never ask you for remote access to your device (say, by asking you to install an app), give you an unexpected “refund,” or ask you to make a payment outside of the website (eg via bank transfer).
Another popular method of tricking people out of their money is to pretend the mark has won a “sweepstakes” and they need to pay some sort of fee or tax to collect their prize. This, Fisher assures CNN, is never truly the case.
I’ve been pig butchered — what now?
If you, like so many others, have fallen victim to pig butchering, the best thing you can do is report the theft as quickly as possible. “We are definitely going to be more successful if you immediately report,” Erin West, deputy district attorney at the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office, tells ProRepublica.
Tell your bank, the local police, FBI, and Secret Police what’s happened. The sooner you do so, the better the chance that the bank will be able to reverse the transactions, and that law enforcement will be able to track your stolen money. Keep an eye on your bank accounts for any suspicious transactions, and if you’ve told the scammer any of your passwords, change them.
