A scam known as ‘pig-butchering’ is claiming victims around the world in a rip-off that can start off with a simple message.
One of the oldest con games in creation is known as “pig in a poke.”
The scam dates all the way back to the Middle Ages, when quality meat was scarce and people would fork over very large amounts of dough for pigs and cows.
The victim would pay for a piglet in a sack — also known as a “poke” — only to go home and find they had just purchased a cat instead of a porker.
Centuries later we’re still dealing with pig-related scams only this latest one starts with a “hi”, ends with “bye” and can leave you high and dry.
We’re talking about a con game known as “pig butchering”, which are frequently run out of Asia, but can nail victims all over the world.
People are often drawn in by a simple text measure — sometimes just the word “hi” — and then begin a conversation that is actually an elaborate set-up for a rip-off.
The pig in this scenario is the victim who is fattened up for a financial butchering.
Beau Friedlander, co-host of the “What the Hack with Adam Levin” podcast, said that after the initial contact, scammers “charisma bomb you, so you get into a rhythm with them friendship-wise and eventually they ask you for money.”
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice said it had seized virtual currency worth an estimated $112 million linked to a pig butchering cryptocurrency investment scam.
Here’s How To Avoid Becoming A Target
Officials said judges signed off on the seizure warrants for six virtual currency accounts in Los Angeles, the District of Arizona, and the District of Idaho.
In the Los Angeles case, a U.S. magistrate judge authorized the seizure of an account containing roughly $66.4 million in various cryptocurrencies after finding probable cause that the funds were obtained from wire fraud schemes.
“Scammers often target their victims through social networking and online communications platforms, dating websites, and phone calls and text messages that are meant to appear to have been misdialed,” the DOJ said in an April 3 statement.
“After gaining the trust of their victims – sometimes over a period of months – scammers eventually introduce the idea of trading in cryptocurrency,” the DOJ said.
The con artists control websites that are built to look like legitimate trading platforms, applications that victims download onto their phones, or malicious smart contracts accessed through cryptocurrency wallet software.
The L.A. case covered a series of cryptocurrency investment scams, one of which targeted a professional woman who was contacted on LinkedIn by a man who used the name “Fei Kuang.”
After learning that the victim already had a small cryptocurrency account, “Fei Kuang” offered to help the victim, eventually convincing her to invest more money and to move her funds to another, presumably fraudulent, trading exchange.
Scammers Can Be Victims, Too
When she tried to withdraw her funds, she was told she had to pay a 20% in “taxes,” the DOJ said. When the trading platform continued to demand more money, the woman realized she was the victim of a $2.5 million scam.
Investment fraud caused the highest losses of any scam reported by the public to the FBI’s Internet Crimes Complaint Center, last year, the DOJ said, totaling $3.31 billion.
Frauds involving cryptocurrency, including pig butchering, represented most of these scams, increasing 183% from 2021 to $2.57 billion in reported losses last year.
However, analysts believe that the pig-butchering scams could be pulling in a lot more money, only the victims are too embarrassed to admit they’ve been conned.
And the scammers can be victims themselves. A Sept. 13 article in ProPublica describes the ordeal of a 22-year-old man from China who was held captive at a location in Cambodia and forced into conducting pig butchering scams.
“This idea of combining two crimes, scamming and human trafficking, is a very new phenomenon,” Matt Friedman, chief executive of the Mekong Club, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit that combats what it calls modern slavery, told ProPublica.
Calling it a “double hurt,” Friedman said it’s unlike anything he’s ever seen in his 35-year career.
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