Pig-butchering scams spread fast as more people get duped

Over the past few months, a fraudulent investment scheme known as the pig-butchering scam has been on the rise, especially across the Asian continent. The fraud allegedly has its origins in China, but has since become a global menace in the last few years.

The scheme draws its name from the concept of fattening a pig before slaughter, meaning that the scammers build a strong relationship with their victims over weeks or months before they pull off any scam. Usually, pig-butchering scams begin with friendly everyday conversations before the scammers take the initiative and pivot the conversation towards their victim putting money in an investment scheme, one that they usually control, to steal from them.

Pig-butchering scams on the rise as more victims fall prey

A recent case was that of 44-year-old Ahmet Tozal, who worked as a garment maker in Istanbul, Turkey. Over the last few months, Tozal was the victim of a pig-butchering scam, taking out three credit card loans and withdrawing his life savings to make a fortune from digital assets. He said he was lured by a new friend who contacted him via WhatsApp in 2023, with this friend urging him to try the space as it could fetch him plenty of money.

According to Tozal, he had met the woman on WhatsApp after she accidentally sent him a message in 2023. Tozal said she claimed to have mistakenly stumbled on his number, but she was friendly and was very interested in learning about Turkey. She told him she was a wealthy businesswoman, and she had plans to visit his country very soon. Tozal said she sent him photos of herself at some point in their conversations.

He mentioned that she described herself as a young woman who was traveling the world and attending prestigious conferences across the globe. Tozal also added that they video-called once, with the call lasting just seconds. Eventually, she struck, suggesting that he try his hand at cryptocurrencies, promising him it was a gold mine where he could make a fortune and change his life. The trajectory of their conversations showed the hallmarks of a pig-butchering scam, but Tozal failed to see the signs.

Tozal said that over the following weeks, she convinced him to invest about 400,000 Turkish lira (approximately $9,600), which was a year’s worth of his wages, into a new cryptocurrency called UAI Coin. What Tozal didn’t know at the time was that the coin never existed, and the woman pulled off the perfect pig-butchering scam in his case. “Whenever I think about it, it makes one almost go mad,” he said.

A study carried out by the University of Texas in 2024 showed that more than $75 billion has been lost to pig-butchering scams since 2020. In one of the biggest schemes in the United States, the CEO of the Heartland Tri-State Bank in Kansas lured $47 million of the company’s cash into a similar scam, bankrupting the company in the process. In cases like this, there is little hope of recovering what has been lost to the criminals.

Like Tozal, there have been a majority of people across the world who have been called prey to these pig-butchering scams, with most of them not willing to be named for fear of damaging their reputations. Some said they had been goaded into falling in love with their acquaintance on WhatsApp after a chance conversation, which led to them losing more funds before realizing it was indeed a scam. In addition, most of them had fallen for an opportunity to change their life by investing in the fake UAI digital asset.

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