Pig Butchering
A pig butchering scam is a type of investment scam that lures victims into investing money into ventures that appear legitimate and profitable. Pig butchers often use fake images, impressive looking investment portfolios, and romantic manipulation to convince victims of the legitimacy of their scheme, but once victims are hooked and have invested a large amount of money they disappear, leaving victims with no way of recovering their funds.
The term “pig butchering” comes from the idea that scammers ‘fatten up’ their victims before ‘slaughtering’ them for their money.
How does it work?
1. Scammers create a fake identity for themselves
Scammers will often create a fake online presence, with an attractive persona that typically shows an alluring profile picture and images conveying a glamorous lifestyle. These photos are likely stolen from someone else.
2. Finding a victim
After they have set up their fake profile, scammers begin messaging their victims. They send out multiple messages across social media, dating sites, or other networking sites. Scammers have also been known to use platforms like WhatsApp to contact victims, claiming to have stumbled across a 'wrong number'.
3. Winning the target’s trust
Once the victim has been contacted the scammers try to gain their trust. Common techniques include asking the victim about their life, family, or work, with an eye for mining for information about their lives that they can later use to manipulate them.
Scammers may try and manipulate their own life story, based on the information you tell them, to try and seem relatable and similar to their victims. They work on the theory that people like people who are like themselves.
4. Steering the conversation
After gaining the victim’s trust, scammers will soon try and steer the conversation towards investments. They make claims about their own success, and how it has helped them overcome issues in their own life (although their issues are likely fake and just modelled off of what the victim has going on – being relatable, remember?). Victims are encouraged to open an account with the same investment broker as the scammer, but they are unaware that the broker is fake and instead anything deposited goes straight to the scammer.
These 'brokers' often have legitimate looking websites that are aesthetically pleasing.
5. Getting the victim to deposit money into the fake account
Once the victim agrees to learn about investing, the scammers offer to ‘help’ them with the investment process. They give explanations on how to transfer money to a crypto wallet, and then from there to the fake broker account.
6. Proving the investment is “legitimate” – fattening up the pig
If the victim has doubts about the legitimacy of the investment process, scammers often allow them to withdraw money a couple of times to prove that the process can be trusted. This causes victims to believe that what they are doing is safe, and so they are more likely to invest more in the future.
7. Manipulating their target
Unfortunately, pig butchers are well versed in the art of emotional and financial manipulation. They will assure the victim feels as though the scam is legitimate and that their investment is real, and get them to deposit more funds. They may start small by ensuring that the investment is risk-free, but they progress to pressuring victims to take out loans, dip into their retirement savings, or mortgage their house to get more funds to invest.
8. Slaughtering the 'pig'
Scammers are only interested in their victims while they are actively investing more money. If the victim becomes suspicious or does not want to deposit more funds the apparent investment success they have seen suddenly stops. Scammers stop them from being able to withdraw funds, or they 'suffer a large financial loss' on their investments, causing them to lose everything.
9. Taunting the victim before they depart
Once the victim figures out that they have been scammed, the butchers often being insulting the victim. They may even tell the victim that they have lied to them just to earn their trust and steal their money. Once the victim stops engaging with the scammer they go dead. All traces of accounts and websites used disappear, as though they never existed to begin with. Scammers then restart the process and target a new person.
How do I avoid pig butchering scams?
- Be careful of group chats and unsolicited messages
- Research any potential 'Investment Brokers' - often a search will flag that it's a scam
- Suspect pressurising conversations
- Monitor identity theft for leaked personal information
- Be sceptical of high investment returns with a low risk
- Educate yourself about emerging social engineering tactics
- Report any suspicious activity
- Do not invest in anything if you don’t fully understand how it works