“Pig butchering” is a translation of the Chinese term shāzhūpán (sha zhu pan) and draws its name from the concept of fattening up an animal for slaughter.
In terms of pig butchering scams, they are long-term con jobs that combine elements of romance scams, investment schemes, and cryptocurrency fraud. The slaughter of the victim doesn’t happen overnight: there is a long process to prepare the victim for the ‘slaughter’.
Here’s how a pig butchering scam plays out:
- The scammers initiate contact with a target online via social media, a dating app or text message and they start building a relationship with their victims.
- After earning the victim’s trust or making them fall in love, the scammers encourage them to invest in cryptocurrency.
- There is usually a website or an App for the victims to join and these platforms are fake and set up by a gang of scammers.
- Once the victim joins the platform and invests, because the platform is manipulated by the scammers, they make it look like the victim is making money. After seeing the profit, the victim is now encouraged to withdraw some of their profit to prove that the App or the website is legit.
- Now, the victim is convinced that this is a secure way to invest and make profit, they invest larger sums of money. This step is called ‘fattening the pig’ before slaughter.
- Usually, the victims are allowed to withdraw their profit a few times and reinvest with more money until there is a ‘problem’ with their account. Sometimes, they ask the victim to pay taxes or large fees to get their money back, but the truth is they have already lost control over their account as well as their money.
- In the end, the victim realises the truth and the scammer, and the platform disappear.
Unfortunately, because all transactions happen on the blockchain, recovering the funds is almost impossible.
Education is protection. Educate yourself and stay safe.