It’s a weird-sounding name, but you’ve likely seen it happen. You get a weird text from an unknown number, with something fairly innocent like “how are you doing?“, and it slowly evolves into a full conversation. The text is from a scammer, and over the course of a few days they try to build a friendship and ultimately encourage you to invest money in a fake cryptocurrency.
It happened to me a few weeks ago, but thankfully I was already aware of this scam and it wasn’t a problem.
A recent episode of John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” dug deep into it, which you can view here:
I had a few takeaways from it.
The name
“Pig butchering” is an odd name for it, but it really describes it quite well. The scammer tries to “fatten you up” with innocent small talk, and then slowly gets you prepared for them to take advantage of you.
The system
I always wondered “how do people fall for this kind of thing?“, but the way they do it here is quite brilliant. You never send the scammer money directly, but instead they just give you a “tip” for a great cryptocurrency to invest in. It’s a fake crypto, but you can use legit apps to get to it. As a result, you’re downloading a popular and well-regarded app on your phone, which makes it seem more legit.
As you invest money, you can watch your investment rise, which often encourages you to put in more money or even get your friends and family involved. However, when you try to take any money out, you’re shut out and it’s all gone. Plus, due the nature of cryptocurrency, there is almost no hope of getting it back.
The scale
The scale of this is what amazes me. The video above shares the story of a bank CEO who lost $50M in a scheme like this! All told, these scams rake in over $3B per year in the US alone, and that’s likely an underreported number because many people are likely too embarrassed to admit what they did.
The scammers
Lastly, the actual scammers are not who you think. While the person texting you is doing a very bad thing, no doubt, they’re often locked in a building and forced to do this like a slave. The real crooks are the one holding them and making them do this.
As Oliver shares, there’s not much you can do to help other than raise awareness — hence this post. Make sure that the people you are about are aware of this kind of thing so they don’t fall prey to it. If you want more beyond the video above, a recent episode of the “Search Engine” podcast digs into it as well and went quite deep into how this all works.
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