This article was written by Deborah Bond, Consulting Manager.
Millions of people use mobile devices, dating apps and social media to stay connected to family, perhaps make new friends, possibly find the love of their life. What we do not expect is to be scammed.
When we meet someone in a dating app or on social media, over time we may let down our guard because we want to build a connection. We may share personal information, not realizing this information can be exploited by traffickers or scammers.
Initial Contact
Many times, a scam victim is contacted by receiving what appears to be a wrong number text. These have become increasingly clever. Scammers will use any tactic (including sending a photo of an attractive young Asian female named ‘Jen’, for example) to get your attention long enough to respond. Then, over the next 90 or so days, Jen will convince the victim she wants to be with them, declaring her love for them, saying she is lonely and wants the victim to live with her and share her very expensive lifestyle.
There are hundreds of stories online about people who have fallen victim to romance scams just like the one described above. Retirees losing everything, perhaps they took out huge loans or a second mortgage on their home because their online love said they needed money. A single adult looking for love, loses their life savings. The victim’s entire world collapses when they discover their life savings is gone and their online love is a scammer.
Dating apps, dating websites, and social media have become a haven for scammers and traffickers. These scammers and traffickers will use dating apps, social media platforms, or unsolicited text messages. They will invest time to understand your life, family dynamics, work, and other aspects of your life in order to build a connection with you. This is referred to as grooming.
Grooming
Grooming is beginning of the Pig Butchering Lifecycle. Pig Butchering is a scam where fraudsters gain the trust of victims over time, claiming a romantic connection, declaring their love to build trust. The scammer’s goal is to become a trusted confidant. The scammer will occasionally drop a breadcrumb about an lucrative investment opportunity they are working on.
As the scammer learns more about you, your financial situation, your work, your hobbies, etc… they will ask you to begin using a different messaging platform like Whatsapp or Telegram. Scammers want you to use these messaging platforms because they are encrypted and therefore, makes it harder to identify, track, and report scammers.
Introduce the Fake Investment
Next, the scammer will tell their victim about a lucrative investment. As the scammer has gained the victim’s trust, it is easy to charm their victim into sending money to invest.
Credibility
To establish credibility with the victim, the scammer will send fake screenshots or photos of trading platforms, and share a fake story about a friend or family member who “invested and made a huge profit”.
The scammer may send ‘personal photos’ of themselves in what may appear to be a luxurious home, driving a fancy car, or wearing expensive designer clothing. The goal is to convince the victim that the investment opportunity is real, that their online love has become financially successful through this investment, and that the victim should be ready to invest as much of their money as possible so they do not lose out on this great opportunity.
Stealing Your Money, Starting With Small Amounts
Since the victim may feel skeptical or is still worried about losing money because they are on a fixed income, the scammer will encourage a minimal investment to start, so they can ‘test the waters’ and get familiar with the process. After the first deposit, the scammer will create a fake return showing ‘impressive results’, usually with some financial or technical jargon added just so it is more convincing.
Psychological Pressure
Scammers know how to apply subtle pressure to get what they want – their victim’s money. They might suggest that the investment opportunity is only for a few more hours or a few more days and encourage the victim to invest. They may reference so-called market trends or limited-time windows before a blackout period to create a sense of urgency. Since there is an emotional bond now, they may even suggest that the continued romantic relationship depends upon the victim’s investment.
Where are These Scams Coming From?
These scams are being run by Transnational Organized Cybercrime groups in Southeast Asia, expanding its footprint to other locations to Myanmar and Dubai. Thes groups are associations of people who operate illegally, either in whole or in part. They often bribe local authorities to turn a blind eye. The size and organization of these groups vary. The scenario described above involves Pig Butchering and Scam Call Centers. In 2023 alone, Americans reported losing 4.6 billion to these investment schemes. (pbs.org/newshour/show/how-human-trafficking-victims-are-forced-to-run-pig-butchering-investment-scams)
Scam Call Centers are call centers run mostly by large crime syndicates in Southeast Asia. These scam call centers are filled with people who have been trafficked and forced to do this horrible work. Scam call center compounds are very large. To attract people to work in the call center, the criminals constructed very authentic-looking websites to offer up jobs in Southeast Asia.
People from all over would apply for these jobs, thinking they would have a great work/life opportunity. However, there was a sickening, rude awakening when they arrived. Their passports were taken, they were put in buses and transported to these compounds surrounded by armed men. They were locked down and forced to work in the scam call center for up to 17 hours a day. As if being forced into this work was not enough, the workers were expected to meet a monthly target of about 300,000 yuan ($41,200) of stolen money or risk being tortured, which may of them were.
One of the largest scam call centers discovered was a scam call center compound in Bamban, Philippines, which contained 36 buildings spanning 25 acres. This compound was disguised as an Internet gaming company.
How To Protect Yourself
Now that you have learned a little about transnational criminal organizations, scam call centers, and pig butchering, you want to make sure that you and your loved ones are safe.
There is pretty much a textbook operation for how these scammers conduct their business. They will begin an initial conversation with their target (victim) whether it is a fake wrong-number text message, Facebook, or some other social media or dating app.
This is where you take extreme caution. Literally anytime someone is reaching out to you or a family member from an electronic platform of any kind that you don’t know them and don’t recognize them, STOP and take a breath. There are so many bad actors out there trying to find their next victim to take advantage of them. Do you want to be the next?
If you get a text message from an unknown number that says, for example, ‘Hello’ – STOP. Delete the text message and report it as spam or scam. If you get a text message with a photo of an attractive person from an unknown number that says, for example, “I’d like to meet you”, STOP. Delete the message and report it as spam or scam.
If someone sends you a message via text, Facebook, a dating app or some other social media platform and wants you to move over to WhatsApp or Telegram “for more privacy”, STOP, take a breath, and recognize that it’s a scam. This person is probably not a friend, they are likely a scammer who is trying to groom you and trick you into giving them your money.
Stay vigilant on all social media platforms and teach your family members to do the same. If you don’t know someone, do not ‘friend’ them, do not ‘connect’ with them, do not take other actions on the platform that would give the person requesting the connection access to you and personal details about your life. Their goal is to gather as much information about you as possible so they can build a bond, become a trusted person, and trick you into giving them your money.
There are excellent resources on transnational criminal organizations and the rise of scam call centers. These groups are comprised of highly sophisticated criminals, focused entirely upon deceiving you.
- https://operationshamrock.org/education/the-problem
- https://www.rfi.fr/en/international-news/20240725-inside-the-dark-world-of-philippine-scam-centres
If you think that you or someone you know is the victim of a pig butchering scam (romance/investment scam), you can report it to the Operation Shamrock portal: https://www.chainabuse.com/report?source=shamrock