BRITS have been warned over a horrifying swindle carried out by gangs of cyber criminals who raid people’s bank accounts.
The devastating con is usually carried out by Chinese organised crime groups who have been estimated to have stolen billions of dollars from victims worldwide.
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So-called “pig butchering” is where scammers established fake romantic and trusting relationships with victims before luring them into fraudulent investments or other financial traps.
In 2023, Shan Hanes, a banker from Kansas, US, embezzled £34.6million from his bank to cover his losses, having fallen victim to a pig butchering scam.
Hanes was later sentenced to more than 24 years behind bars.
Usually, a pig butchering scam works in three stages – hunting, raising and killing.
This involves a scammer finding a victim online, chatting to them in order to build up trust and then getting them to invest large amounts of money into fraudulent schemes.
The scam works in a similar way to a traditional romance scam, where scammers approach their victims by posing as a possible romantic partner on a dating app, or as a friend via social media.
The big difference though is how the scam is executed.
With a romance scam, trust is based on the victim’s urge to maintain a romantic relationship with the scammer.
In this scenario, the scam can often last for years.
Pig butchering scams though, in comparison, generally take place over a much shorter time period.
The scammer, rather than focusing on trying to extract money through emotional manipulation, leans more on the victim’s desire to make money together with the scammer.
This can involve just a few months rather than years to take advantage of the victim.
Usually, the scammer will present themselves as being financially successful and confident with a broad network and have appealing investment opportunities.
Once the victim has made an initial small investment, the scammer will then try to escalate the process and push them into making a much larger financial commitment, Phys.org reports.
In 2024, Jacqueline Crenshaw, from Connecticut, US, met a man on an online dating site.
He posed as a widower with two children and regularly chatted to Crenshaw on the phone.
In just two months, they started talking about investing in cryptocurrency.
She sent him $40,000 (£29,500) at first and received screenshots from him showing supposedly huge profits from the investment.
Crenshaw was then encouraged to invest much more and it ultimately led to her losing almost $1 million (£738,000).
Highly organised criminal gangs are thought to run these pig butchering scams with them using management teams who provide training to new recruits and even hire people as models who can interact with the victim.
The Chinese government has taken a number of measures in order to try to stamp out the fraud.
The Anti-Telecom Fraud Act was introduced in 2022 which was aimed at specifically preventing and punishing the use of telecommunications and internet technologies to defraud individuals and organizations.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security has also launched the National Anti-Fraud Centre App.
This app allows the public to report scams and access real-time risk alerts relating to fraud.
Along with the work of other government departments, it has helped intercept 4.7billion scam calls and 3.4billion fraudulent text messages since the start of 2024.
The crackdown by the Chinese authorites has made it more difficult for criminal groups to operate in the country, leading many criminals to relocate abroad with South-East Asian countries – mainly Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar – being their chosen destination.
The collapse of the illegal online gambling industry in the region following the Covid pandemic has led criminal gangs to look for new sources of revenue.
Estimates of the profits made from online scams amount to around 40 percent of the combined GDP of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
The leaders of the criminal gangs often operate from tightly controlled compounds which act as hubs for online scams, with their primary focus on pig butchering.
These compounds are usually presented as being “technology parks” which help recruit workers.
However, many people are forced into working for the scammers.
While pig butchering can inflict severe financial hardship on the victims, the crime gangs are often also closely tied with violent crime, human trafficking as well as other forms of organised criminal behaviour.
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