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A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

227 points by stmw 1y ago

qwertytyyuu 1y ago
lol I’ve gotten this question. For me, they wanted to invite me to this bad mobile game
- Dilettante_ 1y ago
  "I love you honey. Hey, let's play Raid Shadow Legends™, my Favourite Game Ever together! If you sign up with this link you get one hundred gold and a Free Epic Champion <3"
anasrin 1y ago
Couple months ago I got message from random woman on Telegram, I'm sure from the account photo it self is AI generated, and start play along. After I got some photo of her, I start reverse search the photos and found some Russian forum [1] that some people share their experience about pig-butchering scam [1] https://pikabu.ru/story/temu_neponyatnyiy_razvod_11302944 https://pikabu.ru/story/temu_neponyatnyiy_razvod_11302944
- K0balt 1y ago
  I get presented with one or two of these a month. It’s easy to be calloused until you remember that these people are also victims, often in worse ways than you could ever be as one of their targets. The best thing is just to ignore completely. If you engage at all, you risk worsening their situation by wasting their time, while if you do engage you might be saving someone else at their expense…. It’s lose/lose to engage in any way. I’ve settled on just saying, hey, I’m sorry that they are in the situation they are in, and I hope they find the strength to make it out someday. That makes it clear that there is nothing to be gained while offering a tiny bit of hope and empathy, which I’m sure is in short supply.
  - shkkmo 1y ago
    > If you engage at all, you risk worsening their situation by wasting their time, while if you do engage you might be saving someone else at their expense…. I don't understand what you are arguing for here? That they need to be allowed to scam someone else to avoid worsening their situation? I'd say wasting their time is the best solution. It avoids giving the bosses info on what approaches works with who and helps makes runnning these sorts of operations uneconomical.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      >That they need to be allowed to scam someone else to avoid worsening their situation? There are two levels of scammers here. One is the low level scammer that is directly interfacing with you. In these situations they are also victims that are being held by violence. Simply put if bad things happen to these people or not the scam will remain as this level is rather cheap. The bosses will observe from a higher level based on the successful feedback and direct their efforts there, much like a spammer that calculates the return on millions and millions of sent emails. To catch the bosses we need nation state/global level enforcement against said people. The problem is they quite often pay their local governments handsomely to protect against them.
      - shkkmo 1y ago
        > the scam will remain as this level is rather cheap. The less efficient you can make the process, the less you make it attractive to put resources into scaling it. Focus on making them generate the types of proof that aren't as easy to fabricate or at least give them as little information about why their initial approach failed as possible by playing along for a while after you catch on so they can't figure out how they got caught.
        K0balt 1y ago
        The victim you are being manipulated by is judged on their numbers, not on how hard they tried. While what you are saying is theoretically effective, it assumes that enough people will do this to impact the business model… they won’t. So all you will accomplish is increasing human misery of trafficked slaves or their loved ones, while accomplishing nothing besides feeling a sense of retribution. This problem requires state-level intervention, but it is mostly getting state level support. The incentive alignment on this is not going to allow improvement. Perhaps if client nations imposed sanctions on nations that allowed this kind of industry, that could be changed.
- ____tom____ 1y ago
  Reverse search likely won't work anymore. Too easy to generate a new face for each target.
sema4hacker 1y ago
I'm surprised that so many of the 26 participants in the paper's study were young and well-educated, with a mean age of 48. I would have guessed a much older group of victims.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  The cons play the statistics, and usually target people that have other issues in their life. One kind lady we knew had early Alzheimer's disease, and they still ran a crypto investor scam and fake police funds recovery con. Yes, the scams actually work on smart people too sometimes... It is not about education or IQ level, but rather if cons target someone currently vulnerable. Note: the 7 spear-phishers on YC are rather obvious in an attempt to avoid IT people. =3
  - jajko 1y ago
    > cons target someone currently vulnerable This. I am a senior software dev, living in Switzerland. Few years ago there was an issue with my residence permit renewal, process that should have taken few weeks took more than a year. No way to contact that Geneva immigration office, and you can't visit them personally, emails ignored. Official phone contact is just a single phone that often rang few times and then dropped the call, 19 out of 20 times. Few times it was picked up clearly annoyed and couldn't-be-bothered woman who just told me to wait, no further info. My boss applied for same after me, got the papers in 3 weeks. Me and my kids (who have same permit as me) were basically living in Switzerland semi-illegally, while sporting high paying permanent banking job and wife is a doctor. One day a call came which introduced themselves as Swiss police, a very elaborate scheme, stating that my ID was used in fraud and I am being investigated. They caught me in this period of fear of getting deported, ruining efforts of past 15 years and my whole family lives. I followed through, they were very clever, pulled just the right strings. But then came the moment when all this could be solved if I just went to the shop and bought... Apple gift card. LOL. But man I felt extremely vulnerable and under tremendous stress during those few hours.
    - jan_Inkepa 1y ago
Theodores 1y ago
My dad passed away about three weeks after being fully pig-butchered, losing all of his money and reputation with family/friends. We all tried to talk him out of it, but it was like he joined a cult, for he cut us off and lost his mind. The whole sorry saga is very hard to live with. The sums of money were vast, cocaine addiction would have been a more cost effective way to go. The pig-butchers had some type of bot/AI/wage slaves for the backend and they used Zendesk for the frontend. I am not happy that Zendesk is being used to basically rob people and I am minded to write up the whole sorry saga here just to inspire developers to steer their companies away from the Zendesk product. They didn't shoot my dad, they just sold the gun.
- meindnoch 1y ago
  I'm interested in more details!
- karel-3d 1y ago
  They are using actual slaves, not "wage slaves". They kidnap people, lured for work in Thailand, and take them to Myanmar/Burma, where there is a civil war ongoing and a form of lawlessness; while there is a relatively good internet connectivity and electricity. They beat people and force them to do this. It's mostly run by Chinese. (But they scam Chinese too. It originated as scamming older single Chinese ladies, actually.)
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - em500 1y ago
    > It's mostly run by Chinese. (But they scam Chinese too. It originated as scamming older single Chinese ladies, actually.) This comment suggests that the main target would be non-Chinese, with some incidental Chinese targets/victims. I think the reality is the opposite, and that the primary targets are Chinese, with some incidental Western victims, for the simple reason that both the perpetrators and the (involutary) scam workers are largely far more fluent in Chinese and knowlegable about Chinese financial systems, culture, etc. Both in mainland China and other countries with large ethnic Chinese populations, there is quite some awareness and media information these issues, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3235445/chinese-tourists-shun-thailand-crime-film-stokes-kidnapping-fears-social-media https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/323544... https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/30/1078663/pig-butchering-scam-human-trafficking/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/30/1078663/pig-butc... p.s.: From casual conversations with European friends, there are probably smaller scale "native" versions of such scams in many Western countries. Large scam centers with imprissoned workers might be somewhat specific to Chinese/Cambodia.
qnleigh 1y ago
I got sucked into reading this paper, and it has completely changed my perception of these scams. They are incredibly thorough and realistic. Here are some quotes that drove this home for me. "The bond phase showed that scammers had tremendous patience; this phase lasted anywhere from 3 to 11 months before the scammer moved on to the next stage of the scam." "When I spoke to her on a video call, it was the same person from the photos. She was even wearing the dress that matched a photo she had sent earlier in the day." “She did not push me to invest, or ask for money. She seemed genuinely interested in me and we spoke for nearly 6 months before she even brought up investments; it all seemed so real and organic." "It seemed legitimate, there was no reason to think that it could be fake – if she could be a scammer, so could any of my actual friends." "[the site] was similar to what you would expect on an investment portfolio website; in fact, the prices of stocks and bitcoin also matched..." "According to recent research [23], these scams have resulted in losses of nearly 75 billion dollars since 2020."
- blululu 1y ago
  That was a tabloid page turner of an arxiv preprint. Really nice mixed methods research paper that conveys the depth of these scams.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- smusamashah 1y ago
  3 to 11 months is long enough. I wonder if higher level scaammers spend even longer for even higher rewards, years instead of months for the momey. At that point it should be a much higher purpose/agenda but I guess these timespans must be happening too.
  - madaxe_again 1y ago
    I mean, Madoff spent nearly four decades building confidence.
  - sammorrowdrums 1y ago
    Our clandestine services will spend years getting people into the right places. I mean at at certain point the difference between the two blurs, and the social engineering entirely overlaps.
spaceport 1y ago
In case anyone else lives under a rock like me, this is only metaphorically linked to swine. Filed under TIL.
wiether 1y ago
Didn't know the meaning of "pig-butchering scam", so I took it at its front value and was a bit confused.
- BrandoElFollito 1y ago
  Same here (I am French, so the language is yet another barrier). I thought this was about viral actions by extreme ecologists that get into butchering companies and expose how the animals suffer. And I thought - "these are scams?" But hey, everything is possible. And then got to the comments and learned a few things :) The article is very good and the comments as well.
  - wiether 1y ago
    A croire que c'est un problème de compréhension uniquement chez nous autres pauvres Français !
    - BrandoElFollito 1y ago
      Bah ouias, j'avais les actions de L-quelque chose en tête mais non :)
- shireboy 1y ago
  I did same at first but then recognized it as something that has affected family members. Would be nice to find a name that is a little more respectful to the victims. I can tell you victims already have guilt/shame for falling for these things. I would send them the article but don’t want to call them “pigs” on top of what they have already suffered
- FabHK 1y ago
  Frankly, I am shocked by this. I don’t mean that to criticise you or others that didn’t know the term, but the quality of the discourse/media. Pig butchering and related crypto scams are an enormous problem. Latest estimates are that the cyber scam industry revenues exceed the illegal drug trade. There are so many victims, both cyber trafficking victims promised great jobs then forced to perpetrate the scams, as well as victims handing over huge sums. Both suffer not only financial loss, but psychological damage. Lastly, this threatens to destabilize whole countries - as the narcos screwed up Colombia and Mexico, so these scammers are screwing up the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar etc. Again, that such a massive problem is so little known is in itself scandalous.
jsilence 1y ago
Wondering if it were feasible to vibe-code a Bot that would engage and invest the little sums that yield those bait gains, and harvest those. Eject at the right time.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  Great original idea, you should make a Beowulf Cluster of them! With a Java Applet!
  - K0balt 1y ago
    This made me taste cringe. It’s orange flavoured and weirdly acidic like something the dentist used on me when I was 7.
phb01 1y ago
The related tragedy of this crime is that hundreds of thousands of people are recruited and trafficked into scam centres - particularly in SE Asia. People are then forced to conduct the scams. Although it's possible AI advancements might eventually lead to fully automated scam processes resulting in reduced trafficking into scam centres.
cluckindan 1y ago
If they’re paying out ”bait gains”, aren’t these just ponzis like Bernie Madoff?
- SXX 1y ago
  They usually dont pay out anything. It's just target's "investment account" value grows until they want to withdraw. Obviously some scammers can even pay something at first, but it's just not usual strategy.
  - shellfishgene 1y ago
    In the article it says some victims were allowed to withdraw small amounts, and one says he got it as a gift card. So that's where all those gift cards from the email scams go...
pavlov 1y ago
Estimated $75 billion stolen since 2020. These are mostly cryptocurrency investment scams. More crypto regulation would help, but the so-called crypto industry doesn't want to see that happen because their product has no other utility than enabling this stuff.
- karel-3d 1y ago
  You can also buy 5 different official Donald Trump cryptocurrencies, too. It's not that useless.
  - pavlov 1y ago
    Someone might argue that Donald Trump's political career is the most successful pig-butchering scam in the history of the world.
    - jiggawatts 1y ago
      I knew some Scientologists in the late nineties, and there are many parallels. Ironically, they were also devout Christians, and one later became a priest. Something very eye opening is know precisely who L Ron Hubbard is, what kind of person he was, and nonetheless seeing a real religion building up around him made me realise that all of the major religions must have started similarly. Watching Trump's followers turning MAGA into a new political religion gives me the same heavy feeling of dismay.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        Politics in general has a lot of parallels to religion. People need to segment into belief groups, and politics is the new church. Only this church is a popularity game to decide who controls a vast federal standing domestic army of armed police, as well as an outward projecting armed forces. The scary thing is that everyone seems to believe their church is correct, and willing to employ the machine of violence to enforce it.
        1y ago
nomilk 1y ago
Was curious of the etymology of name of the scam: > The term comes from fraudsters referring to their victims as 'pigs' – those they gradually 'fatten up' by luring them into a fake romance or friendship before 'butchering' them by convincing them to invest, often in fake cryptocurrency schemes. Source: https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERPOL-urges-end-to-Pig-Butchering-term-cites-harm-to-online-victims#:~:text=The%20term%20comes%20from%20fraudsters,often%20in%20fake%20cryptocurrency%20schemes. https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERP...
- bondarchuk 1y ago
  Oh, I had never gotten the "fatten up" part of the analogy before.
M95D 1y ago
We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject. A lot of people actually are scammers - and this is socially accepted. What is the difference between the "everyday scams" and the scams from this article is rather the scope. Thus, to make people scam-resistant, you have to make them insanely distrusting about everybody in society (or to express it more directly: make the people paranoid and near-schizophrenic), including the government, the politicians etc. Since school serves an agenda, this is of course not done.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
  - makr17 1y ago
    This. "Scam resistance", in my mind, maps to critical thinking and a bit of pattern matching. Could definitely be taught, but critical thinking seems to be out of favor in (American) education at the moment (and has been for a while, honestly).
  - jerf 1y ago
    It is not quite so terrible as to need to make everyone distrustful. There is an old saying: "You can't scam an honest man." I think a lot of people misunderstand this; it is not that being honest somehow lets you just know when you're being scammed. Indeed the natural "surely they'd be even more vulnerable" probably has some truth to it in some sense. What it means is that the vast bulk of scams involve convincing the mark that they are dishonestly pulling off a scam. You pay $400 and you're going to get $millions. She misidentified you as someone else but hey you're just so amazingly charismatic that she's into you anyhow, and if you just pour a few more hundreds in she's totally going to let you sleep with her. You know you never entered that lottery, but hey, if they're going to make a mistake and say you won who are you to argue, right? Not everything fits into this; one classic that affects businesses more than individuals is Ye Olde Just Issue An Invoice And Hope They Pay It. There are also some scams around posing with varying degrees of fidelity as a specific individual you know, such as by hacking their emails and sending this out as them, although in many cases that's still just a delivery mechanism for a scam based on convincing the mark they're going to pull a scam. A solution that will make you highly resistant to scams, though as I am saying outright, not immune, is to realize that you will not get anything for free, to refuse to participate, to be aggressively honest even if it seems to hurt you. Perhaps ironically, or perhaps counter to your intuition, in the modern world, such aggressive honesty will on the net benefit you by protecting you from these scams. The same ethics that make you give $5 back to the cashier that they gave you in extra change will save you hundreds of thousands in a pig butchering scam. In the modern era it probably is getting more important to verify identities even of people you know, which is a new and developing angle.
frotaur 1y ago
I often get these 'Is this <random_name>?' messages on telegram, from usually what appears to be a beautiful woman. I always answer on the positive, it is very fun to see them try to ask a question that will make me answer 'no that's not me' so they can continue on the next part. Can recommend.
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  Lol, that's great. I got one that was something like "Are you still coming for dinner? The chicken is just finished baking." It sounded delicious, I wanted it so badly to be real haha
woadwarrior01 1y ago
The cycle time seems rather long, in the order of months to years (See table 1 on pg 18 of the paper). Who is working on AI agents startup to automate this? /s
- guappa 1y ago
  They probably use AI quite a lot.
hereme888 1y ago
I've saved at least one elderly person from giving "Elon Musk" $100k for the secret bitcoin mining operation he's building, as Elon explained to them in the deepfake. "Elon" apparently has secret telegram accounts too. The scammers worked with additional people who met them in the real world. Someone else's elderly father wasn't so lucky: they kept sending all their life savings to the scammers, until the wife divorced him and the family suffered so much.
gcanyon 1y ago
For those interested in a lightweight summary, Last Week Tonight did a segment on pig-butchering about a year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg The interviews with the victims are heartbreaking. There's one dad/daughter pair where the dad has lost almost literally everything, is on camera being interviewed about everything that happened, and is still flipping between "it was a total scam" and "maybe if I just send them another fee payment I can get at least some of my money back" and the daughter saying, "No, dad! It's a scam, and you are not sending them anymore money!"
donatj 1y ago
I recently received a DM on Twitter, this person claimed to have known me growing up and had a surprising amount of personal information some of which I don't recall ever having posted online. I have a very good memory of my childhood and know for a fact that I never knew this person. The persons profile was strangely convincing, it was hyper-local to my neighborhood growing up. This account had existed for something like 4 or 5 years and had posts going back at least a few. It was almost convincing. The tell was just that their posts were too targeted, all "Hey, local event is going on" "Hey, local politics thing" with no other thoughts expressed. Their replies section was just littered with replies to people about how things were "awesome" or "great news" without any critique or thought. The whole thing was very unsettling. It was the first scam where I really felt like it would have been easy to fall for with a standard amount of critical thinking. If I had a hazier recollection of my childhood I might have. I can't imagine this bot was made specifically for me, I'm not that important, but certainly people in my area. I genuinely wonder if this is part of some larger network of hyper-local bots. I don't look forward to the attacks to come as AI progresses.
- Beretta_Vexee 1y ago
  Scammers tend to create ecosystems of fake accounts in large cities or communities, such as the expat community in Paris. These are easy to fabricate and maintain, and consist of a social network of individuals who are either loosely connected or constantly changing. They use these accounts to collect data about key people, events, meet-ups and news events.They have developed a full lifecycle for these accounts. Creation, enrichment, data collection, then consumption and end of life when they are used for scams. They are playing the long game.
cholmon 1y ago
NPR Planet Money did a segment on pig butchering scams back in May. They played along with one to get a first hand perspective of the process. It’s a fascinating listen, way more complicated than I thought, and tragic for both ends of the scam. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-scam-crypto-tether https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-sca...
shireboy 1y ago
I have a family member falling for these on a regular basis. In their case it’s possibly tied to mental health issues. They are able to drive, converse, care for self, but are sending money to groups that are clearly not real (example: fundraiser for a celebrity supposedly in the hospital, when news shows they weren’t. Was convinced actually conversing with the celebrity). Rest of the family has taken some steps but does feel at a loss. How do you prevent them from being seriously hurt emotionally and financially while respecting their autonomy and dignity? Even when they “come anround” to the fact they have been scammed, that adds insult to injury. The vector is definitely social media and sms/phone. Any tips would be appreciated. Locking down phone hasn’t really helped, and finances are already segregated to hopefully avoid giving away total life savings.
- alistairSH 1y ago
  Sounds like some form of guardianship/conservatorship is in order. Talk to a lawyer, if you haven't already (maybe that's what you mean by finances are already segregated).
  - foobarian 1y ago
    The question is, what can YOU do now to avoid risk to your own estate once you are old and start losing your mental faculties?
    - Loughla 1y ago
      Build those things into your estate. My family made a trust that pays bills and what not. So your income goes to the trust and you use it to pay regular bills and groceries and what not. Anything on the "not-approved" list takes a vote of the people controlling the trust (parents and kids). That has helped us avoid some bullshit so far.
      - alistairSH 1y ago
        Of course, you avoid the pig butchering, but open yourself to abuse from the trustees. Reasonably want a new BMW? Hope your kid is ok with their inheritance shrinking by $60k. Etc. I'm not claiming a trust is a bad idea, only that you need to take care picking the trustees. And be sure there's an "out" if you and the trustees fall out.
jacknews 1y ago
Are there not some more direct interventions? I know of a building housing one of these. Obviously they pay the local police and have cover so just filing a complaint or whatever is not an option.
- bhy 1y ago
  Well yes, I believe some interventions happened awhile ago in Myanmar in the form of war between factions.
  - jacknews 1y ago
    Was that not just a power grab? There is a more recent conflict over this issue in Cambodia. I'm thinking more targeted interventions. International organizations and so on. Failing that, maybe accidentally short the xformer supplying the building...
- shellfishgene 1y ago
  The article states than an estimated 75 billion dollars have been lost since 2020, the corruption goes way beyond local cops, and in Myanmar probably involves the government directly. Whole cities are being built for scamming. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/myanmar-military-junta-scam-centres-trafficking-crime-syndicates-kk-park https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/m...
  - jacknews 1y ago
    I believe Cambodia is another case where the government is directly involved. The question is are there any effective interventions, short of war (which, happened), given that.
  - FabHK 1y ago
    That’s probably an underestimate. The Economist estimates “Scam Inc.” to pull half a trillion a year.
gadders 1y ago
I got one of those scam texts last week that begin with "Dad save my new number..." it then escalated to where they asked for money. (I knew it wasn't genuine as I'm still paying for my daughter's cellphone) Anyway, I played a long for a bit but finally told them that I knew it wasn't genuine as my daughter is not that polite when she asks for money.
- beAbU 1y ago
  The age old "hey it's me ur brother" scam.
  - gramie 1y ago
    The oldest version I heard of was in Japan in the 1990s. Scammers would call elderly people, claiming to be grandchildren, and demand money or they would be arrested/scandalized. It was called the "ore ore" (pronounced "o-ray o-ray") scam because they would typically use the word "ore" for "I", a familiar and often brusque or aggressive form of the first person singular.
    - Hunpeter 1y ago
      This is also well known here in Hungary, there was even movie about it. It's called "unokázás"; literally: "grandchilding".
tikkabhuna 1y ago
The Scam Inc podcast from the Economist was very interesting. You need an Economist subscription, unfortunately. Amazing how much infrastructure is built up to support these operations. https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc
dismalaf 1y ago
Once I got suckered into at least texting one of these scammers. Had just got a new phone number, assumed it was the usual trying to reach the previous owner of the number, then all of a sudden they started talking about crypto, and it's ciao from my end... Just blocked anyone I didn't know after that and after 3-4 numbers it stopped forever.
AvocadoPanic 1y ago
My wife was a victim of two of these. I posted about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037474
- Milianalice 1y ago
  [dead]
pcrh 1y ago
A relative of mine fell victim to one of these. Their "relationship" developed over about 1 yr, and which point they sent ~£30k to temporarily cover a cashflow shortfall in their scammer's apparently legitimate business. This was quickly detected by their spouse, who was obviously livid. However..... not only did they transfer these funds to some limbo, and had received extremely clear advice that they had been scammed, they did the same thing with another ~£30k about a month later. The funds so transferred went to some account in China. The repetition of this "aberrant" behavior contributed to the divorce of my relative and their spouse. In later conversations with the victim, who did eventually realize that they had been scammed, I attempted to reassure them by saying that these scammers are very skilled, and that they were innocent in the whole affair. It was small consolation, though.
bomewish 1y ago
This is just an extremely well written paper.
ropable 1y ago
When you start learning a little more about pig butchering scams and the organisations which run them, it gets extremely harrowing. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people being forced to work in these online scams across Myanmar and Cambodia under threat of violence or worse. The human cost to both sides of this practice is staggering.
floppiplopp 1y ago
What contemporary economic ideology has taught me: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't. And the Venn diagram of scams and business is almost a circle in a sense that companies and criminals don't have your interests in mind. There's really no reason to trust either.
- ____tom____ 1y ago
  > If it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't. it usually IS
  - 3PS 1y ago
    Different bracketing. "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't (true)" vs "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is (too good to be true)"
Milianalice 1y ago
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bella014 1y ago
[dead]

227 points by stmw 1y ago

qwertytyyuu 1y ago

lol I’ve gotten this question. For me, they wanted to invite me to this bad mobile game

Dilettante_ 1y ago
"I love you honey. Hey, let's play Raid Shadow Legends™, my Favourite Game Ever together! If you sign up with this link you get one hundred gold and a Free Epic Champion <3"

anasrin 1y ago

Couple months ago I got message from random woman on Telegram, I'm sure from the account photo it self is AI generated, and start play along. After I got some photo of her, I start reverse search the photos and found some Russian forum [1] that some people share their experience about pig-butchering scam [1] https://pikabu.ru/story/temu_neponyatnyiy_razvod_11302944 https://pikabu.ru/story/temu_neponyatnyiy_razvod_11302944

K0balt 1y ago
I get presented with one or two of these a month. It’s easy to be calloused until you remember that these people are also victims, often in worse ways than you could ever be as one of their targets. The best thing is just to ignore completely. If you engage at all, you risk worsening their situation by wasting their time, while if you do engage you might be saving someone else at their expense…. It’s lose/lose to engage in any way. I’ve settled on just saying, hey, I’m sorry that they are in the situation they are in, and I hope they find the strength to make it out someday. That makes it clear that there is nothing to be gained while offering a tiny bit of hope and empathy, which I’m sure is in short supply.
- shkkmo 1y ago
  > If you engage at all, you risk worsening their situation by wasting their time, while if you do engage you might be saving someone else at their expense…. I don't understand what you are arguing for here? That they need to be allowed to scam someone else to avoid worsening their situation? I'd say wasting their time is the best solution. It avoids giving the bosses info on what approaches works with who and helps makes runnning these sorts of operations uneconomical.
  - pixl97 1y ago
    >That they need to be allowed to scam someone else to avoid worsening their situation? There are two levels of scammers here. One is the low level scammer that is directly interfacing with you. In these situations they are also victims that are being held by violence. Simply put if bad things happen to these people or not the scam will remain as this level is rather cheap. The bosses will observe from a higher level based on the successful feedback and direct their efforts there, much like a spammer that calculates the return on millions and millions of sent emails. To catch the bosses we need nation state/global level enforcement against said people. The problem is they quite often pay their local governments handsomely to protect against them.
    - shkkmo 1y ago
      > the scam will remain as this level is rather cheap. The less efficient you can make the process, the less you make it attractive to put resources into scaling it. Focus on making them generate the types of proof that aren't as easy to fabricate or at least give them as little information about why their initial approach failed as possible by playing along for a while after you catch on so they can't figure out how they got caught.
      - K0balt 1y ago
        The victim you are being manipulated by is judged on their numbers, not on how hard they tried. While what you are saying is theoretically effective, it assumes that enough people will do this to impact the business model… they won’t. So all you will accomplish is increasing human misery of trafficked slaves or their loved ones, while accomplishing nothing besides feeling a sense of retribution. This problem requires state-level intervention, but it is mostly getting state level support. The incentive alignment on this is not going to allow improvement. Perhaps if client nations imposed sanctions on nations that allowed this kind of industry, that could be changed.
____tom____ 1y ago
Reverse search likely won't work anymore. Too easy to generate a new face for each target.

sema4hacker 1y ago

I'm surprised that so many of the 26 participants in the paper's study were young and well-educated, with a mean age of 48. I would have guessed a much older group of victims.

Joel_Mckay 1y ago
The cons play the statistics, and usually target people that have other issues in their life. One kind lady we knew had early Alzheimer's disease, and they still ran a crypto investor scam and fake police funds recovery con. Yes, the scams actually work on smart people too sometimes... It is not about education or IQ level, but rather if cons target someone currently vulnerable. Note: the 7 spear-phishers on YC are rather obvious in an attempt to avoid IT people. =3
- jajko 1y ago
  > cons target someone currently vulnerable This. I am a senior software dev, living in Switzerland. Few years ago there was an issue with my residence permit renewal, process that should have taken few weeks took more than a year. No way to contact that Geneva immigration office, and you can't visit them personally, emails ignored. Official phone contact is just a single phone that often rang few times and then dropped the call, 19 out of 20 times. Few times it was picked up clearly annoyed and couldn't-be-bothered woman who just told me to wait, no further info. My boss applied for same after me, got the papers in 3 weeks. Me and my kids (who have same permit as me) were basically living in Switzerland semi-illegally, while sporting high paying permanent banking job and wife is a doctor. One day a call came which introduced themselves as Swiss police, a very elaborate scheme, stating that my ID was used in fraud and I am being investigated. They caught me in this period of fear of getting deported, ruining efforts of past 15 years and my whole family lives. I followed through, they were very clever, pulled just the right strings. But then came the moment when all this could be solved if I just went to the shop and bought... Apple gift card. LOL. But man I felt extremely vulnerable and under tremendous stress during those few hours.
  - jan_Inkepa 1y ago

Theodores 1y ago

My dad passed away about three weeks after being fully pig-butchered, losing all of his money and reputation with family/friends. We all tried to talk him out of it, but it was like he joined a cult, for he cut us off and lost his mind. The whole sorry saga is very hard to live with. The sums of money were vast, cocaine addiction would have been a more cost effective way to go. The pig-butchers had some type of bot/AI/wage slaves for the backend and they used Zendesk for the frontend. I am not happy that Zendesk is being used to basically rob people and I am minded to write up the whole sorry saga here just to inspire developers to steer their companies away from the Zendesk product. They didn't shoot my dad, they just sold the gun.

meindnoch 1y ago
I'm interested in more details!
karel-3d 1y ago
They are using actual slaves, not "wage slaves". They kidnap people, lured for work in Thailand, and take them to Myanmar/Burma, where there is a civil war ongoing and a form of lawlessness; while there is a relatively good internet connectivity and electricity. They beat people and force them to do this. It's mostly run by Chinese. (But they scam Chinese too. It originated as scamming older single Chinese ladies, actually.)
- cindyllm 1y ago
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- em500 1y ago
  > It's mostly run by Chinese. (But they scam Chinese too. It originated as scamming older single Chinese ladies, actually.) This comment suggests that the main target would be non-Chinese, with some incidental Chinese targets/victims. I think the reality is the opposite, and that the primary targets are Chinese, with some incidental Western victims, for the simple reason that both the perpetrators and the (involutary) scam workers are largely far more fluent in Chinese and knowlegable about Chinese financial systems, culture, etc. Both in mainland China and other countries with large ethnic Chinese populations, there is quite some awareness and media information these issues, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_More_Bets https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3235445/chinese-tourists-shun-thailand-crime-film-stokes-kidnapping-fears-social-media https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/323544... https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/30/1078663/pig-butchering-scam-human-trafficking/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/30/1078663/pig-butc... p.s.: From casual conversations with European friends, there are probably smaller scale "native" versions of such scams in many Western countries. Large scam centers with imprissoned workers might be somewhat specific to Chinese/Cambodia.

qnleigh 1y ago

I got sucked into reading this paper, and it has completely changed my perception of these scams. They are incredibly thorough and realistic. Here are some quotes that drove this home for me. "The bond phase showed that scammers had tremendous patience; this phase lasted anywhere from 3 to 11 months before the scammer moved on to the next stage of the scam." "When I spoke to her on a video call, it was the same person from the photos. She was even wearing the dress that matched a photo she had sent earlier in the day." “She did not push me to invest, or ask for money. She seemed genuinely interested in me and we spoke for nearly 6 months before she even brought up investments; it all seemed so real and organic." "It seemed legitimate, there was no reason to think that it could be fake – if she could be a scammer, so could any of my actual friends." "[the site] was similar to what you would expect on an investment portfolio website; in fact, the prices of stocks and bitcoin also matched..." "According to recent research [23], these scams have resulted in losses of nearly 75 billion dollars since 2020."

blululu 1y ago
That was a tabloid page turner of an arxiv preprint. Really nice mixed methods research paper that conveys the depth of these scams.
deleted 1y ago
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smusamashah 1y ago
3 to 11 months is long enough. I wonder if higher level scaammers spend even longer for even higher rewards, years instead of months for the momey. At that point it should be a much higher purpose/agenda but I guess these timespans must be happening too.
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  I mean, Madoff spent nearly four decades building confidence.
- sammorrowdrums 1y ago
  Our clandestine services will spend years getting people into the right places. I mean at at certain point the difference between the two blurs, and the social engineering entirely overlaps.

spaceport 1y ago

In case anyone else lives under a rock like me, this is only metaphorically linked to swine. Filed under TIL.

wiether 1y ago

Didn't know the meaning of "pig-butchering scam", so I took it at its front value and was a bit confused.

BrandoElFollito 1y ago
Same here (I am French, so the language is yet another barrier). I thought this was about viral actions by extreme ecologists that get into butchering companies and expose how the animals suffer. And I thought - "these are scams?" But hey, everything is possible. And then got to the comments and learned a few things :) The article is very good and the comments as well.
- wiether 1y ago
  A croire que c'est un problème de compréhension uniquement chez nous autres pauvres Français !
  - BrandoElFollito 1y ago
    Bah ouias, j'avais les actions de L-quelque chose en tête mais non :)
shireboy 1y ago
I did same at first but then recognized it as something that has affected family members. Would be nice to find a name that is a little more respectful to the victims. I can tell you victims already have guilt/shame for falling for these things. I would send them the article but don’t want to call them “pigs” on top of what they have already suffered
FabHK 1y ago
Frankly, I am shocked by this. I don’t mean that to criticise you or others that didn’t know the term, but the quality of the discourse/media. Pig butchering and related crypto scams are an enormous problem. Latest estimates are that the cyber scam industry revenues exceed the illegal drug trade. There are so many victims, both cyber trafficking victims promised great jobs then forced to perpetrate the scams, as well as victims handing over huge sums. Both suffer not only financial loss, but psychological damage. Lastly, this threatens to destabilize whole countries - as the narcos screwed up Colombia and Mexico, so these scammers are screwing up the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar etc. Again, that such a massive problem is so little known is in itself scandalous.

jsilence 1y ago

Wondering if it were feasible to vibe-code a Bot that would engage and invest the little sums that yield those bait gains, and harvest those. Eject at the right time.

DonHopkins 1y ago
Great original idea, you should make a Beowulf Cluster of them! With a Java Applet!
- K0balt 1y ago
  This made me taste cringe. It’s orange flavoured and weirdly acidic like something the dentist used on me when I was 7.

phb01 1y ago

The related tragedy of this crime is that hundreds of thousands of people are recruited and trafficked into scam centres - particularly in SE Asia. People are then forced to conduct the scams. Although it's possible AI advancements might eventually lead to fully automated scam processes resulting in reduced trafficking into scam centres.

cluckindan 1y ago

If they’re paying out ”bait gains”, aren’t these just ponzis like Bernie Madoff?

SXX 1y ago
They usually dont pay out anything. It's just target's "investment account" value grows until they want to withdraw. Obviously some scammers can even pay something at first, but it's just not usual strategy.
- shellfishgene 1y ago
  In the article it says some victims were allowed to withdraw small amounts, and one says he got it as a gift card. So that's where all those gift cards from the email scams go...

pavlov 1y ago

Estimated $75 billion stolen since 2020. These are mostly cryptocurrency investment scams. More crypto regulation would help, but the so-called crypto industry doesn't want to see that happen because their product has no other utility than enabling this stuff.

karel-3d 1y ago
You can also buy 5 different official Donald Trump cryptocurrencies, too. It's not that useless.
- pavlov 1y ago
  Someone might argue that Donald Trump's political career is the most successful pig-butchering scam in the history of the world.
  - jiggawatts 1y ago
    I knew some Scientologists in the late nineties, and there are many parallels. Ironically, they were also devout Christians, and one later became a priest. Something very eye opening is know precisely who L Ron Hubbard is, what kind of person he was, and nonetheless seeing a real religion building up around him made me realise that all of the major religions must have started similarly. Watching Trump's followers turning MAGA into a new political religion gives me the same heavy feeling of dismay.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      Politics in general has a lot of parallels to religion. People need to segment into belief groups, and politics is the new church. Only this church is a popularity game to decide who controls a vast federal standing domestic army of armed police, as well as an outward projecting armed forces. The scary thing is that everyone seems to believe their church is correct, and willing to employ the machine of violence to enforce it.
      - 1y ago

nomilk 1y ago

Was curious of the etymology of name of the scam: > The term comes from fraudsters referring to their victims as 'pigs' – those they gradually 'fatten up' by luring them into a fake romance or friendship before 'butchering' them by convincing them to invest, often in fake cryptocurrency schemes. Source: https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERPOL-urges-end-to-Pig-Butchering-term-cites-harm-to-online-victims#:~:text=The%20term%20comes%20from%20fraudsters,often%20in%20fake%20cryptocurrency%20schemes. https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERP...

bondarchuk 1y ago
Oh, I had never gotten the "fatten up" part of the analogy before.

M95D 1y ago

We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject.

deleted 1y ago
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aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject. A lot of people actually are scammers - and this is socially accepted. What is the difference between the "everyday scams" and the scams from this article is rather the scope. Thus, to make people scam-resistant, you have to make them insanely distrusting about everybody in society (or to express it more directly: make the people paranoid and near-schizophrenic), including the government, the politicians etc. Since school serves an agenda, this is of course not done.
- cindyllm 1y ago
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- makr17 1y ago
  This. "Scam resistance", in my mind, maps to critical thinking and a bit of pattern matching. Could definitely be taught, but critical thinking seems to be out of favor in (American) education at the moment (and has been for a while, honestly).
- jerf 1y ago
  It is not quite so terrible as to need to make everyone distrustful. There is an old saying: "You can't scam an honest man." I think a lot of people misunderstand this; it is not that being honest somehow lets you just know when you're being scammed. Indeed the natural "surely they'd be even more vulnerable" probably has some truth to it in some sense. What it means is that the vast bulk of scams involve convincing the mark that they are dishonestly pulling off a scam. You pay $400 and you're going to get $millions. She misidentified you as someone else but hey you're just so amazingly charismatic that she's into you anyhow, and if you just pour a few more hundreds in she's totally going to let you sleep with her. You know you never entered that lottery, but hey, if they're going to make a mistake and say you won who are you to argue, right? Not everything fits into this; one classic that affects businesses more than individuals is Ye Olde Just Issue An Invoice And Hope They Pay It. There are also some scams around posing with varying degrees of fidelity as a specific individual you know, such as by hacking their emails and sending this out as them, although in many cases that's still just a delivery mechanism for a scam based on convincing the mark they're going to pull a scam. A solution that will make you highly resistant to scams, though as I am saying outright, not immune, is to realize that you will not get anything for free, to refuse to participate, to be aggressively honest even if it seems to hurt you. Perhaps ironically, or perhaps counter to your intuition, in the modern world, such aggressive honesty will on the net benefit you by protecting you from these scams. The same ethics that make you give $5 back to the cashier that they gave you in extra change will save you hundreds of thousands in a pig butchering scam. In the modern era it probably is getting more important to verify identities even of people you know, which is a new and developing angle.

frotaur 1y ago

I often get these 'Is this <random_name>?' messages on telegram, from usually what appears to be a beautiful woman. I always answer on the positive, it is very fun to see them try to ask a question that will make me answer 'no that's not me' so they can continue on the next part. Can recommend.

pinkmuffinere 1y ago
Lol, that's great. I got one that was something like "Are you still coming for dinner? The chicken is just finished baking." It sounded delicious, I wanted it so badly to be real haha

woadwarrior01 1y ago

The cycle time seems rather long, in the order of months to years (See table 1 on pg 18 of the paper). Who is working on AI agents startup to automate this? /s

guappa 1y ago
They probably use AI quite a lot.

hereme888 1y ago

I've saved at least one elderly person from giving "Elon Musk" $100k for the secret bitcoin mining operation he's building, as Elon explained to them in the deepfake. "Elon" apparently has secret telegram accounts too. The scammers worked with additional people who met them in the real world. Someone else's elderly father wasn't so lucky: they kept sending all their life savings to the scammers, until the wife divorced him and the family suffered so much.

gcanyon 1y ago

For those interested in a lightweight summary, Last Week Tonight did a segment on pig-butchering about a year ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg The interviews with the victims are heartbreaking. There's one dad/daughter pair where the dad has lost almost literally everything, is on camera being interviewed about everything that happened, and is still flipping between "it was a total scam" and "maybe if I just send them another fee payment I can get at least some of my money back" and the daughter saying, "No, dad! It's a scam, and you are not sending them anymore money!"

donatj 1y ago

I recently received a DM on Twitter, this person claimed to have known me growing up and had a surprising amount of personal information some of which I don't recall ever having posted online. I have a very good memory of my childhood and know for a fact that I never knew this person. The persons profile was strangely convincing, it was hyper-local to my neighborhood growing up. This account had existed for something like 4 or 5 years and had posts going back at least a few. It was almost convincing. The tell was just that their posts were too targeted, all "Hey, local event is going on" "Hey, local politics thing" with no other thoughts expressed. Their replies section was just littered with replies to people about how things were "awesome" or "great news" without any critique or thought. The whole thing was very unsettling. It was the first scam where I really felt like it would have been easy to fall for with a standard amount of critical thinking. If I had a hazier recollection of my childhood I might have. I can't imagine this bot was made specifically for me, I'm not that important, but certainly people in my area. I genuinely wonder if this is part of some larger network of hyper-local bots. I don't look forward to the attacks to come as AI progresses.

Beretta_Vexee 1y ago
Scammers tend to create ecosystems of fake accounts in large cities or communities, such as the expat community in Paris. These are easy to fabricate and maintain, and consist of a social network of individuals who are either loosely connected or constantly changing. They use these accounts to collect data about key people, events, meet-ups and news events.They have developed a full lifecycle for these accounts. Creation, enrichment, data collection, then consumption and end of life when they are used for scams. They are playing the long game.

cholmon 1y ago

NPR Planet Money did a segment on pig butchering scams back in May. They played along with one to get a first hand perspective of the process. It’s a fascinating listen, way more complicated than I thought, and tragic for both ends of the scam. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-scam-crypto-tether https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-sca...

shireboy 1y ago

I have a family member falling for these on a regular basis. In their case it’s possibly tied to mental health issues. They are able to drive, converse, care for self, but are sending money to groups that are clearly not real (example: fundraiser for a celebrity supposedly in the hospital, when news shows they weren’t. Was convinced actually conversing with the celebrity). Rest of the family has taken some steps but does feel at a loss. How do you prevent them from being seriously hurt emotionally and financially while respecting their autonomy and dignity? Even when they “come anround” to the fact they have been scammed, that adds insult to injury. The vector is definitely social media and sms/phone. Any tips would be appreciated. Locking down phone hasn’t really helped, and finances are already segregated to hopefully avoid giving away total life savings.

alistairSH 1y ago
Sounds like some form of guardianship/conservatorship is in order. Talk to a lawyer, if you haven't already (maybe that's what you mean by finances are already segregated).
- foobarian 1y ago
  The question is, what can YOU do now to avoid risk to your own estate once you are old and start losing your mental faculties?
  - Loughla 1y ago
    Build those things into your estate. My family made a trust that pays bills and what not. So your income goes to the trust and you use it to pay regular bills and groceries and what not. Anything on the "not-approved" list takes a vote of the people controlling the trust (parents and kids). That has helped us avoid some bullshit so far.
    - alistairSH 1y ago
      Of course, you avoid the pig butchering, but open yourself to abuse from the trustees. Reasonably want a new BMW? Hope your kid is ok with their inheritance shrinking by $60k. Etc. I'm not claiming a trust is a bad idea, only that you need to take care picking the trustees. And be sure there's an "out" if you and the trustees fall out.

jacknews 1y ago

Are there not some more direct interventions? I know of a building housing one of these. Obviously they pay the local police and have cover so just filing a complaint or whatever is not an option.

bhy 1y ago
Well yes, I believe some interventions happened awhile ago in Myanmar in the form of war between factions.
- jacknews 1y ago
  Was that not just a power grab? There is a more recent conflict over this issue in Cambodia. I'm thinking more targeted interventions. International organizations and so on. Failing that, maybe accidentally short the xformer supplying the building...
shellfishgene 1y ago
The article states than an estimated 75 billion dollars have been lost since 2020, the corruption goes way beyond local cops, and in Myanmar probably involves the government directly. Whole cities are being built for scamming. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/myanmar-military-junta-scam-centres-trafficking-crime-syndicates-kk-park https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/sep/08/m...
- jacknews 1y ago
  I believe Cambodia is another case where the government is directly involved. The question is are there any effective interventions, short of war (which, happened), given that.
- FabHK 1y ago
  That’s probably an underestimate. The Economist estimates “Scam Inc.” to pull half a trillion a year.

gadders 1y ago

I got one of those scam texts last week that begin with "Dad save my new number..." it then escalated to where they asked for money. (I knew it wasn't genuine as I'm still paying for my daughter's cellphone) Anyway, I played a long for a bit but finally told them that I knew it wasn't genuine as my daughter is not that polite when she asks for money.

beAbU 1y ago
The age old "hey it's me ur brother" scam.
- gramie 1y ago
  The oldest version I heard of was in Japan in the 1990s. Scammers would call elderly people, claiming to be grandchildren, and demand money or they would be arrested/scandalized. It was called the "ore ore" (pronounced "o-ray o-ray") scam because they would typically use the word "ore" for "I", a familiar and often brusque or aggressive form of the first person singular.
  - Hunpeter 1y ago
    This is also well known here in Hungary, there was even movie about it. It's called "unokázás"; literally: "grandchilding".

tikkabhuna 1y ago

The Scam Inc podcast from the Economist was very interesting. You need an Economist subscription, unfortunately. Amazing how much infrastructure is built up to support these operations. https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc

dismalaf 1y ago

Once I got suckered into at least texting one of these scammers. Had just got a new phone number, assumed it was the usual trying to reach the previous owner of the number, then all of a sudden they started talking about crypto, and it's ciao from my end... Just blocked anyone I didn't know after that and after 3-4 numbers it stopped forever.

AvocadoPanic 1y ago

My wife was a victim of two of these. I posted about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037474

Milianalice 1y ago
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pcrh 1y ago

A relative of mine fell victim to one of these. Their "relationship" developed over about 1 yr, and which point they sent ~£30k to temporarily cover a cashflow shortfall in their scammer's apparently legitimate business. This was quickly detected by their spouse, who was obviously livid. However..... not only did they transfer these funds to some limbo, and had received extremely clear advice that they had been scammed, they did the same thing with another ~£30k about a month later. The funds so transferred went to some account in China. The repetition of this "aberrant" behavior contributed to the divorce of my relative and their spouse. In later conversations with the victim, who did eventually realize that they had been scammed, I attempted to reassure them by saying that these scammers are very skilled, and that they were innocent in the whole affair. It was small consolation, though.

bomewish 1y ago

This is just an extremely well written paper.

ropable 1y ago

When you start learning a little more about pig butchering scams and the organisations which run them, it gets extremely harrowing. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people being forced to work in these online scams across Myanmar and Cambodia under threat of violence or worse. The human cost to both sides of this practice is staggering.

floppiplopp 1y ago

What contemporary economic ideology has taught me: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't. And the Venn diagram of scams and business is almost a circle in a sense that companies and criminals don't have your interests in mind. There's really no reason to trust either.

____tom____ 1y ago
> If it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't. it usually IS
- 3PS 1y ago
  Different bracketing. "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually isn't (true)" vs "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is (too good to be true)"

Milianalice 1y ago

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bella014 1y ago

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