You and your family are at risk of pig-butchering scams
First, the bad news. You’re at risk of a new kind of online scam, one that has fooled countless victims – including highly educated people – into voluntarily depositing their life savings into scammers’ crypto accounts.
The good news is that you can help guard against the scam by learning how it works. I hope you’ll share this post with friends and family, especially older relatives and anyone who spends a lot of time on social media.
It’s called “pig-butchering.” Scammers make contact with the victim through a dating site, or LinkedIn, or just an ordinary text or WhatsApp message. Once the victim responds, the scammers begin a conversation that blossoms into a friendship – or a romance – that allows the scammers to gain the victim’s trust. Eventually, the scammers convince the victim to hand over their money.
I’m using the word “scammers,” plural, because there’s never just one person running the scam. Instead, pig-butchering scams these days are run through global crime syndicates: these are well-organized, efficient teams of professionals who have optimized the process – from initial contact through to the final “butchering.” Different teams might specialize in different aspects of the scam, and victims can be shared – or even bought or sold, like assets – between different scam teams. Throughout the process, the victim believes that they’re dealing with one individual, their new friend (or true love or whatever).
The teams operate out of “scam compounds” – office parks with armed guards, who are there to keep the scammers in. In many cases, the scammers were innocent people who were kidnapped and trafficked into the compound before being forced to run the scams, at pain of torture or death. These operations are run by crime syndicates, networks that are becoming so powerful that they are beginning to capture entire economies and governments. Instead of the “narco states” of the 1980s, we’re now seeing the rise of “scam states.”
I’m giving the barest high-level summary here. The person you should really listen to is Sue-Lin Wong. She‘s Asia correspondent at the Economist and host of the podcast series Scam Inc, which goes into detail about pig-butchering scams. I spoke with Sue-Lin on Techtonic this week. I strongly recommend listening to this Techtonic episode, and sharing it with people you want to protect:
I wish I could say that there’s good news on the horizon – some promising legislation, or a helpful piece of tech – but the reality is grim. Americans are losing billions of dollars a year to this scam, and law enforcement can’t keep up: as one investigator puts it in Scam Inc, “it’s like bringing a mop to a tsunami.” Sue-Lin Wong herself told me she’s “very pessimistic” about the future.
What I can offer, apart from my interview with Sue-Lin, is a pointer to an organization she mentioned: Operation Shamrock, a nonprofit helping spread the word. From their website –
Operation Shamrock’s mission is to raise awareness of pig butchering with everyone, everywhere, all the time. Our goal is to educate the public, mobilize collective action, and disrupt the operations networks of transnational organized criminals to prevent further harm.
Long-term, our best protection will come from strong relationships. Family, friends, neighbors: these are the people who will ultimately protect us from these scams – and who we, in turn, need to protect. As Sue-Lin said in our interview:
Online, we need to all be less trusting, and offline we need to be more trusting and be more in touch with our family, and our neighbors, and our friends.
“Online, we need to be less trusting.” It’s depressing to think that we have to assume the worst of everyone who contacts us online. But we can, at the same time, deepen our relationships offline with people we care about. Abandoning the digital world, at least a little, in order to foster healthier communities? That feels hopeful.
I’ve posted more links on the episode page. Mainly I hope you’ll share this column with friends and family, and listen to the interview. Listen here.
Until next time,
-mark
Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
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