Meta provided insight this week into the company’s efforts in taking down more than 2 million accounts that were connected to pig butchering scams on their owned platforms, Facebook and Instagram.
Pig butchering scams are big business, with hundreds of millions of dollars involved every year. The numbers are not precise because some researchers see these scams as a special kind of romance scam, while others classify them as investment fraud, muddying the numbers based on which group is counting what type of loss.
Still, the general idea is that scammers use elaborate storylines to fatten up victims into believing they are in a romantic or otherwise close personal relationship. Once the victim places enough trust in the scammer, they bring the victim into a cryptocurrency investment scheme. Then comes the “butchering”—an attempt to “bleed” a target dry of their money.
Pig butchering, however, isn’t always a simple case of cybercriminals preying on unsuspecting victims. As Meta described, sometimes the scammers themselves are victims that work in scam centers, mainly located in Asia.
“These criminal scam hubs lure often unsuspecting job seekers with too-good-to-be-true job postings on local job boards, forums, and recruitment platforms to then force them to work as online scammers, often under the threat of physical abuse.”
These workers not only work on pig butchering scams. They are also forced to engage in a wide range of malicious activities that can involve cryptocurrency and gambling, or they can be tasked to carry out impersonation scams.
Working with expert NGOs and law enforcement partners in the US and Southeast Asia, Meta has focused on investigating and disrupting the activities of the criminal scam centers in Southeast Asia. This has led to the take-down of over two million accounts linked to scam centers in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines.
Despite their location, the targets of the scams can be found all over the globe. The scammers follow playbooks to gain the trust of the targets. Contacting victims initially on social media, dating apps, email, or messaging apps, the scammers later move their interactions to more private channels like scammer-controlled accounts on crypto apps or scam websites masquerading as investment platforms. This pushes victims further into a trap and it removes their ability to report their conversations to a platform that takes this type of abuse seriously.
From here, scammers will continue the charade that they’ve set up wise investments for the targets. But once enough trust has been built to seriously rob a victim, scammers will steal what they can and disappear. As Meta said:
“Typical of ‘pig butchering’ schemes, the target may be allowed to withdraw small amounts to build trust, but once they start asking for their ‘investment’ back or it becomes clear that they do not have more funds to send to the scammer, overseas scammers typically disappear with all the money.”
How to avoid becoming the pig
The good thing about pig butchery scams is that they mostly follow a narrow pattern, with few variations. If you recognize the signs, you stand a very good chance of going about your day with a distinct lack of pig-related issues. The signs are:
- Receiving stray messages for “someone else” that appear out of the blue. This can be a message directed to someone who does not have your name.
- The profile picture of the person you’re talking to looks like someone who is a model.
- Common scam opening lines may involve: Sports, golfing, travel, fitness.
- At some point they will ask you about investments and/or cryptocurrency.
- They will ask you to invest or take some of their money and use that instead.
As you can see, there is a very specific goal in mind for the pig butcher scammers, and if you find yourself drawn down this path, the alarm bells should be ringing by step 4 or 5. This is definitely one of those “If it’s too good to be true” moments, and the part where you make your excuses and leave (but not before hitting block and reporting them).
Here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe:
- Don’t give scammers the information they need. Scammers rely on what you volunteer about yourself online to tweak their script and lure you in. Use tools such as the Malwarebytes Personal Data Remover to minimize the amount of data accessible through search engine results, spam lists, and people search sites.
- Perform an image search of the photo and the name of the person you’re in touch with. Scammers often steal someone else’s image to use as bait, and stolen identities are rife.
- Go slow. Scammers tend to rush, building rapport with their victims as quickly as possible before moving in for the money-themed kill.
- Never give money to anyone you’ve met online
- Get a second opinion from someone you trust
- If in doubt, back away and report the account.
If you’ve been impacted by a romance scam, pig butchering, or crypto investment fraud, you can report the crime to the Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3), which is run by the FBI, or the FTC on its reporting and resources page.
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