What is a “pig butchering” romance scam? Here’s how they work:

Why do you get random text messages all day long saying, "Hey, did I leave my shoes at your house?" Or, "Hey, do ribs sound good for dinner?" Or, "Hey, your your phone number's in my phone, but I'm not sure who is who this is. Who is it?" You probably get text messages. If you're on um Telegram, you probably get Telegram messages all day long like I do with those. So, what are those? That is someone trying to start a pig butchering scam on you. So, what is a pig butchering scam? Uh, a pig butchering scam is a scam where the scam artist fattens you up over the course of four months before they finally slit your throat. Here's how that works. So, first of all, they constantly blast messages looking for lonely people. That's the goal. Find lonely people that will respond to anything. And they try everything. You know, again, every random message you can imagine that is intended to find a lonely person and elicit any type of response. As soon as they get any type of response on it, they start building rapport. And it's always pretends to be a woman, but it's always a guy on the other end. So, as people say, if you get one of these, you know, if a if a beautiful woman reaches out to you, block him because it's always a him on the other side, regardless of what pictures they're sending. Um, but anyway, so they're trying to get any sort of response. If they get any sort of response, they'll typically follow up with a picture and it's typically a picture of an Asian woman and then they strike up a conversation and in the course of the four months where they try to build rapport, they're sending pictures. They're sending um, and I'm not saying like racy pictures, it could just be normal pictures, but they're trying to start a romance and start a connection. They're trying to fill that gap that lonely people have of for connection with the goal over time of learning, you know, what assets that person has. So, what they're trying to do is they're trying to get the person comfortable with them. They're trying to learn um, you know, they're they're showing off a lifestyle that is, you know, unattainably lavish as compared to the person they're chatting with. Inevitably, they're they're trying to get the person to ask, "How do you afford this lifestyle?" at which point they say, "Oh, my brother or my cousin or my uncle does cryptocurrency trading. He's actually made a ton of money and you know, I put $10,000 in and I made a million dollars and that's why I'm, you know, sending you pictures of me on these yachts and, you know, all these fancy cars and whatever else." So they're trying to build in the course of the pig butchering, they're trying to build rapport with the person and they're trying to show off their lifestyle so that the person, the victim, which is supposed to be you, asks about their lavish lifestyle, in which case they'll they'll bring up in passing that there's this investment opportunity that's worked out really well for them. Then they'll ask you if you want to be part of it. Again, this all takes place this grooming process typ typically play takes place over the course of like four months. Um, but in that process, they try to figure out what assets you have, um, all the different, you know, and then they start promoting, you know, all the different ways you're going to get rich on everything they're doing and all that sort of stuff. So, what happens over time then, give me one second here. Uh, what happens over time then is they try to figure out what assets you have because they're going to try to then invite you to put each of those assets into their scheme. So, it's going to start with them finding out that, oh, you can borrow against your 401k for my investment thing and you have so much in your savings account and you have so much in your, you know, retirement and you have so much and all this. And over time, what they're going to do is they're going to invite you to put that into their scam. And the whole time they're trying to build rapport. They're trying to build romance. They're trying to build basically trying to get you to believe that you have met the person of your dreams. They're living a the lifestyle you've always wanted. They're trying to meet every need you have, you know, as a lonely person or somebody who is getting scammed. And in that they're said, you know, the login they're giving you to the supposed trading platform where you see your returns. Every time you put money in it, you see your money show up. And then you immediately see your money start to grow. And it's formulated where the the the amount of money that it shows that you have, it always goes up and down. And it always goes up and down enough to lull you into believing it's real because sometimes it goes down but over time it always goes way up. And so you know you're you know you put in $1,000 it turns into $10,000 within 2 weeks. Then you put in $10,000 it turns into $150,000 within another two weeks. And so the whole process is them trying to milk you of your last dollar. So typically these scams will then go into I'd really want to come visit you but I need a visa. You know can you give me money for my travel? you know, the the plane tickets are going to be $7,000. You know, can you send me money for that? Basically, again, it's called pig butchering because they're fattening you up for the slaughter every step of the way. So, the goal is through that entire fourmonth grooming process is to then is to build the rapport, figure out how much assets you have, get as much of your assets in their scam as possible. And then the final piece of the puzzle is where you know they pretend they want to come visit. They pretend they want to meet you and all this sort of stuff and to try to get the last of your dollars and then once it becomes clear that they have literally the last penny. I mean when they're like hey you know I'm on the plane but I have to pay for customs. Can you send me the last $50? As soon as you are completely absolutely broke 100% you don't have a penny left. there's nothing, you know, nothing more to, you know, to take from you. Then they either go dark on you or they get mad at you or they break the relationship off and pretend that it was, you know, your fault all the time and you did something wrong and you lost your money, it was your fault. So, it's absolutely heartbreaking. I mean, people commit suicide after this whole thing goes through. I mean, it's just heartbreaking the insanity of what these scammers put people through. A lot of this is is, you know, almost all of it comes out of Asia. um I forget the major countries like Myanmar or something like that. Countries with poor rule of law where they can get away with running these you know scams at a large scale for a long time and uh you know efforts have been made to like cut off their internet access to these huge compounds. A lot of the labor that is used is uh human traffic labor. So it's people that are promised you know a good job in Thailand. Then they get to Thailand and are told they have to go to Myanmar or wherever it is or Burma or whatever. Then they go there and they find out after they're situated that instead of a call center job doing tech support, they're actually going to be a scammer. And then if they're if they don't scam enough and meet their quota, they're they're beaten and they're not allowed to leave. And they have huge quotas like if you can scam people out of $2 million, then you can earn your freedom. And the whole thing is just absolutely insane. But they have massive compounds that look like college campuses where there's huge perimeter fences that trap everybody in where all the people who've been promised good paying jobs, you know, in call centers are actually being forced to scam. And you know, a lot of the that's what's happening now. Not all the people who are sending these text messages are forced labor, but a lot of it is forced labor. Um, so anyway, it's it's a just an absolute bizarre, toxic, horrible thing that all these people are caught up in on both the side of being forced to scam, but obviously the recipient of these scams and the rest of us who have to put up with getting tons of random text messages and messages on Telegram all day long, you know, with all just, you know, hey, uh, I thought we were meeting today. Where are you? I mean, it's just anything that's going to elicit any sort of response. So that's what pig butchering is. They're trying to find victims who are lonely, strike up a conversation, build a romantic connection, expose their amazing lifestyle, you know, have the person want to be to have the same lifestyle, invite them to be part of this cryptocurrency trading or whatever it is, and then slowly milk that person for every dollar they possibly have. And then again, it's called pig butchering because they fatten you up by taking your money every step of the way. And then finally, when they have every last penny you have, slit your throat by either dumping you or walking away or engineering a fight in a fallout or, you know, taking away access to the online platform that was showing you you were rich even though it was all fake all the time. Just all that sort of stuff. So, uh, anyway, that's why all of us are getting these random messages all day long. Don't fall for it. And most importantly, educate your loved ones. If you have a family member or an extended family member that's, you know, lonely or they've lost a loved one or something like that, they are especially susceptible to big pig butchering scams because the average person's just, you know, if you're in a happy, healthy relationship, you're probably not going to strike up, you know, you're not going to respond to these uh text messages. But if you're sitting home alone with nothing to do, feeling lonely, it's very tempting, I imagine, to respond to some of these messages. Um, so anyway, uh, educate your loved ones. What is pig butchering? I will include in the first comment here a link to Natalie Brunell's interview. Uh, send that to your loved ones and spread the word so people don't fall fall for these scams. And, uh, but check the first comment and I will post a link to Natalie Brunell's uh, most recent podcast where she covered it. Thanks.