A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

140 pointsposted 11 hours ago
by stmw
(arxiv.org)

71 Comments

qnleigh

9 hours 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."

0cf8612b2e1e

7 hours ago

Definitely sympathizes the victims even more. I had been thinking that these were 1-2 month, ham-fisted operations: establish contact and rush to grab the cash from the gullible rube. To string along the target for a year shows dedication completely separate from the pedestrian scams you normally encounter.

bartread

4 hours ago

I mean a lot of the investment scams you see on places like Reddit - like the "testing the network" crypto scam - are pretty hamfisted. People still fall for them though.

K0balt

4 hours ago

It was a pretty wild ride, for an arvix paper lol. Easily as good as a provocative work of fiction, It had me questioning my marriage briefly until I rolled over and looked at my toddler, and briefly thought “holy shirt this runs deep!” (And then obviously broke out of the spell of the story lol)

Still, it’s a testament to the level of emotional damage that these scams must levy on their actual victims.

smusamashah

8 hours 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.

mothballed

3 hours ago

Most motorcycle gangs require a 1 year hang around, plus the introduced person has to be known for at least a year.

The conventional wisdom is to wait 2 years to marry someone, and 1 year at the absolute bare minimum if you are old or at the edge of the fertility window or in some extenuating circumstance.

This seems somewhat confirmed by the fact it outlives the measure of these long-running scams. Perhaps the conventional wisdom is correct.

sammorrowdrums

3 hours 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.

madaxe_again

7 hours ago

I mean, Madoff spent nearly four decades building confidence.

blululu

7 hours ago

That was a tabloid page turner of an arxiv preprint. Really nice mixed methods research paper that conveys the depth of these scams.

est

5 hours ago

the scammers had the best CRM software and "customer service" training.

If any of the scam farm worker failed they will get physical punishment or even capital punishment...

guappa

4 hours ago

Is this for sure? I can imagine that even then, 99% of the attempts will fail.

K0balt

4 hours ago

There are token rewards for successes and punishments, sometimes extreme, for low productivity. If a slave is seen as having no worth to the endeavour and cannot be trafficked, they will sometimes be killed as a warning to the others that productivity is expected.

It’s a horrific and brutal scenario that pits victims against victims. In many ways, the targets have less to lose than the victims targeting them.

anal_reactor

4 hours ago

Eh. While it's surprising to see someone string along someone through the internet for so long, it's not a really a new thing in the physical world. It happens once in a while that someone marries someone much richer just to file for a divorce a bit later. Heck, it's actually socially acceptable to be nice to people just because you want something from them.

anasrin

10 hours 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

K0balt

4 hours 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.

phb01

7 hours 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.

nomilk

7 hours 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/INTERP...

bondarchuk

4 hours ago

Oh, I had never gotten the "fatten up" part of the analogy before.

shireboy

3 hours 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

2 hours 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).

gcanyon

4 hours 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

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!"

sema4hacker

10 hours 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.

vjvjvjvjghv

2 hours ago

I know an engineer in his 30s who had a “girlfriend” somewhere in Asia and he would send her money regularly. They had been “together” for 2 years but never met. He even knew that something was probably wrong but did it anyways out of desperation.

Joel_Mckay

9 hours 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

8 hours 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

7 hours ago

Yeah, I remember a friend getting a call during coworking and her face just went white, and after the call she told us that was the tax people calling about irregularities (she had moved countries and was slow in sorting out her tax situation), and we all bought it - there was no sober "oh yeah it's a scam" advice from us - it was really perfectly timed, and took a day or to for her to reason through that it must be a scam. (No money lost though!)

giveita

4 hours ago

AML/KYC laws have done us a big favour. Otherwise that would be a bank txn they would ask for. And now buying $200 of gift cards as an actual gift is impossible (in physical space)

mothballed

3 hours ago

Always verify a wire details through an initiated call to a verified number of the legitimate institution in question.

My country has AML law, but all the time people are tricked into wiring money to scammer for a house or something else because they take wire details by spoofed e-mail or a received phone call.

The scammers are very clever, they will monitor e-mail from a title company or some other company with large invoices, then trick you at the exact moment you are making a legitimate transaction to a legitimate institution. Because you did not make a mistake sending the wire, nor did the bank, only sent it to exactly the wrong person, once the wire gets forwarded on out of country you're often SOL.

giveita

3 hours ago

Correct. There is more verification buying a beer at some pubs than sending $1m.

alexdbird

6 hours ago

We are all vulnerable at some point. I'd even go as far as saying we all fall for something at some point. Even if it's something small the psychological effect can be large, and there can be a lot of shame, so many do not share their experience.

donatj

4 hours 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

3 hours 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.

pavlov

7 hours 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.

shellfishgene

an hour ago

I doubt that, it seems the investment websites used are entirely fake, they probably just use crypto because it's well known and sounds good to many people. They might however just as well promote fake investments in stocks or something else.

karel-3d

4 hours ago

You can also buy 5 different official Donald Trump cryptocurrencies, too. It's not that useless.

pavlov

3 hours ago

Someone might argue that Donald Trump's political career is the most successful pig-butchering scam in the history of the world.

jiggawatts

3 hours 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

3 hours 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.

frotaur

6 hours 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.

gadders

2 hours 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.

M95D

7 hours ago

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

aleph_minus_one

4 hours 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.

cluckindan

7 hours ago

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

SXX

6 hours 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

an hour 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...

jsilence

8 hours 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

7 hours ago

Great original idea, you should make a Beowulf Cluster of them! With a Java Applet!

K0balt

4 hours ago

This made me taste cringe. It’s orange flavoured and weirdly acidic like something the dentist used on me when I was 7.

wiether

9 hours ago

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

shireboy

3 hours 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

BrandoElFollito

6 hours 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

33 minutes ago

A croire que c'est un problème de compréhension uniquement chez nous autres pauvres Français !

hereme888

4 hours 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.

spaceport

9 hours ago

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

jacknews

3 hours 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

2 hours ago

Well yes, I believe some interventions happened awhile ago in Myanmar in the form of war between factions.

jacknews

an hour 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...

qwertytyyuu

10 hours ago

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

Theodores

9 hours 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.

karel-3d

4 hours 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.)

em500

2 hours 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://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/323544...

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.

natebc

4 hours ago

Sorry to hear this happened to your father especially with such a dire conclusion. Hopefully writing about it will give you some catharsis and help someone else, plus maybe get Zendesk to crack down on the use of their product.

meindnoch

7 hours ago

I'm interested in more details!

woadwarrior01

5 hours 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

4 hours ago

They probably use AI quite a lot.