"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"
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
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.
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.
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."
> "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."
Which isn't that far from the truth, eh.
Tupperware and Amway might be legit MLMs (there is a product attached, after all), but there are sooo many "side hustles" preying particularly on women that are outright scams - and inevitably the victims of these lose almost all of their friends and even family because they're all sick sooner or later from them constantly attempting to shill whatever supplements, insurances, shitcoins or kitchen gadgets they're currently dealing. It's truly heartbreaking to see people you know fall for that bullshit and get sucked into the vortex with no way of pulling them out.
The podcast Scam, Inc details all if this and is very interesting and worthwhile. Talks about the big cases and the people who perpetrate the scams. It has surprising detail.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
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.
42 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 75.1 ms ] thread[1] https://pikabu.ru/story/temu_neponyatnyiy_razvod_11302944
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.
"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."
Which isn't that far from the truth, eh.
Tupperware and Amway might be legit MLMs (there is a product attached, after all), but there are sooo many "side hustles" preying particularly on women that are outright scams - and inevitably the victims of these lose almost all of their friends and even family because they're all sick sooner or later from them constantly attempting to shill whatever supplements, insurances, shitcoins or kitchen gadgets they're currently dealing. It's truly heartbreaking to see people you know fall for that bullshit and get sucked into the vortex with no way of pulling them out.
Wow, this really makes me think. You see, I have this president that ...
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.
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.
> 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...
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.
Who is working on AI agents startup to automate this? /s
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.
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!"
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.
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-sca...
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.
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.
(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.
Amazing how much infrastructure is built up to support these operations.
https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc
Just blocked anyone I didn't know after that and after 3-4 numbers it stopped forever.
I posted about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037474