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 2 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.
qwertytyyuu 1 hours ago [-]
That's the ones i've encountered
wodenokoto 2 hours ago [-]
I saw a YouTube who had planted a mole inside one of these farms. Each guy ran something like 10 WhatsApp on his PC and when needed they had girls in a waiting room “on call” to do FaceTime.
smusamashah 3 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.
madaxe_again 2 hours ago [-]
I mean, Madoff spent nearly four decades building confidence.
blululu 2 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.
4 hours ago [-]
anasrin 5 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
> 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.
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.
frotaur 52 minutes 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.
sema4hacker 4 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.
Joel_Mckay 4 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 3 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 2 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!)
alexdbird 42 minutes 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.
M95D 2 hours ago [-]
We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject.
52 minutes ago [-]
pavlov 2 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.
cluckindan 2 hours ago [-]
If they’re paying out ”bait gains”, aren’t these just ponzis like Bernie Madoff?
SXX 1 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.
jsilence 3 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 2 hours ago [-]
Great original idea, you should make a Beowulf Cluster of them! With a Java Applet!
wiether 3 hours ago [-]
Didn't know the meaning of "pig-butchering scam", so I took it at its front value and was a bit confused.
BrandoElFollito 1 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.
spaceport 4 hours ago [-]
In case anyone else lives under a rock like me, this is only metaphorically linked to swine. Filed under TIL.
qwertytyyuu 5 hours ago [-]
lol I’ve gotten this question. For me, they wanted to invite me to this bad mobile game
Theodores 4 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.
meindnoch 2 hours ago [-]
I'm interested in more details!
woadwarrior01 11 minutes 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
"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."
[1] https://pikabu.ru/story/temu_neponyatnyiy_razvod_11302944
> 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Who is working on AI agents startup to automate this? /s