3/ Any kind of person can fall for this con. Reporter Cezary Podkul interviewed dozens of victims from all walks of life: a C-suite executive, PhDs, a scientist, small business owners, a parking lot attendant and everyone in between. It’s a hugely potent and financially devastating scam.
I'm not so sure about this, have you met a millennial we have no money to steal
"Any kind of person can fall for this con." Except the millions of Americans with zero money to invest.
"Any kind of person" or only naive, vulnerable people? Let's rather have a story about the victims. I was never taught explicitly to avoid scammers but I can see their nonsense a mile off. What's fascinating is those people who can't.
Naive and vulnerable, maybe. Greedy, sure.
I so struggle to understand how people fall for this. I've had messages out of the blue (usually from an account with a pic of an attractive young woman) and I know 100% the convo is gonna go to investments. They're screaming SCAM. I accept my lack of understanding is a me problem but hey people!
4/ The scam is so successful that one estimate pinned its annual take at more than $44B. That’s just for scammers based in Asia, who often operate out of huge, fortified compounds in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar like this one👇
5/ Important note: Many of the workers are also victims of human trafficking who’ve been tricked into working inside these fraud factories. Here’s Cezary's report on the crushing cycle of victimization involved in pig-butchering scams:
I’ve been considering if there’s any useful resource I could point the pig butchering scammer to before blocking them. I’ve used random articles about the compounds in Myanmar, but it would be better to have something written for the potential trafficking victims.
I have fun. Put them on hold and go about my business. Or Put them on hold and come back with "You have reached precinct # ---. This is sergeant so and so, I hear you have an incident to report. May I have your name, phone# ..." *click* They're gone! 😁
Be careful with that. They can copy and clone your voice to use it for accessing accounts. I just put my phone under a metal mixing bowl and wallop it with a mixing spoon. For some reason they don’t call back.
😲‼️ 🙊🤐😶 Thanks for the warning
My niece warned me. She also told me the metal bowl & spoon may be technically illegal, but what’s a scammer gonna do?
This podcast cured me of the idea of mocking the scammers. These aren’t Nigerian college students in an internet café. Both the targets and the callers are being ruthlessly exploited in this kind of scam. open.spotify.com/show/76SEtNM...
6/ Scammers prefer to deal in cryptocurrency, but since their typical victim doesn’t own crypto, many pig-butchering scams still unfold with consumers tapping their bank accounts to wire money to fraudsters’ accounts.
Ha ha ha Funnily enough I have been approached three times last week claiming the saw my resume on line.while I’ve searched companies that offer work from home part time work. Smelt funny How do you pay Crypto Bye
I get the “saw your resume online” scam regularly. I’m retired from a job I had 28 years. My resume has never been online.
What part of the phrase: you can't get something for nothing, do people forget is reality? Or? ALL of crypto is a global, multi-national, multi-governmental, Ponzi scheme? 🤦
Yeah, I keep getting them, too. I have NEVER had a LinkedIn (social media tied to either housing or employment is a TERRIBLE idea), and haven’t had a resume in the wild since… 2007, 8ish. Haven’t even had my CV online since 2016. They mention those? They are scamming.
My husband and I get a pretty good laugh at the ones that claim they saw his resume on LinkedIn. He’s a farmer/mechanic. He not only isn’t on LinkedIn, he’s never had a resume in his life.
7/ But wait a second: An international scam operation can’t just have a checking account in its name. And how would these scammers move tens of billions of dollars of stolen money across borders without raising alarms?
8/ Turns out there’s a parallel money-laundering industry that helps scammers do just that. They’re called “motorcades” (车队) in Chinese and they’re incredibly efficient at helping fraudsters collect and move stolen funds.
9/ Here’s how motorcades operate. Once a scam gang in, say, Cambodia, has identified a fraud target willing to wire funds, they hire a motorcade that controls a U.S. bank account. The motorcade gives the account details to the scammers, who send them along to the victim.
10/ This is what it looks like in practice. The fake online brokerage you’re dealing with will give you a “recharge account” to wire funds to, along with a request to send a screenshot when you’re done wiring the money, which then appears in the fake brokerage.
11/ At this point you’ll wonder why you’re being asked to wire funds to some strange-sounding company other than the fake brokerage you’re dealing with. The scammers will tell you that’s just how crypto works and instruct you not to tell your bank you are “investing” in crypto.
Right here on @bsky.social, I have been approached by someone posing as #GeorgeStrait, asked me to send cash, wire transfer or bitcoin to a nonprofit?
12/ Don’t buy it. The strange-sounding companies are just shell entities the motorcade used to open bank accounts (examples from court records👇). They ask for a screenshot of your wire so they can credit your brokerage with fake money and take the real money soon as you send it.
People wiring their life savings to "Dongdong Seafood LLC"
13/ And the only reason they don’t want you to mention crypto to your bank is because they don’t want the bank to talk you out of wiring the funds. This process is how Kevin, a lifelong saver and small business owner in New Jersey, lost $716,000 that he wired to scammers in 2023.
I block texts and WA messages faster than you can say "scam." I've even blocked people I know and/or needed to be in touch with. 😂 Oops. Don't care. "Block early and often" is my motto.
is this from the trump org case? lol
The problem with PHDs and bankers is that they spend so much time balancing their portfolios that they forget what genuine human interaction looks like. They expect their accountants to do that part for them so when they receive scam texts they don't know how to react. Us poor folk know better.
Who falls for this crap?
Tech illiterate seniors, lonely people looking for any connection, people in financial distress who see it as an opportunity to get out.
scammers usually combine elements of: friendship/social trust, urgency, individual's vulnerability (catching someone already in emotional stress for any reason), and persuasiveness. it really can happen to anyone. it's numbers, only takes a few.
My sister, who is not particularly stupid or gullible, fell for an online scammer to the tune of over $10k a couple of years ago. When retelling the story — in hindsight — it sounded like an obvious scam. But in the moment, the scammers were *very* skilled at getting her to give up the money.
A lot of people. Maybe try empathizing with them instead of judging them.
I’m 85 and I wasn’t judging at least that was not my intent. Just don’t take calls if you don’t know the number! If it’s important they will leave a voicemail. Most calls I get now days don’t leave a voicemail so I block and report. Common sense was my intent. Sorry if I offended you.
Vulnerable folks, unfortunately.
anyone is vulnerable at the right timing. job loss? loved one passed away? recent move? all ripe for someone to be just distracted enough to not immediately suss out scams.
People like to pretend it’s all “vulnerable” folks, but in reality it’s greed. People are just greedy as hell, and always want more, more, more. “Pigs get slaughtered” is an idiom in the financial world about people being overly greedy who in turn lose their ass. Hence, “pig-butchering scam”.
It's "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered."
Greedy people, which is why it’s called “pig butchering“, from the saying: “Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.”
Watch out if you ever respond to these just to be troublesome. Be slightly positive and your number will be sent far and wide for more of the same…
Positive? I've been DMing them back a picture of my latest deposit to the Bank of Porcelain before blocking.
?
📌
👆22-year-old from China who was taken captive in 2021, was sold twice within the past year, he said. He doesn’t know if he was listed on Telegram. All he knows is that each time he was sold, his new captors raised the amount he’d have to pay to buy his freedom
Can you please post the actual physical locations of these places? Much appreciated in advance.
The information is out there on several of the large ones. They operate in Southeast Asia, where I don't want to say governments are lax, but a lot of their crime fighting resources are tied up in endeavours that are more immediate than scammers taking advantage of wealthy foreigners.
Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Laos, Bavet in Cambodia etc. Some of them are just run out of rented office space in big cities though. They catch people with fake job offers and stuff, get them in country and kidnap them.
Yes, I'm just looking for actual physical addresses in order to avoid the awkwardness when you destroy a place only to find out it was a legit business. I've never been good at explaining myself in those type of situations, and I'd rather not have to get better with practice.
Information is always out there, but it's not always reliable nor correct. Is there a reputable listing source?
I mean, unless you are part of an active investigation you aren't going to get specific details. They do tend to thrive in "Special Economic Zones" which are spread all over, usually in tandem with prostitution and casinos. Anywhere you'd expect to find organized crime.
Therein lies the problem: I doubt there are any many, if any, active investigations. I'm just looking for a damn address, and I realize large places are easier to find, but a lot look the same from the outside and I don't feel like trying to explain away a huge mistake.
It is well known that Sihanoukville in Cambodia has many, many people trapped in these compounds.
I'm not doubting the veracity of the claim, I'm literally asking for the locations. I reckon I can't do shit if I don't know where to do it at. But I am admittedly a simple man, and can't be counted on to find locations by guesswork alone. That place just looks like a weird hotel to me.
You haven't explained why someone would respond to a random text from a complete stranger.