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I came across this “pig butchering” concept while reading about financial investments. “Pig butchering” is a mix of investment fraud with romance fraud. The victims are groomed (lovebombed) online for several weeks or months to fall in love with the scammer and then invest in their online lover’s (fake) cryptocurrency projects. It is called “pig butchering” because it involves a “fattening up” grooming period (the love bombing phase) before the slaughter (exploitation).
This is from the US Secret Service website warning about these romance scams:
“One of the most common categories of cryptocurrency investment fraud is known as “pig butchering,” a highly lucrative billion-dollar industry that has victimized millions of Americans. Pig butchering scams involve fraudsters gaining the trust of victims, oftentimes via a fictitious romantic relationship, and duping them into making investments into fake cryptocurrency projects. These schemes typically begin with a victim meeting someone on an online dating website.”
From a Pro Publica report:
“The next step is starting a conversation with a potential victim to gain their trust. The scammers often initiate benign chats about life, family and work with an eye toward mining their targets for information about their lives that they can later use to manipulate them. They’ll fabricate details about their own life that make them seem similar to you. After all, people like people who are like them.”
So this is basically the same fraud tactics that sociopaths use in personal relationships, the same manipulation tactics of love bombing and mirroring to gain the victim’s trust so they can be exploited.
The more I understand about sociopaths the more I have come to realize that the best way to understand their personality is as criminals. And the best way to “manage” them is same as with criminals: get away from them and stay away from them or else you will be exploited.
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One of my coworkers was caught in not one, but two of these scams. He is recently divorced and went online to “see what is out there” and got involved with a woman who eventually talked him into investing thousands of dollars in her cryptocurrency business. (A Sure Thing – you will double your money in two months”, she told him. He even flew out to Phoenix to meet her, but, of course, she was a no-show. When I heard through other employees what was happening I shared a bit of my story of being conned, but he absolutely refused to believe it. Said she was just “having a hard time” and things would work out. He never heard from her after the trip, and when he checked his investment account, it had disappeared, too. Then another woman contacted him, charmed him, and talked him into a bitcoin deal. Again, he flew down to Los Angeles to meet up with her — her invitation — and she never showed up. By the time he returned, his bank account was drained, all the bitcoin accounts had been closed. In total he was out over $70K! Again, other coworkers chided him, warned him, cautioned him – but until the money went away, he refused to believe that these “lovely, sweet ladies” were probably operating from a call center in Nigeria! I printed out information about con artists, pig butchering scams, Nigerian love scams, GooglePics to verify photos – anything I could find – and papered his inbox with them. He has finally admitted he was thinking with his “other brain” – their correspondence was fast and hot and heavy, their pictures lovely, their promises convincing – both in their 30’s, gorgeous…he is 65. He admitted to me he feels like a fool. I referred him to this site. Sadly, these con artists are very, very good at what they do – very convincing. Unless you are expecting it, watching for the signs, you can get sucked in easily. I feel badly for this guy – he lost his entire retirement account, not to mention his house and dog in the divorce! Now he is limiting his “shopping” to local venues, bars and referrals from friends. He won’t even lend a dollar to a buddy any more!
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