How ‘pig butchering’ romance scams siphon millions from Californians every year – The Mercury News

It took two months of near daily conversations, of first cultivating trust and then love, before he walked into her trap.

Two months of phone calls, text messages and video chats. Two months of sharing their life stories and their dreams about the future before he took the bait — an investment opportunity pitched by this woman he had never met.

“Interesting,” he wrote in a text message. “How much money?”

It started with a small $1,000 cryptocurrency investment, but by the time the Santa Monica-based software developer realized the truth, he’d turned over $740,000 with no hope of getting it back. He liquidated stocks, emptied his savings and drained his retirement.

If a friend hadn’t intervened, he would have lost his home, too, all in the hopes of covering the “taxes” needed to withdraw the $2 million he’d supposedly made from cryptocurrency trades his love interest had recommended.

In reality, he had already lost every cent.

“I used to have a cushion and safety net, and now I have nothing,” he said in an interview. “I’m struggling just to make sure I pay the bills.”

The Santa Monica resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the embarrassing nature of the crime, is one of hundreds — if not thousands — of Californians victimized by a long con referred to as “pig butchering,” in which networks of scammers spend weeks and months posing as prospective romantic partners to fatten their targets with love before financially cutting their throats.

Unlike the often joked about “Nigerian prince” emails, or the myriad quick-hit scams that cast thousands upon thousands of lines in the hopes of catching a nibble, pig butchering is sophisticated, targeted and, most importantly for its effectiveness, incredibly patient.

Trail of devastation

The devastation left behind by these fast-growing romance scams has destroyed families, erased plans for retirement and pushed some victims to suicide.

Erin West, a deputy district attorney from Santa Clara County and a member of California’s cybercrime taskforce, REACT, told Congress during a hearing in September that pig butchering scams take a heavy toll.

“An adult daughter in Michigan confided that her father had killed himself. She had no idea why until she started to look through his digital life and found that, immersed in a pig butchering scam, he lost the family fortune. He saw no alternative,” West said. “I talked to an adult daughter in California whose father had killed himself. She didn’t know why until she discovered that he was a victim of a $3 million loss in a pig butchering scam.

“These reports continue to come in at uncomfortably regular intervals, not remotely slowing down,” she testified.

The stories of tragedy are everywhere. According to CNN, an 82-year-old Maryland man took his life in March in the wake of one such scam initiated through Facebook.

Exploded during pandemic

Beginning in China in 2019, “sha zhu pan” expanded worldwide as loneliness soared during the pandemic.

In California, early pig butchering scammers, believed to operate out of Myanmar and Cambodia, specifically targeted Chinese speakers and immigrants in cities like Irvine, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now, just having a wealthy ZIP code could put someone in their crosshairs.

“The scammers have just realized how easy it is,” said Brett Chabot, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI’s financial crimes unit in Orange County.

In 2023, the FBI reported that Americans lost $4 billion to cryptocurrency investment scams, of which more than $1.1 billion was siphoned from California residents alone. Texans, the group with the second highest losses in the country, were taken for $411 million, by comparison.

Law enforcement experts and victim advocates say those numbers are likely severely underreported, as many who have been duped are too embarrassed to come forward because of the stigma surrounding scams. Some hold out hope for months before contacting law enforcement.

Chabot estimates his FBI office, which handles Orange County and parts of the Inland Empire, has received about three pig butchering cases every week for the past year-and-a-half.

“The ones that we’ve seen have lost well over $1 million,” Chabot said. “Many times, we’re talking about everything they have.”

How it started

While some pig butchering scams start with a “wrong number” text out of nowhere, dating apps have become a common hunting ground, according to Chabot.

The software developer from Santa Monica met “Jenny” on one such app in February 2023.

Most likely, living in an affluent city made him a target, while his answers to early questions about his career and finances, as well as information gleaned from social media profiles such as LinkedIn, revealed if he was worth the trouble.

At the time, he was a 45-year-old developer at a well-known tech company who had recently separated from his wife.

Jenny was 32 and had moved to Boston from Shanghai to work at her uncle’s venture capital firm four years earlier. The move and the pandemic had made it difficult to meet new people and now she wanted to settle down, she said, according to a chat history provided to the Southern California News Group.

She was beautiful, energetic and eager to show off the successful lifestyle she lived. It felt a bit too good to be true.

“Do you want to sell me something?” he joked in their first interaction.

But the pitch didn’t come. At least not yet.

Developing a bond

Instead, she wanted to know all about his life, asking attentive questions about his children, his career and his hobbies. In turn, she spoke about her own dreams and fears, successes and failures. They had a lot in common, including a shared desire to retire early.

She had been married, too, she said. The relationship had ended after her husband gambled away their savings and turned emotionally and physically abusive.

Over the course of four months, these conversations became a daily routine — from “good morning, my love” when they awoke to “sweet dreams” at night.

Jenny radiated positivity, offering affirmations and praise at every turn to the man she began calling “my husband.”

Jenny loved to share her adventures and the fancy meals she ate. She might send a distant picture of her riding a horse, or a quick shot of her friends hanging out at a backyard party, or maybe a video of her wearing a mask and doing a silly dance at a museum. Some days, she’d ask him to help pick which scarf to buy, or stockings to wear.

Much of it was impromptu, creating a convincing illusion of someone who lived a full life.

They’d buy a big house together someday, she’d say. Their combined finances would give them the freedom to travel and live life as they saw fit, she promised.

The red flags

There were red flags — glaringly so, in hindsight — but it became easier to dismiss them as more and more time passed.

“It’s like they put you under a spell or something,” the software developer said later. “I was very vulnerable and I think they took advantage of that, I really do.”

An official with the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation said a key red flag to watch out for is someone pushing to move a conversation to a different, encrypted messenger.

“The biggest thing is just to be very wary of texts you receive from numbers you don’t recognize or messages from someone you have never met before,” said Trevor Carroll, senior counsel for the agency’s enforcement division. “Never give funds to anyone you’ve met on social media, or who texted you, or emailed you.”

Two months in with the Santa Monica man, Jenny shared a screenshot showing more than $2 million in her checking account, piquing his interest, but also setting off an alarm bell. Who keeps that much money in a checking account?

She explained that her uncle’s firm had developed something called “fast trading,” where, by monitoring the cryptocurrency markets, they could time investments to guarantee a profit of at least 40% with minimal risk. It took the careful planning of a full team, she said, but she’d be willing to pass along inside information from her firm to the man she loved.

“How much money?” he finally asked.

An investment of $5,000 would bring $2,000 in profit, she explained, before allowing the topic to fade.

Three days later, the software developer learned he was about to be laid off.

“I am very sad to hear the news, my love,” she wrote. “I want to give you a big hug.”

Finally, the bait is taken

It took almost another week before she finally persuaded him to sign up for a fake cryptocurrency exchange where he could watch his “investment” grow in real time. The website mirrored a real exchange with a slightly different URL from the one someone could find through a Google search. It even had its own customer support, allowing the scam to keep the nitty gritty details, such as where to transfer the money, far removed from any connection to Jenny.

He was only willing to risk $1,000 at first. Once he made $400 in profit off that first trade, Jenny pushed him to take his profits out — likely to reinforce the supposed legitimacy of the site — and to leave the rest for the next quickly approaching opportunity.

Each time, the amount needed to participate in the “fast trading nodes” grew. When he couldn’t meet the amounts needed in time, Jenny would “lend” him the difference by sending it to the website on his behalf, further ingratiating herself to him.

“That’s just a small part of it, my love, I don’t care, because I love you,” she wrote. “I want to be with you all my life.”

They grew closer as the scam slowly progressed into May and June 2023. He talked of using the money to start a business flipping houses. She imagined caring for his children as her own. They openly spoke of getting married.

The last trade promised a 100% return, she said. It would make him a millionaire and let them “buy what we like without checking whether we have enough money in our pockets.”

“How am I lucky enough to have found you,” he wrote in response. “I feel like the luckiest guy.”

Victims become ‘intoxicated’

One of the reasons pig butchering is so successful is because it can become intoxicating, said Kathy Waters, CEO of the California-based group Advocating Against Romance Scammers.

“What could be better than being in love and having a ton of money for the rest of your life with your loved one?” she said.

The scammer intentionally grooms their target by mirroring their interests and unleashing a flood of love and attention to someone who may not be getting it elsewhere.

“It makes them feel so good, it can be almost an addiction, and they don’t want that to go away,” she said. “A lot of us know the red flags, but when we’re in a vulnerable position, we don’t think it could happen to us, and we end up falling victim.”

Waters formed Advocating Against Romance Scammers in 2016 with Bryan Denny, a retired colonel whose photo had been used in several romance scams, including one targeting a friend of Waters’ mother.

Romance scam victims don’t just lose their money, she said. Often, they feel as though they lost someone they loved, and many experience intense shame and embarrassment as a result of the public perception that only someone who is stupid or gullible would fall for a scam.

”They don’t realize how much goes into these scams,” she said. “They think these people just hand over the money when they are contacted by a scammer, and that’s not the case at all.”

Website tracks victim stories

In response to the rise in these types of scams, the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation set up a “crypto scam tracker” website. It has received more than 300 complaints since starting the website in February 2022, including a dozen from Los Angeles, nine from Torrance and six from Irvine.

“It’s heartbreaking to hear the stories and to talk to the victims,” said Carroll of the agency’s enforcement division. “They (the scammers) can be incredibly patient and just play the long game and build up that trust over time.”

The stories are shockingly similar.

“A Californian reports that ‘Emily’ contacted them through Instagram. She encouraged them to move the conversation over to WhatsApp and they developed a relationship,” one reads. “Emily informed the victim her aunt worked at a prominent cryptocurrency exchange platform and can help the victim trade crypto.”

The victim lost $35,000 there.

“A California resident reported being approached on social media by ‘Amberly,’ who claimed to be from Ontario, Canada,” another states. “Over time, the two developed a relationship and began texting and calling each other every day.”

They invested $60,000 before realizing it was a scam.

In another, “Lena” from Singapore took $290,000. “Alisa,” $1.2 million. “Alvin,” $250,000.

There was even another “Jenny.”

‘It’s all my money’

By the end, the Santa Monica developer had put the last of his $740,000 into the fake crypto account, plus the “profits” he’d made along the way, in the hopes of a massive payout. His Jenny added another $130,000 to help him reach the threshold needed.

“It’s all my money,” he wrote to her. “I couldn’t look my kids in the eyes if I lost it.”

Trust me, she said.

“I will be with you and watch the children grow up day by day and become adults,” she wrote. “I love them and want to be a good mother to them.”

The final trade was a painstakingly long six minutes. But then came the relief — a pop-up showing he’d made more than $1 million in profit, bringing his account balance to $2,166,558. There was just one small matter to resolve first.

Though he’d successfully withdrawn roughly $400 early on, this time he needed to pay $281,000 to cover a 20% personal income tax. He couldn’t use his profits to make the payment either; instead, he needed to add new money.

Jenny claimed she had put everything she had into her own investment and couldn’t give him any more. He began looking at bridge loans that leveraged his home as collateral, expecting he would pay it back instantly once the funds were released.

Friend intervenes

He didn’t recognize the warning signs until he told a friend about his investment. It sounded an awful lot like a video the friend had watched at work.

“He showed me one on pig butchering and it was exactly what I went through,” he said, later describing it as waking up with a jolt.

He confronted Jenny. She insisted it wasn’t a scam, he just needed to pay the tax bill and they could finally be together, she said. She’d fly to California next week and everything would be OK.

She used her “loans” to apply additional pressure. If he didn’t pay back the $130,000, she’d kill herself, she warned.

He filed a complaint with the FBI and the Santa Monica Police Department, but neither could help him recover the funds, which had already moved through dozens of accounts and shifted between different cryptocurrencies.

“It’s almost impossible,” said Chabot, the FBI agent. “Unless the victim reports it within 72 hours, the chances of getting any money back are almost nil.

“We’re essentially investigating a bunch of ghosts, or at least that’s what it looks like on the front end,” Chabot said.

The scammers rarely use U.S.-based cryptocurrency accounts and often reside in jurisdictions where the FBI has “less than ideal law enforcement relationships,” Chabot said.

“There are many countries where we have problems getting that type of cooperation, and I think the scammers know that,” he said.

Authorities strike back

Federal and state investigators recently have hit back at scammers by targeting local players in the chain.

In May, a grand jury indicted two Chinese nationals, including a Temple City resident, for their alleged roles in laundering $73 million tied to cryptocurrency investment scams. A cryptocurrency wallet involved in the scheme allegedly received more than $341 million in virtual assets.

Last year, the Department of Justice seized $112 million in funds from pig butchering scams, including $66.4 million tied to a Los Angeles-based account. They later charged defendants from Alhambra, Cypress and Rosemead who were found to have allegedly handled $20 million in funds stolen from victims.

In September, West, the deputy district attorney from Santa Clara County, told the national security subcommittee of the House of Representatives that revenues from criminal industries now make up an estimated 40% of the combined GDP in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, where the largest pig butchering compounds are located.

“In Cambodia particularly, this can be viewed as a state-run criminal enterprise with compounds owned by senators, governors, cabinet members, advisers to and family members of the prime minister,” she testified. “While pig butchering was primarily based in compounds, casino towers and office buildings in Southeast Asia, we are now seeing a global footprint spreading to the Middle East and Africa.”

The REACT Taskforce that West belongs to funds local detectives specializing in cybercrime. She spoke before the House to urge the federal government to develop a national strategy to combat the rise of pig butchering.

“I come before you as a human being who is emotionally depleted from hearing victim after victim tell the same story of loss and having to tell them — there is nothing I can do to help you,” she said.

The pig butchering operations, run by organized crime syndicates, are fueled by human trafficking, West said. The scammers behind personas like “Jenny” are often victims themselves, tricked into traveling to the country for a prospective job, only to have their passports taken. They’re bused to compounds surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by men with guns.