Online ‘pig butchering’ love scams have gone global after getting their start in China
- The scam involves building a relationship, often romantic, with a victim before convincing them to make a fraudulent investment
- Victims are often well-educated women and the amount of money stolen tends to be significant
A scamming strategy called “pig butchering” that started in China is spreading beyond both border and language, transforming into a global fraud racket.
According to the Global Anti-Scam Organisation, a volunteer-led advocacy group, the primary victims of the scheme outside China are Chinese nationals or ethnically Chinese people living in Southeast Asia. But more than a third of the duped people were non-Chinese people in North America and Asia, showing how the demographic targeted is rapidly expanding.
Called sha zhu pan in Chinese, or “pig butchering” in English, the scam involves the perpetrator building a relationship, often romantic but not always, with the victim over months, akin to fattening the pig, before convincing them to invest money into a fake venture, slaughtering the animal.
The losses were often significant, averaging US$98,000 based on 240 victims surveyed by the Global Anti-Scam Organisation. About 70 per cent of the victims were women.
Unlike traditional romance scams, most of those who fell for “pig-butchering” scams were people in their 20s and 30s who have a decent education, with nearly 90 per cent of them holding a bachelor’s degree or higher.