Whether you want to call them “catfishing,” “pig butchering” or just good ‘old-fashioned “social engineering,” romance scams have been around forever.
I was first introduced to them through the MTV show “Catfish,” but recently they seem to be making headlines as the term “pig butchering” enters the public lexicon. John Oliver recently covered it on “Last Week Tonight,” which means everyone my age with an HBO account heard about it a few weeks ago. And one of my favorite podcasts going, “Search Engine,” just covered it in an episode.
The concept of “pig butchering” scams generally follows the same chain of events:
- An unknown phone number texts or messages a target with a generally harmless message, usually asking for a random name disguised as an “Oops, wrong number!” text.
- When the target responds, the actor tries to strike up a conversation with a friendly demeanor.
- If the conversation persists, they usually evolve into “love bombing,” including compliments, friendly advice, ego-boosting, and saying flattering things about any photos the target has sent.
- Sometimes, the relationship may turn romantic.
- The scammer eventually “butchers” the “pig” that has been “fattened up” to that point, scamming them into handing over money, usually in the form of a phony cryptocurrency app, or just straight up asking for the target to send the scammer money somehow.
There are a few twists and turns along the way based on the exact scammer, but that’s generally how it works. What I think is important to remember is that this specific method of separating users from their money is not actually new.
The FBI seems to release a renewed warning about romance scams every Valentine’s Day when people are more likely to fall for a stranger online wanting to make a real connection and then eventually asking for money. I even found a podcast from the FBI in 2015 in which they warned that scammers “promise love, romance, to entice their victims online,” estimating that romance-related scams cost consumers $82 million in the last half of 2014.
The main difference that I can tell between “pig butchering” and past romance scams is the sheer scale. Many actors running these operations are relying on human trafficking and sometimes literal imprisonment, forcing these people against their will to send these mass blocks of messages to a variety of targets indiscriminately. Oftentimes in these groups, scammers who are less “successful” in luring victims can be verbally and physically harassed and punished. That is, of course, a horrible human toll that these operations are taking, but they also extend far beyond the world of cybersecurity.
In the case of pig butchering scams, it’s not really anything that can be solved by a cybersecurity solution or sold in a package. Instead, it relies on user education and the involvement of law enforcement agencies and international governments to ensure these farms can’t operate in the shows. The founders who run them are brought to justice.
It’s never a bad thing that users become more educated on these scams, because of that, but I also feel it’s important to remember that romance-related scams, and really any social engineering built on a personal “relationship,” has been around for years, and “pig butchering” is not something new that just started popping up.
These types of scams are ones that our culture has kind of just accepted as part of daily life at this point (who doesn’t get surprised when they get a call about their “car’s extended warranty?), and now the infrastructure to support these scams is taking a larger human toll than ever.
