The Pig Butchering Scam!

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Every year, people around the world lose millions of dollars to a sophisticated scam known as “the pig butchering romance scam”.
 
The scam takes its name from the victims, who the scammers call “pigs” that they "fatten up" before slaughter.  It usually begins with a text message that appears to be a wrong number. People who respond are lured into a long conversation with a good-looking and wealthy stranger who eventually offers to teach them how to make money with crypto investments. The investments are (of course) fake, and once victims send enough of their money, the scammers disappear. Victims frequently lose their life savings, and often the crime goes unreported because the victim is so embarrassed by what happened. A Kansas banker embezzled almost $50 million dollars from his bank as part of a pig-butchering scam, leading to the bank's failure.

In the bestselling book - Number Go Up by Zeke Faux, it was revealed that the people sending the messages are frequently victims themselves.  In today's video we explore how the scam works and why cryptocurrencies like tether are to blame for the huge scale of this crime.

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Zeke Faux - Number Go Up: https://amzn.to/3XJV7Q1
BBC Pig Butchering Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW4wYV0V-5s
Griffin & Mei Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4742235#:~:text=The%20perpetrators%20interact%20freely%20with,Binance%2C%20Huobi%2C%20and%20OKX.

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