Crypto "Pig Butchering" A Scam Gaining Traction

I think everyone is pretty familiar with Romance scams, they've been pretty popular ever since internet dating became an acceptable means of finding love. People use the internet to lure in would be lovers and instead of getting at their hearts, they get at their pockets.

There are plenty of reports of small-time guys hitting people for a few $100 bucks and then there are the guys like the Cafe Boys of Ghana and Nigeria who have become such trained experts at this skill they can extort millions out of people over the course of years.

Now when these RomCons started, payment would be done via PayPal or Wire transfers and it would be tough to get bank accounts set up overseas and these guys would either need to buy them from Europeans or Americans willing to sell them one, or rent them.

Now that we have bitcoin and by extension cryptocurrency, it removed the one pain point these scammers had and boy has business been good.

Dating scams are easier than ever

Before you had to go to all these not too popular dating websites I don't know like eHarmoney and stuff like that, but with Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and the likes having a smartphone gives you an endless supply of victims waiting to be milked. You see the profile of these dating app users is often vulnerable in nature, and reasonably wealthy so all the targetting is already done, you just need to convince them to hand over the cash.

This is where the pig butchering comes in.

Put lipstick on the pig before you gut it

The scammers meet victims on the apps before moving the conversation on to WhatsApp where they won't be banned and have pretty much free reign since you cannot be reported, its up to the user to block them. After enough time is wasted cozying up to the victim, the idea of cryptocurrency is brought up.

Naturally, when you're using apps like this your dating intentions are highly superficial so money is often flaunted to give you a false sense of you speaking a successful person.

The fraudster will claim to be a successful crypto trader, offers to show the victim how to invest their money.

The scammer will give the victim instructions on how to buy KYC cryptocurrency on a legitimate site, like Coinbase, and then transfer it to a fake cryptocurrency exchange or their personal address.

Here's where to con gets pretty clever

The victim’s money appears on the exchange’s website, which mimics a real crypto trading platform, showing accurate real-time values of cryptocurrencies but your balance from this "bot" keeps moving up and up.

Victims instantly start seeing supposed profits and often times add more money as greed takes over. Once it comes time to cash out, the fraudster disappears leaving the victim with no way to recover the money and would have taken as much as they could from the victim.

A fool and their money are soon parted

Like all scams, greed and emotion are the primary points scammers hit on to try and get you to follow steps to hang yourself out to dry. It's sad but you did it voluntarily and there is a lesson to be learned. I have no sympathy for people who can't do due diligence, and the money you lost is your tuition for a few months attending the school of life.

Have your say

What do you good people of HIVE think?

So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, "I am a Jessie."

Let's connect

If you liked this post, sprinkle it with an upvote or esteem and if you don't already, consider following me @chekohler and subscribe to my fanbase

Safely Store Your Crypto	Deposit $100 & Earn $10	Earn Interest On Crypto

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta