Pig Butchering is not a good idea anymore if you don't want to lose your life

[theking]

...saving?  :

'I was in a trance': A tech executive was scammed out of $450K in a cruel romance grift called 'pig butchering' — here's how it works and what to watch out for

Shreya Datta had been swiping through dating apps for months before she met “Ancel Mali,” a purported wine trader from France, on Hinge.

After they chatted online for a couple of months, exchanging flirty emojis and selfies, he ended up conning her out of $450,000.

“I was in a trance,” Datta told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I felt like I had met my person.”

Datta, a 37-year-old director at a multinational tech company in Philadelphia, explained that Mali convinced her to give trading in crypto a go. He sent her a download link to what appeared to be the app SoFi — complete with two-factor authentication and customer service.

SoFi is a legitimate provider of loans and some banking services in the U.S. and Hong Kong, but is often imitated by scammers.

When Datta later tried to withdraw her money from the app, she got a message that she had to first pay a 10% personal tax.

She contacted her brother, who is a lawyer, and with the help of a private investigator, they determined she’d been a victim of a crypto investment scam known as “pig butchering.”

How ‘pig butchering’ works
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in April that it had seized an estimated $112 million linked to pig butchering scams.

“The victims in pig butchering schemes are referred to as 'pigs' by the scammers because the scammers will use elaborate storylines to 'fatten up' victims into believing they are in a romantic or otherwise close personal relationship,” stated an affidavit in support of the Los Angeles seizure warrant, shared by the DOJ.