Reported by Jason Henry

It took two months of near daily conversations, of first cultivating trust and then love, before he walked into her trap.

Two months of phone calls, text messages and video chats. Two months of sharing their life stories and their dreams about the future before he took the bait — an investment opportunity pitched by this woman he had never met.

“Interesting,” he wrote in a text message. “How much money?”

It started with a small $1,000 cryptocurrency investment, but by the time the Santa Monica-based software developer realized the truth, he’d turned over $740,000 with no hope of getting it back. He liquidated stocks, emptied his savings and drained his retirement.

If a friend hadn’t intervened, he would have lost his home, too, all in the hopes of covering the “taxes” needed to withdraw the $2 million he’d supposedly made from cryptocurrency trades his love interest had recommended.

In reality, he had already lost every cent.

“I used to have a cushion and safety net, and now I have nothing,” he said in an interview. “I’m struggling just to make sure I pay the bills.”

The Santa Monica resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the embarrassing nature of the crime, is one of hundreds — if not thousands — of Californians victimized by a long con referred to as “pig butchering,” in which networks of scammers spend weeks and months posing as prospective romantic partners to fatten their targets with love before financially cutting their throats.

Unlike the often joked about “Nigerian prince” emails, or the myriad quick-hit scams that cast thousands upon thousands of lines in the hopes of catching a nibble, pig butchering is sophisticated, targeted and, most importantly for its effectiveness, incredibly patient.

Trail of devastation

The devastation left behind by these fast-growing romance scams has destroyed families, erased plans for retirement and pushed some victims to suicide.

Erin West, a deputy district attorney from Santa Clara County and a member of California’s cybercrime taskforce, REACT, told Congress during a hearing in September that pig butchering scams take a heavy toll.

“An adult daughter in Michigan confided that her father had killed himself. She had no idea why until she started to look through his digital life and found that, immersed in a pig butchering scam, he lost the family fortune. He saw no alternative,” West said. “I talked to an adult daughter in California whose father had killed himself. She didn’t know why until she discovered that he was a victim of a $3 million loss in a pig butchering scam.

“These reports continue to come in at uncomfortably regular intervals, not remotely slowing down,” she testified.

The stories of tragedy are everywhere. According to CNN, an 82-year-old Maryland man took his life in March in the wake of one such scam initiated through Facebook.

Exploded during pandemic

Beginning in China in 2019, “sha zhu pan” expanded worldwide as loneliness soared during the pandemic.

In California, early pig butchering scammers, believed to operate out of Myanmar and Cambodia, specifically targeted Chinese speakers and immigrants in cities like Irvine, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now, just having a wealthy ZIP code could put someone in their crosshairs.

“The scammers have just realized how easy it is,” said Brett Chabot, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI’s financial crimes unit in Orange County.

In 2023, the FBI reported that Americans lost $4 billion to cryptocurrency investment scams, of which more than $1.1 billion was siphoned from California residents alone. Texans, the group with the second highest losses in the country, were taken for $411 million, by comparison.

Law enforcement experts and victim advocates say those numbers are likely severely underreported, as many who have been duped are too embarrassed to come forward because of the stigma surrounding scams. Some hold out hope for months before contacting law enforcement.

Read full report: https://www.ocregister.com/2024/10/13/how-pig-butchering-romance-scams-siphon-millions-from-californians-every-year/amp/