Experts and Authorities Warn of Crypto Pig Butchering Scam

• Experts and Authorities raise concerns over a growing crypto scam called pig butchering.
• It’s called pig butchering because criminals entice their victims with promises of love and wealth.
• Lakewood police department and Coinbase say that the scammers use online dating sites.

Concerns have been raised by authorities in the United States, for crypto specialists, and the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase, over a spike in the frequency of romance-investment scams known as “pig butchering” or “Sha zu pan.” According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the moniker for the fraud comes from the method in which the swindlers lure their victims in with false promises of love and wealth before suddenly cutting them off and stealing all of their money.

Coinbase said:

Recently, a noteworthy increase in scams purporting to be foreign exchanges or crypto trading platforms that are spread by scammers who use dating apps to lure victims.

According to Coinbase’s explanation, the perpetrators of the fraud generally claim that they have made great financial advantages from a crypto investment, and they use this claim to entice their victims to participate in scams like this.

During the course of the last month, the Lakewood Police department has assisted a few victims who fell for the scam. The department’s public information officer John  Romero has also said that the most common way of scams is via social media and online dating services such as Tinder and Hinge.

Some victims are sometimes given a little amount of money that is said to be a return on their investment in an effort to convince them to invest an even bigger amount of money.

In an additional attempt to coerce money from the victim, when they want to withdraw funds from the site, they are informed that they have to make a tax payment or service charge before their funds can be released.