Pig butchering scams: how strangers online steal life savings
Pig butchering meaning: why scammers spend months being your friend first
A scammer who wants your money could ask for it on day one. In the scam called pig butchering, the stranger waits for weeks, sometimes months, and asks for nothing at all. What is all that waiting for?
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1
Two months later, Nalia knows Rono's life. She asks how his bad knee is. She remembers the names of his old students. Rono waits for her messages more than for anything else in his day.
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2
Early on, she asked to move their talk from text messages to a chat app. Scammers often do this early. To Rono, it just felt more private, as between friends.
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3
She also asked him to keep their friendship to himself for now. Other people might not understand, she said. So Rono hears only one voice about Nalia: her own.
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4
In all that time, she has never asked for one cent. To Rono, that is the proof. A scammer would ask for money, he thinks.
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5
But the waiting is the plan. Each kind message builds trust, and trust is what the scammers will spend later. They even have a cruel name for these months: fattening the pig.
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6
To the scammers, the victim is a pig: fattened first, then butchered. In Chinese, they call the scam "sha zhu pan", roughly pig butchering. Interpol asks people to say "romance baiting" instead, because the old name shames the victims.
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7
One evening, Nalia sends Rono a picture of her phone screen. It shows a chart that climbs, and it says she made $4,300 today. Her aunt taught her, she says.
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Quick check
A stranger you met online has written to you every day for three months. They have never asked for anything. Is that a sign that they are safe?
Show the answer
No. In this scam, the long wait is the plan. The scammers spend weeks or months building trust, so that later you send money on your own.