Workers create legitimate-looking social media accounts that they can use to target potential victims and follow scripts to interact with targets. Administrators of scam operations also oversee money laundering efforts once victims have made payments. Since billions have been made from fraud, those running these scams have quickly reinvested some of the ill-gotten gains to incorporate artificial intelligence and make the scams more efficient.
Mina Chiang, founder of the anti-trafficking company Humanity Research Consultancy, says she doesn’t like the name “pig butchery,” not only because of its dehumanizing impact but also because it “restricts people’s imagination about the nature of the scam.” factories.”
“These hundreds of complexes with hundreds of thousands of workers are not only engaged in romantic investment scams, but also carry out ‘homework scams’, ‘sextortion’, ‘sports betting scams’, ‘fake authority related scams’ and many more,” Chiang says, noting that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has called the behavior “organized fraud.”
“Focusing on a single type of scam would risk missing the bigger picture that scams are being organized and industrialized by transnational criminal groups,” adds Chiang, “and that scam tactics are constantly changing as long as criminals are able to extract money from his victims.”
Nick Court of Interpol says the organization recognizes that “pig slaughter” includes multiple types of crime. He notes that there may be several different names for each subcategory of activity, but almost all of them fall within the international legal definition of fraud. He also adds that although not everyone agrees that phrases like “romantic bait” are a perfect substitute for “pig butchery,” it is nevertheless necessary to move away from the original name.
In recent decades, the Court says, law enforcement agencies, investigators and those who work with various types of victims have launched similar efforts to evolve the language used to describe other crimes, such as domestic violence, sexual assault and online child sexual abuse. exploitation. In all of these cases, he says, the goal is to reduce stigma and try to create a safer space for people to come forward and report crimes.
“We know that in a variety of types of crimes, the use of language and the use of words are very important,” Court says.