New research from Atlas VPN shows that 25,7% of pig butchering scams had their first point of contact on dating websites.

Pig butchering is a relatively recent social engineering scam in which fraudsters contact people via social media sites or emails and text messages, and cultivate trust through long-term dialogue. They create the illusion of a friendship or romantic relationship, also called the “feeding” phase.

At some point, the fraudsters suggest that the victim invests in cryptocurrencies on a suggested platform.

Little does the victim know that even though the website looks trustworthy, the platform itself isn’t connected to a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange or market.

Victims who visit these bogus investment dashboards see large returns and believe their investment is bringing huge returns quickly. Then, the fraudster advises investing even more while the going is good, hence luring out even a larger sum of money from the victim. In other words, what is referred to as “harvesting” the already “fed” victim.

Finally, when the victim attempts to cash out, they are hit with multiple procedures and fees. As suspicion builds, it is not long before the website is shut down and the previous friend or romantic interest is nowhere to be found.

The data on pig butchering scams is originally from the Pig Butchering Scam report by RealCall based on a survey of 996 RealCall users, interviews with scam victims, former scam sweatshop workers, advocates, rescue workers, as well as research in numerous channels.

Surprisingly, nearly 48% of the respondents report that they have gone through a pig butchering scam and experienced financial losses.

Another 49% of those surveyed said that they had encountered a pig butchering scam in the past, but were able to identify it and avoid it.

It is worth noting that the surveyed respondents already use the service offered by RealCall which is used to detect and block unknown spam calls and robocalls, suggesting that the population surveyed has already had a negative experience pertaining to being contacted by an anonymous actor with negative intentions, so these percentages should not be applied to the more general population.

On the other hand, knowing the most common points of contact is still useful in order to avoid getting taken advantage of.

As already mentioned, 25,7% of respondents say they were first messaged through dating websites, while 40,4% of victims note their initial contact with fraudsters was through anonymous calls and messages.

Another 11,2% of communication was started on social media, and 9,3% through job-hunting channels. These days, only 7,6% of contact is made through emails.

Recently, Forbes released an extensive article revealing how a pig butchering scam works in real life. Here, a 52-year-old man from San Francisco lost $1-million after being approached by scammers posing as an old friend.

The deception was carried out during a months-long WhatsApp chat that totalled more than 271 000 words.