Workers set up legitimate-looking social media accounts that they can use to target potential victims, and they follow scripts to interact with targets. Fraud operations managers also monitor attempts by victims to launder money after payments have been made. With billions raked in from fraud, the operators of these scams quickly reinvest some of the ill-gotten gains. Adding artificial intelligence and making scams more efficient.
Mina Chiang, founder of the anti-trafficking firm Humanity Research Consultancy, says she’s not a fan of the name “pig butcher,” not only because of its dehumanizing implications, but also because it “limits people’s imagination about the nature of the scam.” Factories.
“Those hundreds of compounds with hundreds of thousands of employees don’t just work on romance-investment scams, they also deal with ‘task scams,’ ‘extortion scams,’ ‘gambling scams,’ ‘fake-authority-related scams,’ and more.” All,” Chiang says, referring to the behavior the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has labeled “organized fraud.”
“Focusing on just one type of scam risks missing the bigger picture that scams are being organized and industrialized by transnational criminal groups,” Chiang adds, “and that these scam tactics are constantly evolving. continue to change as long as the criminals are able to extract money from their victims.”
Interpol’s Nick Cort says the organization recognizes that the umbrella of “pig killing” encompasses a variety of crimes. He notes that there may be several different names for each subcategory of activity, but almost all of them fall under the international legal definition of fraud. He also says that while not everyone agrees that phrases like “romance baiting” are a perfect substitute for “pig butchering,” it’s still important to get away from the original name.
Over the past few decades, the court says, law enforcement agencies, researchers and those working with different types of victims have changed the language used to describe other crimes such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and online child sex. have launched similar initiatives to develop exploitation In all of these cases, he says, the goal is to reduce stigma and try to create a safe place for people to come forward and report crimes.
“We know that across a range of crime types, the use of language, the use of words, matters a lot,” Court says.
