The financial hit currently on the rise is what is known as “pig slaughter,” or “the slaughter of the pig” in Portuguese. In it, scammers look for victims through social networks, presenting themselves as partners or friends with whom the victim has never spoken to talk about investments.
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The scam is used by WhatsApp and other social networks with a first approach where the scammer tells that he knows the victim from somewhere and somehow he saved their contact on his phone. The message can be “Hello, I have you under my contact numbers, looks like we met somewhere” or it can even appear like the message was a mistake “Oh sorry, I made a mistake “. Cheating is also common on Tinder.
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According to Luis Orellana, a specialist at the PDI (Police of Investigations of Chile), in an interview with the BBC, it is a new type of scam that uses the same characteristics as romance scams used on social networks.
“The methodology is new, but it uses the same characteristics as the amorous punches,” says Orellana. “The difference in this crime is the time criminals spend ‘fattening’ the victim before ‘slaughtering’ them when they receive the investment. It mainly refers to investments with cryptocurrencies or virtual currencies.”
The expert explains that the scammers want to turn the conversations into something real and start talking about various routine topics. With this manipulation, victims trust what “appears to be the support you were looking for”.
With the victim’s trust, criminals don’t ask for the money but instead introduce the victim to an investment app or website that they are happy to put their money into.
According to Orellana, the scammers manipulate the victim into believing in the benefits and profits they will get from their investments.
“Criminals say they want to help people give their families a better life. Things like that make them skip it and invest their fortunes in the platforms.”
But the truth is that these websites or apps are fake and completely controlled by criminals. The expert reports that in Chile many people have reported that the problem with these platforms is that it is time to withdraw profits and they cannot.
Grace Yuen of Gaso, an international organization fighting such scams, told the BBC that these scams are often linked to dating sites.
“But not all scams are just romantic. We now see a lot of victims that the criminals met on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn — that is, the big ones, but they really use every social network,” says Yuen.
According to Yuen, around 80% of victims of this type of scam have university degrees and “comprise all professions: from nurses and lawyers to computer specialists and telecommunications engineers. All are highly educated people, usually 24 and even over 40 years old. And now we are also looking at older victims.”
how to protect yourself
The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has released some tips to protect yourself from the scam. Check it out below:
- Never send money, trade or invest on the advice of someone you only met online.
- Don’t discuss your current financial situation with people you don’t know or trust.
- Never give out your bank details, document numbers, copies of ID or passport documents and other personal information to any third party on the internet or websites that you do not know are legitimate;
- When an investment or online trading site offers seemingly impossible benefits, they are probably just that: impossible;
- Beware of people who claim to have unique investment opportunities and insist you must act quickly.
With information from BBC
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