‘Pig Butchering’ Online Scams Are Proliferating. Here’s Why They Work So Well.
It starts with an unsolicited text message. And then it’s all about gaining the victim’s trust.
5 min
Do you get unsolicited text messages from people you don’t know? Be forewarned: If you respond, you could be falling for a particularly dangerous online scam that has found victims around the world. Some unfortunate individuals have lost millions of dollars.
There is even a name for it. Pig butchering. Victims are fattened up, made to trust the scammer and think they are making tons of money, until they are mercilessly taken—sometimes for everything they have.
On June 6, at the WSJ Tech Live: Cybersecurity conference in New York City, two cybercrime experts sat down with Wall Street Journal reporter Robert McMillan to discuss how pig butchering works and what is being done about it. The participants were Troy Gochenour, an investigator with the Global Anti-Scam Organization, a nonprofit that helps victims and raises public awareness of scams, and Jamil Hassani, a supervisory special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An edited transcript of their conversation follows.
How the scam works
WSJ: Why “pig butchering”?
GOCHENOUR: It’s not our term. In Chinese, it is shā zū pán , or pig-killing plate. What makes this scam so effective is they want to build trust so that you might think they could be a potential love interest or a business partner. Once they built that trust, then they will start talking about how they’ve made a lot of money in cryptocurrencies and how the victim could, too.
WSJ: It’s a variation on the romance scam. Instead of asking for money to buy a plane ticket, they propose to make money together?
HASSANI: Absolutely. The rise in cryptocurrency has opened the door for these scammers to take your money instantaneously. There are no third parties doing the reconciliation. If you do a regular wire transfer and you contact the FBI within 72 hours, chances are we can get that money back for you. But with crypto, it’s almost immediate and it’s gone.
WSJ: Are you seeing more pig butchering because of the rise of crypto?
HASSANI: Absolutely. The rise since 2019 for victimization is almost 2,000%.
WSJ: Why does it work?
GOCHENOUR: The social-engineering aspect is very powerful. I have stories that are very sad: folks who have been warned that they’re getting scammed, and yet, because they’ve been socially engineered so much, they actually continue to invest.
They’re looking for everybody, but they prefer people with titles—doctor, dentist, IT professional, CEO. I follow them on the communications platform Telegram, so I have a lot of their training documents, manuals on how they build those relationships. This is an entire industry tied to largely Chinese organized crime.
The victim’s psychology
WSJ: Jamie, psychologically speaking, why does this work?
HASSANI: I remember arresting a hacker out of Tunisia. A 19-year-old kid that was able to bypass levels of security within the Department of Defense, took down a few banks and was wreaking havoc across the world. He explained to me: “Hackers are stupid. They go after the systems, when human beings have way more vulnerabilities. They have the keys to the treasure chest. And it’s so easy to turn off their mental firewall.”
Try to think of a time you were in a relationship where the threat of your spouse or significant other leaving caused you to do pretty much anything to keep them around. Every scam evokes an emotion. It could be love, fear, panic. Your ability to critically think is shut off.
WSJ: Sometimes when I’ve talked to scam victims, it’s like the more they have invested, the harder it is for them to believe they have been taken.
HASSANI: It’s the stigma. The victims can’t fathom that they could have been so stupid, quote unquote. So they hold on to this hope that it had to have been real, the love had to have been there, or the trust, because they’re texting every day, 30 to 100 times. The scammers use information they glean from your communications and social media to validate you in a way that no one else can.
WSJ: If you suspect or know somebody is a victim, is there something you can say that will snap them out of it?
GOCHENOUR: Unfortunately, people are people. We’ve had victims we’ve warned more than once, and they continued to give.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says there could be as many as a couple hundred thousand of these scammers operating throughout Southeast Asia.
HASSANI: A lot of these scammers are trafficked human beings. When a human being is subjected to that kind of circumstance, their will to succeed is intense, because their life, or their family’s life, depends on it. They are constantly fine-tuning strategies, and trying to stay one step ahead of whoever is closest on their tail. These scammers contribute something like half of their country’s GDP, so the local government’s not going to do much.
WSJ: The FBI knows who’s running these scams, largely?
HASSANI: Yes, absolutely.
WSJ: Can you get them?
HASSANI: There are no treaties between those specific countries and the U.S. We’ve taken steps. We work with multiple organizations, including the Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, and we’re applying pressure on these countries to start to take action.
The first approach
WSJ: There are different layers of operators; some do the texting, others do the talking and then there are the video calls.
GOCHENOUR: Sure. So if you get that wrong number, the text to your phone, you respond, saying wrong number. I’m not Paul. Jane. Whoever. They say, oh, so sorry. Uh, my assistant gave me your number. I hope I’m not bothering you.
Sometimes they even send you a picture. That sounds interesting. So you continue to talk. Oh, what’s your name? Where do you live? What do you do?
They’re looking for a weakness. Are you single? Oh, weakness might be romance. Oh, you’re in business. I could be your business partner. But they also want to know what kind of assets they can take from you.
On their Telegram pages, I’ve seen screenshots of their chats. They can chat in Chinese, and it shows up to you as your native language. And when you chat back it shows up to them in Chinese. At the top, it would say your first name, maybe your age, two homes, 401(k).
As you continue to chat, you’re actually being sent to multiple people chatting with you on this one account. You may not even recognize it. They are all in the compound. Everything they do is monitored. So if that person is there against their will, if they don’t chat with you to lure you in, they could get beaten.
What can be done?
WSJ: This scam involves legitimate organizations as well, right? Cryptocurrency companies, the messages come on legitimate apps. What can be done to mitigate this?
HASSANI: Until a collective strategy is put together, you need to be aware of the red flags. And the first one is unsolicited contact. We’ve all gotten that text message, “hi.” That message has a fundamentally different feeling to somebody who is elderly and widowed and lonely. When they see “hi,” that has a profound impact on them.
If you get an unsolicited contact, ask questions. If they want you to invest in cryptocurrency, do a little research on the site. Is this website legit? Some are legitimate and registered with, say, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network or the Securities and Exchange Commission.
WSJ: Some of the scam sites actually register.
HASSANI: True. Most of them aren’t registered with the SEC, but a lot are.
GOCHENOUR: In 2021, 2022, they were using apps like MetaTrader 5 or 4, a foreign-exchange trading app. It’s legitimate. You could go on this app and think you’re doing something legitimate, but you’re sending money to their scam broker website.
WSJ: Why can’t you stop these guys?
HASSANI: They’ll have one major domain with multiple subdomains, so to speak. So as soon as we take that website down, another one pops up. Our strategy is to go after the kingpin.
WSJ: Have you hit any kingpins yet?
HASSANI: We have. The indictments, a lot of them are still under seal. But tech-support scams are a big part of this. We took down three tech-support buildings near Kolkata less than a year ago.
WSJ: All connected to pig butchering?
HASSANI: Yes, and they do the same thing—traffic human beings to scam.
WSJ: Scammers use services like WhatsApp, and the money gets sent to them often through a legit crypto company. Could the tech companies be doing more here?
GOCHENOUR: The tech companies and the exchanges are doing more. And I know that because when I follow the scammers on their chats, they talk about, “Why can’t I get this money? The victim put it in the account, but I can’t get it. What’s going on?”
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
The 1860s Darlinghurst mansion Stoneleigh could become Sydney’s most expensive home ever sold under the hammer when it goes to auction. Clint Ballard is giving buyers a $28 million guide for the heritage-listed mansion on Darley Street, opposite Iona, the former home of Hollywood royalty Baz Luhrmann. Stoneleigh is being offered for sale for the …
Set on one of the city’s last absolute riverfront sites, The Riversdale by Mosaic combines irreplaceable waterfront ownership with one of Brisbane’s most significant residential opportunities.
The voices reshaping how Australians think about money — and why credibility matters more than reach.
6 min
The best financial advice many Australians are receiving right now is not coming from licensed advisers charging by the hour. It is coming through a phone screen, in the ten minutes between work and dinner, from creators who have built credibility the hard way: by being right, being transparent, and being specific in a space where vagueness has always been the easy default.
This is not a ranking by follower count. Follower count is a measure of distribution, not of quality. What follows is a ranking by substance — credentials, accuracy, community depth, and the quality of what an audience actually learns from following these accounts. The distinction matters, because the Australians acting on this content are making real financial decisions with real money.
1- Queenie Tan – Corporate Authorised Representative; Co-Founder & Director, Invest With Queenie & Billroo
There are finance influencers who talk about building wealth, and there are those who document it in real time with receipts. Queenie Tan belongs firmly in the second category. Starting from a $400-per-week income, Tan built her net worth past $1 million while publishing the actual numbers — income, savings rate, investment decisions — for an audience of more than 400,000 across platforms.
She is a Corporate Authorised Representative, co-founder of the personal finance app Billroo, and the author of a book that has become a practical reference for young Australians navigating ETFs, superannuation and property. What separates her from the crowded field of money educators is precision: she does not talk in principles when she can talk in percentages.
2- Alan Kohler – Editor-in-Chief, Eureka Report; Editor-in-Chief, InvestSMART Group; ABC News finance presenter, host of Inside Business.
If Queenie Tan represents the new wave of personal finance creators, Alan Kohler represents something the new wave will spend decades trying to build: institutional credibility that has survived multiple economic cycles. As Editor-in-Chief of the Eureka Report and InvestSMART Group, and a decades-long presence on ABC News, Kohler has spent more than thirty years making financial analysis accessible without dumbing it down.
His coverage of RBA decisions, market movements and economic policy is cited by podcasters, journalists and fund managers alike. He is not chasing virality. He does not need to.
3- Aleks Nikolic – Corporate lawyer; host, Big Swinging Stocks podcast
Most finance creators address the mechanics of money. Aleks Nikolic addresses the psychology — and that distinction explains why her following is as loyal as it is. Operating as Broke Girl Wealth across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Nikolic covers ETFs, crypto and investment strategy, but her real differentiator is a willingness to discuss the emotional architecture of financial decision-making.
Shame around debt. Fear around market volatility. The limiting beliefs that stop people acting on what they already know. In a space where confidence is routinely performed, her candour is a genuine competitive advantage.
4- Bryce Leske & Alec Renehan – Equity Mates Media
Equity Mates did not build a following. They built a media company. What began as a podcast by two friends learning to invest has grown into Australia’s most established investing media brand, covering ASX stocks, ETFs, global markets and fund manager interviews across podcast, social and YouTube.
The longevity is the credential. Equity Mates has operated through multiple market cycles, a global pandemic, and a generational shift in how Australians engage with investing — and its audience has grown through all of it. When the hosts speak, their listeners know they have been paying attention for years.
5- The Lazy CEO – CEO & Founder, Showpo; Shark Tank Australia investor
The metric that matters most on social media is not followers — it is engagement, because engagement signals trust. Jane Lu, known as The Lazy CEO, maintains an engagement rate of approximately 1.15 per cent on Instagram, which is exceptional for a finance account of his size. Her 242,000-plus followers are not passive consumers: they ask questions, share experiences and apply what they read.
Her content focuses on business finance and wealth building, and the active comment sections are the clearest possible evidence that her audience does not merely scroll past.
6- Tash Invests – Founder, Tash Lends; Forbes Australia 30 Under 30
Tash Invests built her following on a premise that sounds simple but is rarer in practice than it should be: she publishes the actual numbers. Not approximations or ranges or anonymised case studies — her salary, her savings rate, her portfolio value, her net worth, updated and on the record.
Having bought her first property at twenty-two and grown her documented net worth past $1 million, she has become the primary reference point for young Australians trying to understand what building wealth on a moderate income genuinely looks like. The specificity is the product.
7- David Scutt – APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group
The authority of most finance social media content rests on research and reading. David Scutt‘s authority rests on having done the job. A former Treasury Dealer at Arab Bank and the Commonwealth Bank, former ASX Business Supervisor, and former Global Markets Editor at Business Insider Australia and anchor at ausbiz TV, Scutt now brings that direct market experience to his role as APAC Market Analyst at StoneX Group, rather than relying on secondary commentary.
When he discusses foreign exchange movements or ASX dynamics, it is not because he has read about them. It is because he has traded them.
8- Meddy Demars – Investing & crypto content creator
The gap Meddy Demars fills is specific and underserviced: connecting global macroeconomic events to the practical reality of Australian investors. When the US Federal Reserve adjusts interest rates, when inflation data moves, when commodity prices shift — most Australian finance content either ignores the local implications or translates them poorly.
Demars, operating across TikTok and Instagram from Sydney, does the translation well: explaining what global conditions mean for Australian stocks, savings rates and investment portfolios in terms that are accessible without being condescending.
9- Simran Kaur – Founder, Friends That Invest
Friends That Invest is arguably the most successful community-building exercise in Australian personal finance, and Simran Kaur is the reason why. The New Zealand-based creator — whose audience is predominantly Australian — built a podcast, a book and a social media presence around a single insight: that the personal finance world was not speaking to young women, and that the consequences of that gap were significant.
The measurable cultural shift that followed — women engaging with investing concepts in communities that had not previously existed — is the kind of impact that most financial literacy programmes aim for and rarely achieve.
10- Effie Zahos – Money Editor at 9News
Effie Zahos is one of Australia’s most recognised financial commentators, appearing regularly across 9News, A Current Affair, Today and Today Extra as 9News Money Editor. Her role puts everyday money questions, from mortgage rates to cost-of-living pressures, in front of a national broadcast audience.
Before television, she spent years as editor of Money magazine, building the editorial foundation for her current commentary. She is also Director and Money Commentator at InvestSMART, an ambassador for Canstar, and a published author, with her financial advice available in print as well as on screen.
That combination, decades of editorial experience, an active broadcast presence, and a body of published work, is what makes her commentary carry weight beyond any single platform or post.
From bushland greens to valley reds, the country’s most awarded designers are proving that the best colour palette was never on a swatch card; it was outside the window all along.
From snow-dusted valleys to festival-filled autumns, Bhutan reveals itself as a rare destination where culture, nature and spirituality unfold year-round.
