Scammers swindle professionals with friendship to generate fake cryptocurrency investments
The text message on Jane Yan’s mobile phone came from a number she didn’t recognize. “Are we going to the salon tonight?” It looked like the kind of mistake that can happen any day.
In fact, it was part of a continuing scam that cost U.S. victims more than $429 million in losses last year, according to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s clearinghouse for consumer complaints about online crime.
Three months after beginning a conversation with the person who texted her, Ms. Yan had lost more than $1.6 million, the victim of a wave of messages that have flooded onto mobile devices this year via text message and social media, according to law-enforcement officials.
In Santa Clara County, Calif., complaints about these scams have skyrocketed over the past two years as people have become more accustomed to meeting and doing business virtually, said Jeff Rosen, the county’s district attorney.
The scam preys on basic decency—the impulse to help someone who sends a message by mistake—and loneliness, Mr. Rosen said. “There are a lot of lonely people out there, and while the vast, vast majority of people are not going to respond to that kind of text, a few will,” he said.
The average losses reported from these scams are $300,000, Mr. Rosen said.
The scammers are often based in Asia, where the con is known as “pig butchering”—a reference to the practice of first “fattening” the victim’s cryptocurrency account with fake gains before the scam ends, according to advocacy groups and law-enforcement officials.
The Global Anti-Scam Organization, a nonprofit that works to help victims and raise public awareness on scams, has counted more than 2,000 victims so far, and they tend to be successful professionals, said Brian Bruce, chief of operations with the group. “They’ve got Ph.D.s; they’re successful business owners; they’re senior managers,” he said. “One scammer said to me, ‘We don’t talk to Uber drivers or farmers.’”
Jane Yan’s text about the salon came on Jan. 20. Normally she would have ignored it, she said, but she didn’t. “You must have the wrong person,” she responded.
The person sending the text said he was “Eric,” a Chinese businessman who was stuck in Seattle because of Covid. He was very polite and apologized for the wrong number. Then he started asking her questions. “Are you working here? Are you going to school here?” he asked. They began to chat, eventually by voice, but not about serious or financial topics. Eric liked to discuss family, food and popular culture, Ms. Yan remembered. He offered advice on life.
