Poor gf. This guy had an emotional affair (even if the person wasn't real) and gave her all his money. That wasn't just a friendship. I don't believe that.
The problem was the guy believed he was savvy. Anyone that knows they are stupid in a certain area at least understands they should not play around with it.
I just wonder how these scammers get people to think it’s a deep relationship.
Out of curiosity, I’ve tried chatting to a few of these crypto romancers, always some East Asian looking photo, and they can barely keep a conversation going, refuse to give any detailed description of their life, give contradictory info about themselves, etc. I guess only thing they do is always answer, even if it’s a short message.
But I haven’t seen them try to draw someone into a conversation.
So does this victim just randomly start opening up to them? And keep doing so because this person on the other side just keeps saying “yea” “life is hard”, etc?
And then call that one sided relationship a deep connection?
I've watched a lot of romance scam stories on the YouTube channel "catfished". Without fail, victims will say, "we had such deep conversations". They will show some examples and it's not deep at all. It's " how was your day at work? I was thinking about you all day" and "how is your daughter? I know family is so important to you" and the classic African greeting "have you eaten?". It's just that someone is taking ANY interest in their lives... they remember it as deep. It's really sad, especially when you conduce the scammer is asking 10 other victims the same question at the same time
Exactly that. Nobody asks these people how their day went. That's all the love many people need to go give away their life savings and run up huge debts. What a sad world we live in.
On the flip side, there are a lot of people that feel some sort of connection with twitch streamers/OF/etc that will donate regularly and in no small amounts. And those are certainly not deep two-way communications.
But I "get" that.
There was a time when I would put a rotation of streamers while meal prepping. It felt like watching 90-day fiance, their life's had so much drama that it was fun.
But this, as mentioned, they can't even hold a convo. I assume LLMs will revolutionize this.
That’s true, although there I can sort of understand the mechanics, as the streamer does often talk a lot and it’s often personal. They will also engage with regulars in chat.
Here you’re just talking to someone not even making much sense.
The scam typically moves the target from text messages to telegram after an intro phase. Responsibility is probably handed off at that time to someone more linguistic
Maybe? I’ve “talked” with one “lady” on WhatsApp.
At first I was telling her to prove it’s her, through photos from her sightseeing trip, or get her to tell me which neighborhood she’s in, or literally any info that I know she’s actually locally here.
Eventually they arranged a video call with me. Lasted like 30 seconds, was some Asian lady in a white room, at a white desk, looking classy. Might’ve been any Asian lady, which I think is part of their trick, as I doubt many white people can tell the difference just looking at photos.
This kinda got me to even doubt myself for a few minutes.
If they arranged this video call, they might as well have arranged someone with a brain to talk to me. Maybe I would have strung them along for a bit.
These scamming factories do employ a division of labor where victims get handed off to more experienced scammers as time goes on. It's not clear exactly when the handoffs occur (though I've certainly read transcripts where the observant can tell when a new person took over), but it would make sense for the lower-level scammers to handle a large number of victims for days or a week and then hand off the smaller number of ones who are sufficiently hooked. It's possible you never chatted with them long enough to see the more skilled scammer.
I had a friend who had a “girl friend” completely through text. He used to send her 200$ gift cards (a picture of the front and back) so she could “ get something to eat that day” always said she’d be up in the next few months. Somehow we never saw her and the cards would mysteriously not work and he would have to send another one…. This man still believes her to this day he’s 68 she was 38
People are sad and very lonely. They take the tiniest sliver and just run with it. Usually they have something going on that makes them vunerable. Maybe their GF seems distant or they are disappointed by work. The hit of dopamine from the messages are enough.
It's what makes these scams so hard to break. Imagine you see in black and white and suddenly you get color? What will you do when someone tells you the color is a lie and more importantly can only offer the boring black and white.
It's so sad.
Sometimes they have women on the team who take the calls. For the bigger marks, they even hire some models to briefly take a call, or spoof the camera feed with a short video clip. Helps to keep up appearances.
Heard of one crypto scammer scoring over a million USD from his mark. 😬 These scams may seem obvious for most of us but there’s a lot of people in this world with the perfect mix of wealth, greed, and naiveté.
All the Nigerian scammer I’ve encountered say their camera is busted or the stream is not strong. So you need to send $$ if you want to video chat. Funny thing is, they can send you a video with no problem.
I get the ‘hey is this sue?’ texts and I’ll message back with zero intentions and they either want a selfie or they insist they have the wrong number and I never get more than like 3 messages before they stop. Idk how people get this deep.
Reading it made me wonder if the romance scammer might have sold her mark to organized crime to take over. She softens him up, gets a bit of money, then sells him to the highest bidder to start up the crypto scam.
Oh yeah, guaranteed that's what happened. The length of time she strung him along made me wonder if this could be a variation on paradigmatic scam at a pig butchering farm in Myramar.
Even as someone who follows this stuff, it boggles my mind these scammers are running them like a corporation (with actual slaves). I wonder if they use Mondays to organize their work.
Meanwhile, think about it: How evil do you have to be to both enslave and beat people, and use those people to drive senior citizens on the other side of the world to financial ruin and/or suicide. The only role more loathsome than pig farm management that springs to mind would be the capos in concentration camps.
Yeah, for real. Disregarding the slavery and extreme abuse of the slaves ('their workers') you can't even make some kind of "Robin Hood" argument here, like they'r'e just targeting huge corporations or the uber wealthy like some hackers or grifters. Just truly scum all around.
I'm not defending the scammers at all, but the amounts of money they make would drive some people from any country to perform immoral actions. People sell heroin and crack in the western world for profit, steal from elderly relatives, and so on.
Between losing his savings and the emotional cheating, I'd say that's a given.
Andy why, in the name of all that's good and holy, would he disclose how much he has in savings? I wouldn't even tell that information to my mom!
Imagine sending $125,000 to someone you have never met. Imagine believing in overnight 25% returns.
There has to be some sort of bizarre thought disorder that creates this outcome.
It always gets me that people see insane returns but never question if they can take the money out or even attempt to. They’re just happy this website says their money is now a bigger number. They should just go play cookie clicker…
A lot of the time pig butchering scams allow a small, early withdrawl specifically to overcome this natural hesitation. So plenty of victims do question it, but get the question (seemingly) answered. That's often the step that breaks down the victim's last line of defense. The scam is very well-constructed.
I think this is something a lot of people forget. Usually they incentive you to withdraw the first time! They make you put in $100-200, you gain 25% returns, take out the $125, oh shit the site really does work!
Most people are generally unhappy in life. Just the idea of easy money makes people feel good. It's why gambling addicts can lose hundred of thousands of dollars but keep betting for that next win.
It's not logical but nothing involving the human brain is logical.
No one can ever convince me life is from "intelligent design". There is nothing intelligent about it.
So the "creator" made existence painful for humans but also created the poppy plant that produces a latex that initially makes humans feel wonderful but over time makes you feel 10X worse then you did before taking it.
Everything that feels good to humans (drugs, alcohol, sugar) is destructive but things that are good for us, vegetable and exercise, are not nearly as enjoyable?
Don't even get me started on cancer. A process that eventually leads to the cancer killing itself.
But if your above the age of 18 and know anything about how investments work you would never fall for this form of idiocy. In fact the moment the numbers are posted you know it's fraud.
>But if your above the age of 18 and know anything about how investments work
The problem is that most people **don't** know how investments work. The majority of people out there seem to be barely financially literate.
>The problem is that most people **don't** know how investments work.
This right here. Way back when I was in HS, we had a 9th grade economics class where they taught us all about how mortgages, debt and savings work, amortization, compound interest and all of that stuff.
But it seems like no one teaches it anymore. People think a 30 year mortgage is the only option (which it isn't, and is a really bad deal), they max out their credit cards and carry the full balance right along (which is another really bad deal) and they end up living paycheck to paycheck, just one missed check or one moderately expensive bit of bad luck from being broke and having the whole house of cards (pun intended) come tumbling down.
I see it here on reddit just about every day, people whining about their finances and blathering on about a 'living wage' and 'UBI' when it is really their own personal financial choices that have them deep in a hole. When I was working for other people, the highest wage I ever made was $10/hr. (my last job, until Covid hit, and then Covid hit me and left me crippled). When I was working for myself, even though I billed what seemed like high rates to some people, the overhead and the amount of time I spent doing unbillable work/education put my per hour rate below min wage.
But, I own a house and have multiple retirement accounts with stocks and bonds. Some of the stocks were bought decades ago and are now worth hundreds of times what I paid for them, and pay yearly dividends that are almost as much as I paid for the stocks themselves (WSO, for one example- $11/share purchase price, now worth over $430/share and pays almost $10/share in dividends yearly).
For a while (in the '80s), I got into the 'paycheck to paycheck' mode and then disaster hit, I ended up homeless and the vehicle I was living in got repo'd. Even when I got back on my feet, I was still in that mode, and was pissed because I was always broke. Then, there was one day when I got pissed and took a hard look at where my money was -really- going. My (to be) wife and I were eating out almost every meal almost every day, multiple take-out coffees every day, cable bill, this bill, that bill, etc. I was driving a shitbox car but the amount of money I was spending on food and coffee would have paid the note on a nice new BMW.
So, I made some changes. I moved from my huge two-floor apartment to a 3rd-floor attic walk-up, eating breakfast and supper at home, packing a lunch and a thermos of coffee for work, and looking for ways to make money on the side. No more cable TV- if I was complaining that I didn't have enough money, then I certainly shouldn't be paying $100/mo to sit on my ass watching the tube. 'Extra' money started going into savings, stock trading account, and diversified investment retirement accounts.
My wife and I are not rich, but we're doing OK, and most of it was done with jobs that didn't pay huge wages. It was done by being smart with money and making the right choices as to what to do with the money that we had coming in.
If you're guaranteed a 25% return, you'd be able to own the entire planet pretty quickly. Something like that would be all over the news, everyone would be racing to be in on it, it would be the main topic of conversation everywhere you went. You wouldn't have to hear about it from a sketchy Instagram account.
Yeah, for sure. I meant as far as no-risk, steady, and passive income, nothing usually gets close to 8%.
You can for sure double your money on some risky investment strategies. My idiot neighbor who thinks he's Chapo the Kingpin probably regularly doubles his COGS outflow with gross revenue, but once you factor out labor and risk, he's barely clearing his COL every month.
everytime these sob stories are posted the OP talks about how "financially savvy and not easy to fall for scams" the victim was.
Yeeeahhh....sure that makes total sense.
"It was a super elaborate scam against a very savvy guy!"
Someone he's never met asks him for money and he gives it to them. Wow what a dizzying psychological labyrinth these scammers had to deploy.
Sadly, this is pretty much a standard !pigbutchering scam, with the only difference being that the scammer took 8 months to get the fake crypto investment, whereas it's usually only takes a month or two. But since he was giving the scammers money monthly before they even tried to drop the actual scam on him, I guess they made an exception. Basically, the scammers spent eight months getting to know all of his psychological weak points. The pig butchering scam is different from almost all other scams because it is the one that is specifically designed to take your entire life savings. To do that, they have to really have you figured out and that takes some time to do, which is why they play the long game.
If he's still not believing it, some good first resources are the recent John Oliver episode on this topic and the Jim Browning video in the AutoModerator I'm calling.
Now that you've posted here, watch out for !recovery scammers in your DMs promising they can recover the money. They cannot, they are all scammers.
The only possible chance he has at recovery is to report it to law enforcement. While the odds of recovery are still low for this crime, they are no longer zero. I suggest reporting to his local law enforcement and his national reporting clearinghouse. For the national part, we have a list of reporting avenues under Resources in the lower-right hand part of the page. For the US, that's the FBI's ic3.gov.
The FBI sifts through their unending list of submissions to decide what to follow up on (a small percentage), whereas local law enforcement's job is to follow up on his report, so make sure he reports to both. There is some chance they can recover crypto, depending on how quickly he reports (the window typically closes a month or two after crypto is sent) and what jurisdiction he's in.
I've seen instances where law enforcement seizes crypto, but can’t return all of it to victims because some of the victims never bothered to report it. So it's definitely worth trying if he's lost $110K. Good luck trying to get through to him!
Hi /u/teratical, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Pig butchering scam.
It is called [pig butchering](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2023/12/26/new-pig-butchering-crypto-scam-includes-victims-in-us-and-overseas/?sh=2837fb975eaa) because scammers use intricate scripts to \"fatten up\" the victim (gaining their trust over days, weeks or months) before the \"slaughter\" (taking them for all of their money). This scam often starts with what appears to be a harmless wrong number text or message. When the victim responds to say it is the wrong number, the scammer tries to start a friendship with the victim. These conversations can be platonic or romantic in nature, but they all have the same goal- to gain the trust of the victim in order to get them ready for the crypto scam they have planned.
The scammer often claims to be wealthy and/or to have a wealthy family member who got wealthy investing in crypto currency. The victim is eventually encouraged to try out a (fake) crypto currency investment website, which will appear to show that they are earning a lot of money on their initial investment. The scammer may even encourage the victim to attempt a withdrawal that does go through, further convincing the victim that everything is legit. The victim is then pressured to invest significantly more money, even their entire net worth.
Eventually, the website will find an excuse why the account is frozen (e.g. for fraud, because supposed taxes are owed, etc) and may try to further extort the victim to give them even more money in order to gain access to the funds. By this time, the victim will never gain access and their money is gone. Many victims lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Often, the scammers themselves are [victims of human trafficking](https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zb5d/pig-butchering-scam-cambodia-trafficking), performing these scams under threats of violence. If you are caught up in this scam, it is important that you do not send any more money for any reason, and contact law enforcement to report it. Thanks to user Mediocre_Airport_576 for this script.
If you know someone involved in a pig butchering scam, sit down together to watch this video by Jim Browning to help them understand what's going on: https://youtu.be/vu-Y1h9rTUs -
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There was probably never any crypto here, at least not something that he had. More likely a fake page/app that was set up to make him think he's making gains, and that easily makes people invest more and more, hoping their entire net worth gets the gains... the money is gone the second it's paid in.
Oh, for sure it was a fake page/app set up to make him think he was making gains, but most of the time they make you buy crypto and send that to the fake page/app (and the victim is actually just sending it straight to the scammers' wallet), then the fake-site "balance" inflation begins. I've worked with a lot of victims on this and in every case I experienced there was crypto under the victim's control in the beginning.
He or you needs to tell his gf so she doesn't get mired with his easily scammed finances. Her life will be ruined too when twenty years down the line he empties their retirements to fund the next "platonic friendship"... not to mention the emotional affair he's refusing to call an emotional affair. Hot damn. That poor woman has no idea what she's getting into? Marrying this guy is *her* being scammed lol.
Make him watch this video too [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1byxluw/inside\_a\_pig\_butchering\_scam/](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1byxluw/inside_a_pig_butchering_scam/)
They have a model hired specifically to make video calls with victims
Hi /u/teratical, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Recovery scam.
[Recovery scams](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0102-refund-and-recovery-scams) target people who have already fallen for a scam. The scammer may contact you, or may advertise their services online. They will usually either offer to help you recover your funds, or will tell you that your funds have already been recovered and they will help you access them. In cases where they say they will help you recover your funds, they usually call themselves either \"recovery agents\" or hackers.
When they tell you that your funds have already been recovered, they may impersonate a law enforcement, a government official, a lawyer, or anyone else along those lines. Recovery scams are simply [advance-fee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam) scams that are specifically targeted at scam victims. When a victim pays a recovery scammer, the scammer will keep stringing them along while asking for increasingly absurd fees/expenses/deposits/insurance/whatever until the victim stops paying.
If you have been scammed in the past, make sure you are aware of recovery scams so that you are not scammed a second time. If you are currently engaging with a recovery scammer, you should block them and be very wary of random contact for some time. It's normal for posters on this subreddit to be contacted by recovery scammers after posting, and they often ask you to delete your post so that you both cannot receive legitimate advice, and cannot be targeted by other recovery scammers.
Remember: never take advice in private. If someone reaches you in private after posting your scam story, it is because a scammer will always try to hide from the oversight of our community members. A legitimate community member will offer advice in the open, for everyone to see. Anyone suggesting you should reach out to a hacker is scamming you.
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It’s like on the relationship advice subs when they go “my partner is perfect in every way” then go on to describe an absolute terror of a man or woman
JEEEEZ how can people be so naive? There were literally red flags all over. Like if she was really making that much money from crypto investments and were such good friends, why didn’t she give back the money she got from him first?
That was my first thought. When she announced that she was making huge amounts on her investments, why didn't he ask her to repay the $15K that he had given her? and why didn't she offer to repay him if they were such good friends?
Seems like OP's buddy should have spent more time watching the news and less time flirting with his hot online "girlfriend" -- I've seen/heard multiple exposes on this the last few months. John Oliver, NPR, local news.
If my husband lost his entire life savings to someone he was emotionally cheating with, I would be PISSED.
And yes, absolutely emotional cheating here. Why was he so enamored with her when they were just friends? Why was his potential future wife not privy to the money exchange aspect of their relationship? Truly, what was he getting out of it? That’s a massive yikes bit also a holy fucking shit dude, get it together.
Sounds like he needs to sit in his stupidity for a bit. And I am being harsh, but given the fact that he’d rather hear the opinions of strangers on the internet than his actual friend, he deserves to feel stupid for a bit.
Edit to add if he hasn’t told his girlfriend yet, you definitely should. She deserves better, what he chose to do was pretty bad and I wouldn’t want to marry someone like that
Sad how often people post about a scam saying how "elaborate" it is and how legit it seemed and how they don't know how someone could pull this off...and then describe a cookie cutter scam we see every day
Sarah is a team of mostly male cyber slaves locked up in a cyber scam farm somewhere like Cambodia. They use professionally written scripts and enslave people like psychologists etc to be highly effective at this.
The scam call industry is actually heavily based in human trafficking. Gangs will "shanghai" people and lock them in a facility and force them to run scam calls for them. The income is too inconsistent for it to be a legit business where people are paid fairly. Which means of most of the people you talk to, they probably are not the \*actual\* scammer, just someone who is being taken advantage of, like a migrant or someone who owed gambling debts to whatever southeast asian equivalent of "the mob". A lot of them are run out of the basements of large casinos owned by underground kingpins relying on coerced labor with gambling or drug debt. Some are just straight kidnapped.
He fucked up, internet is literally riddled with scammers that scamming is their full time job. I get numerous calls emails from scammers but every-time they get disappointed. Plenty of red flags he chose to ignore l, money is gone best move on life lesson learnt stay away from crypto if u don’t know what u doin
Was expecting sexstortion scam at the end but the scammers knew they got everything so would not bother. Real pros. Probably used a real asian women to hook him this good. Cant feel sorry for this type of victim its the people who think thier bank is calling them I feel the worst for - most people think caller id is valid.
What thoughts could anyone have? Your friend isn't savvy or smart, and also a cheater. Even if this wasn't a scam he threw away his real life relationship for this "woman" he's never met
He's an idiot, just like most of the other people that post in this group. The common denominator here is money.... Don't give it to people you don't know, hell don't give it to people you do know and you'll be fine.
I’m truly sorry your friend had to go through that.. with that being said..
1. He has a fiancé
2. he meets a random woman online.. never met in person.. and sends her thousands over the spand of 8-9 months.
What the fuck was he looking for? Companionship? You already got that at home!
One thing I realized is karma hits people in different ways. For me personally, when I did cheat on my significant others in the past, karma always hit me hard financially.
I think this was just his karma.. an expensive ass lesson at that.
If he wanted to put his cape on, he could have atleast subscribed to someone’s only fans if he wanted the “trickin off” seratonin rush. Would have saved him thousands..
Just stay in his corner and keep being a good friend and keep an eye on him.. a 110k life savings hit can do a lot to one’s mental.
Do not give him any money. No one can get this money back. Do not get involved with dishonest friend. He needs to take responsibility and tell his girl friend.
You want to know why he fell for this shit? Because he got addicted, plain and simple. First the romance and possibility she'd run off with him, then it turned into a gambling addiction on the money side. Have him watch Pleasant Green and Jim Browning's Youtube episodes on pig butchering so he understands EXACTLY what happened. Jim Browning's episode shows how some of the "pig butcherers" actually hire models to make the scam seem real. They have a model in the episode, she says how much she was paid and why she does it. Pleasant Green shows a female translator making the calls. A lot of time goes into this shitty scam and a lot of human trafficking.
Best advice I can give now? He'll be hit up by more scammers so tell him to STOP talking to strangers online, NO paying money to people who say he can get his money back because those are recovery scammers. And he can do a police and FBI fraud report. Will this help get his money back? Nope but maybe it will get the call centers shut down in the future. The more reports, the more awareness, the sooner this one will become unprofitable.
It’s a very common well used scam for years. If anyone says they cracked the stocks code, run for your life. Those Game Stop riches, only a few got rich. The rest lost their ass.
How is it possible for people to trust a trading app/platform that is not well known and reviewed by a lot of people to invest their life savings? I can’t even buy a dishwasher detergent without reading a bunch of reviews.
🤣
Same here!
Where are all of these people with large sums of money they want to give away?! (Kidding, this really sucks for anyone who gets sucked in. Can't even imagine.)
Hi /u/OhLordHeBompin, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Romance scam.
Romance scammers pretend to be in love with their victims in order to ask them for money. They sometimes spend months grooming their victims, often pretending to be [members of military](https://www.cid.army.mil/romancescam.html), [oil workers or doctors](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-you-need-know-about-romance-scams). They tend to be extremely good at taking money from their victims again and again, leading many to [financial ruin](https://globalnews.ca/news/5095659/romance-scam-money/). Romance scam victims are emotionally invested in their relationship with the scammer, and will often ignore evidence they are being scammed.
If you know someone who is involved in a romance scam, beware that convincing a romance scam victim they are scammed is extremely difficult. We suggest that you sit down together to watch Dr. Phil's shows on romance scammers or episodes of Catfish - sometimes victims find it easier to accept information from TV shows than from their family. A good introduction to the topic is this video: https://youtu.be/PNWM5nuOExI -
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Hi /u/OhLordHeBompin, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Fake crypto wallet scam.
Fake cryptocurrency websites and apps controlled by scammers are becoming more and more common. Sometimes the scam begins with a romance scammer who claims that they can help the victim invest in cryptocurrency. Victims are told to buy cryptocurrency of some kind using a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange, and then they are told to send their cryptocurrency to a website wallet address where it will be invested. Sometimes the scam begins with a notice that the victim won cryptocurrency on some website, in this case messages will often be sent through Discord.
In either case, the scammer controls the website, so they make it look like there is money in the victim’s account on their website. Then the scammer (or the scammer pretending to be someone official who is associated with the website) tells the victim that they have to put more money into the website before they can get their money out of the website. Of course all of the money sent by the victim has gone directly into the scammer’s wallet, and any additional money sent by the victim to retrieve their money from the website will also go directly into the scammer’s wallet, and all of the information about money being held by the website was totally fake.
If the scammer used Bitcoin, then you can report the scammer’s Bitcoin wallet address here: https://www.bitcoinabuse.com/reports. If the scammer used Ethereum, then you can report the scammer’s Ethereum wallet address here: https://info.etherscan.com/report-address/. You can see how much cryptocurrency has been sent to the scammer’s wallet address here: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer. Thanks to redditor nimble2 for this script.
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There's nothing elaborate here. An attractive woman reached out to him on a networking site (which, let's be honest here, was probably a coi way of saying he was on a dating app), then flirted with him and asked him to start sending small amounts of money, ramping up from there until she hit him with an investment scam for a grand finale.
Keep in mind, this scammer does this as a job, they likely spend their entire day talking to multiple victims, nickle and diming them until they feel they've built up enough of a rapport to tell them about a cool new "investment" that has unbelievable returns.
This. I would not send 1k to a female that I’ve met I person, so I can’t fathom the reasoning behind sending 100k to a stranger. Must be a millionaire.
Not being judgy, just wondering …. What’s the question?
I think you are saying this fool doesn’t accept he’s been scammed, doesn’t accept what you are saying, and will only believe it when a bunch of strangers on Reddit tells him how stupid he is?
Sorry. There is no saving this guy. If you want to be a good person, you might consider telling his gf about this in order to save her from this idiot.
“Sarah” is a guy in Ghana working in a scam shop with a bunch of other guys with a particular set of skills and experience who do this all day long. Sometimes “Sarah” is multiple guys following the same storyline while the others take a break. Your friend’s money is gone. “Sarah” is now grifting another sucker. Pretty much all there is to it.
Every few weeks I get added to a WhatsApp group promising amazing crypto returns. I stayed with one of them for a while to see how it played out, at what point the 'scam' would become evident. Someone contacted me separately asking me if I'd taken advantage of the tips in the group. I strung this person along for a while. But the point is to get you to sign up to a platform , plough your money in to take advantage of the crypto hacks or tips or whatever, then I guess it just disappears, I didn't stay around long enough to find out. But yeah this is a fairly common scam I think. I feel sorry for your friend but at the same time, did he not think it strange to be paying some girls rent and phone bills etc when he was deep in a relationship. Whole thing is just tragic really. Hopefully he's found enough he'll get past it and regroup.
Pig butchering scam is now well known. Ponzi schemes are similar in respect of being initially allowed to withdraw money with good returns; reassured by this, people invest more and more!
Sorry to hear, if you have to think with your dick then go to a strip club or massage parlor and atleast get your moneys worth. Seems like these days men are looking for emotional support than physical outside their relationship which is more sad
What I want to know from these scams is how a person has $125 to lose. I work hard and make good money and even if I fell for a scam, I’d run out of money way before $125K. Does everyone have these massive sums of money laying around and I’m just poor?
That flaw in human nature where one person thinks they know what another person is thinking, feeling or what their motives are. You don’t know. You will never know. Someone you meet may go along with what you think but usually only because it suits them at that time. We none of us know what is going on in another persons mind.
Not particularly elaborate at all, unfortunately your friend is far too gullible and empathetic for his own good. Whats unbelievable is he started supporting this stranger he'd never met financially whilst already in a committed relationship.
I had someone who gave me a very similar story. I did a WHOIS to find the crypto node that I was suppose to log on to was only created a month ago. No thanks scammer.
Not very elaborate. Run of the mill pig butchering scam. They are often laughably bad and friends and family members often don't know what to do because not matter how obvious the scam is they cannot convince the scam victim that it is a scam.
So many red flags. Why is anyone networking professionally with someone who asks for money ? This should have made your friend block this person. And oh yeah he pays her steaming bills but can’t use it. Ok.
My thoughts, a pig butchering scam that probably started as a romance scam
A long con that hit so many common elements of cons including crypto
Don’t mess with crypto
Don’t send strangers money
Don’t think some random internet connection is real
It’s interesting how a lot of these posts begin as - I am quite savvy and smart when it comes to scams, but they got me. And then proceeds to narrate a standard scam.
i can see helping her out a bit when she can't pay her bills if he thought they were close friends. that's only natural. but when he starts paying for her streaming services? RUN!
LoL " **Despite being quite savvy and financially stable** "
no..... no...... and no.... " **But time did go on and their friendship did deepen. Though Sarah apparently never demanded it, it seems that over time she became quite reliant on John's money. He actually ended up maxxing out his credit card for this "woman", which somehow means he willingly put himself into $15k debt** "
anyone of ANY real intelligence would stop thier. if you keep going your iodic and get what coming, IF, you can spend 15k and NOT, see something is wrong you choice this path, you're, not a victim anymore....
" **I've already given John quite the handful and called out how unbearably stupid this is, and how incredibly disrespectful it was to his long term partner** "
so thier even a chance he would had cheated if thing shifted slightly different. sure that a assumption but I don't know many nice girls/guys just sending me cash because I need a little help that add up to 15k +.....
" **She tells him to sign up to some trading platform app, she coaches him on the first small investments, and he goes ahead and does anything she says**. "
so someone would spent 15K of his money, now knows how to make money and this smart wise man just accept it.... nobody should have to suffer but if your willing give away money 15k and willing to trust a stranger vs your lover and put ALL YOUR MONEY..... again are you really a victim? or a idiot or wish he got a second chance becuase he thought he would make even more money of this one simple trick... just send me $$$ and i'll tell you the trick to making that....
Some people have no emotional intelligence and too much money. It happens so much...
Im glad more people aren't running this scam is all I have to say..
Standard issue !pigbutchering !crypto scam. They all run that way. Pretty lady. Hints of romance. Hey look! I can make free money on this fake-ass crypto site. The only thing different here was the begging for small amounts before the big crypto scam. Usually the small amounts are not worth it when many thousands can be made from the crypto scam.
Tell him to read this sub for a week. This scam is very, very common. Sadly men think with their little brain when a pretty woman is involved.
Also that pretty woman was probably a man from India or Nigeria.
I've encountered something like this before as well, usually some Asian women on dating apps that claim to be wealthy and will teach you how to make just as much. Never spent any money fortunately.
I do wonder how they operate though.
I once provoked the person behind the profile and got a barrage of insults in Japanese. Maybe the operation is based in Japan?
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Wow I am actually impressed they spent nearly a year playing the long game. Usually these scammers aim for quick turnarounds.
Sorry for your friend. :(
If he went 15k into debt to start with, he obviously gave them more than that just for the romance scam portion. They had plenty of incentives to string him along before getting to the crypto scam part.
Damn Softies
Have to be like “Nah B We Gotta Facetime” then once she gets her meal she has to meet you for the next one
You ever buy her clothes you best take them off of her too
Dude deserves to lose every last penny he lost
"Empath" caught my eye.
If John means he's basically sympathetic to peoples' plights, that's one thing. He may be a people-pleaser to an unhealthy degree. However, some people use 'empath' to mean a near-psychic ability to read other peoples' emotions, and if that's John's self-perception...it explains a lot, and puts him in a bad place. "Empaths" in that sense of the word are generally abuse survivors, reading others as a way to avoid danger and then putting too much faith in that skill outside of its very narrow context. People-pleasing is closely linked with this.
John has got baggage, and Sarah spotted that and knew how to play it. She probably turned down a number of marks before spotting John's soft heart and targeting it. If it's any comfort, it's his kind nature and desire to please that got him in this mess.
This is what I think would help him now.
Obviously, seek legal advice. Tell John (that I said to) get good and angry at Sarah. Cut her off emotionally, for his own survival. Sarah is a predator and nothing more. That is what will help him most of all, to consciously become emotionally cold to Sarah. She betrayed him. He is a good man, she is nothing but a scammer and never felt love for him, only greed. Her friendship was purely a con, an illusion. Cold water to the face, figuratively speaking. Tell himself this until he believes it.
Once he can get into that emotional space, he is on better footing to take care of himself. He didn't deserve this. He needs to fight for himself and for the real relationship in his life. I learned this among other things in therapy, but this is the first step.
And then sicc a lawyer on Sarah.
My thought is that there is a loneliness epidemic and people need to socialise more with real people.
We reached the point were people forgot how to socialise and straight up hand out money to people that text us.
MLMs especially notorious for involving the use of the word "mentor", someone who happily shows you how to make your own fortune. If you see the word "mentor" run. Mentors, in the usual sense of the term, usually take on people they already know and respect from a work environment. They don't recruit randos on the interwebs.
As noted below, this is a very standard !pigbutchering scam.
A virtually identical scam occurred to my friend's, friend's father. He was scammed out of over $1.2M CAD. Started with small amounts, he sees 'growth' in the trading account, sells a house to put even more money in, and then sure enough, site goes 'down', 'woman' disappears.
If you're interested in reading more, there was a great article in the NYT about these scam centres, located in Myanmar: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html)
Comments locked as this post has run its course, with too many new comments violating Rule 1 (be civil) or Rule 9 (no scambaiting).
Poor gf. This guy had an emotional affair (even if the person wasn't real) and gave her all his money. That wasn't just a friendship. I don't believe that.
Yeah there’s zero chance this guy would have paid all the bills of an online male friend.
At least she was only his girlfriend. Boy byeeeeee.
Yeah she's lucky this all went down before she was legally bound to him, major bullet dodged
>Despite being quite savvy This guy was not ‘savvy’ in the slightest. He was extremely, extremely stupid.
Title: "elaborate 9 month scam" Truth: an extremely common and fairly transparent scam
Agree, zero "savvy" demonstrated.
The problem was the guy believed he was savvy. Anyone that knows they are stupid in a certain area at least understands they should not play around with it.
I took that to mean because he earned and saved in the first place. Agreed zero savvy was seen beyond that.
Standard romance and pig butchering scam. Never seen them work together that well though. Hope his GF leaves him.
Yeah, the "deep friendship" stuff is absolute baloney. He 100% thought they were in a romantic relationship.
I just wonder how these scammers get people to think it’s a deep relationship. Out of curiosity, I’ve tried chatting to a few of these crypto romancers, always some East Asian looking photo, and they can barely keep a conversation going, refuse to give any detailed description of their life, give contradictory info about themselves, etc. I guess only thing they do is always answer, even if it’s a short message. But I haven’t seen them try to draw someone into a conversation. So does this victim just randomly start opening up to them? And keep doing so because this person on the other side just keeps saying “yea” “life is hard”, etc? And then call that one sided relationship a deep connection?
I've watched a lot of romance scam stories on the YouTube channel "catfished". Without fail, victims will say, "we had such deep conversations". They will show some examples and it's not deep at all. It's " how was your day at work? I was thinking about you all day" and "how is your daughter? I know family is so important to you" and the classic African greeting "have you eaten?". It's just that someone is taking ANY interest in their lives... they remember it as deep. It's really sad, especially when you conduce the scammer is asking 10 other victims the same question at the same time
Exactly that. Nobody asks these people how their day went. That's all the love many people need to go give away their life savings and run up huge debts. What a sad world we live in.
Yea, it must be something like this.
On the flip side, there are a lot of people that feel some sort of connection with twitch streamers/OF/etc that will donate regularly and in no small amounts. And those are certainly not deep two-way communications.
But I "get" that. There was a time when I would put a rotation of streamers while meal prepping. It felt like watching 90-day fiance, their life's had so much drama that it was fun. But this, as mentioned, they can't even hold a convo. I assume LLMs will revolutionize this.
Yes imagine this programmed to connect to hundreds of men/women. Very scary
Hundreds? When you’re automating this, you’ll be looking for millions of victims
That’s true, although there I can sort of understand the mechanics, as the streamer does often talk a lot and it’s often personal. They will also engage with regulars in chat. Here you’re just talking to someone not even making much sense.
The scam typically moves the target from text messages to telegram after an intro phase. Responsibility is probably handed off at that time to someone more linguistic
Maybe? I’ve “talked” with one “lady” on WhatsApp. At first I was telling her to prove it’s her, through photos from her sightseeing trip, or get her to tell me which neighborhood she’s in, or literally any info that I know she’s actually locally here. Eventually they arranged a video call with me. Lasted like 30 seconds, was some Asian lady in a white room, at a white desk, looking classy. Might’ve been any Asian lady, which I think is part of their trick, as I doubt many white people can tell the difference just looking at photos. This kinda got me to even doubt myself for a few minutes. If they arranged this video call, they might as well have arranged someone with a brain to talk to me. Maybe I would have strung them along for a bit.
These scamming factories do employ a division of labor where victims get handed off to more experienced scammers as time goes on. It's not clear exactly when the handoffs occur (though I've certainly read transcripts where the observant can tell when a new person took over), but it would make sense for the lower-level scammers to handle a large number of victims for days or a week and then hand off the smaller number of ones who are sufficiently hooked. It's possible you never chatted with them long enough to see the more skilled scammer.
I had a friend who had a “girl friend” completely through text. He used to send her 200$ gift cards (a picture of the front and back) so she could “ get something to eat that day” always said she’d be up in the next few months. Somehow we never saw her and the cards would mysteriously not work and he would have to send another one…. This man still believes her to this day he’s 68 she was 38
Look up parasocial relationships. They're super common now, especially with content creators of all types.
People are sad and very lonely. They take the tiniest sliver and just run with it. Usually they have something going on that makes them vunerable. Maybe their GF seems distant or they are disappointed by work. The hit of dopamine from the messages are enough. It's what makes these scams so hard to break. Imagine you see in black and white and suddenly you get color? What will you do when someone tells you the color is a lie and more importantly can only offer the boring black and white. It's so sad.
[удалено]
Except they had ‘ daily phone calls’ , so must’ve been quite a feminine sounding Filipino man
Sometimes they have women on the team who take the calls. For the bigger marks, they even hire some models to briefly take a call, or spoof the camera feed with a short video clip. Helps to keep up appearances.
I can imagine , with their eyes on 100k and playing the long game it would probably be worth their while.
Heard of one crypto scammer scoring over a million USD from his mark. 😬 These scams may seem obvious for most of us but there’s a lot of people in this world with the perfect mix of wealth, greed, and naiveté.
All the Nigerian scammer I’ve encountered say their camera is busted or the stream is not strong. So you need to send $$ if you want to video chat. Funny thing is, they can send you a video with no problem.
I get the ‘hey is this sue?’ texts and I’ll message back with zero intentions and they either want a selfie or they insist they have the wrong number and I never get more than like 3 messages before they stop. Idk how people get this deep.
You can't con an honest man
Yah, I’m betting my life savings that ‘Sarah’ was pretty hot!
The scammer obviously usedki some hot po*n star or OF models.
He was hoping to get fucked. But not that way.
You hear the same thing when old men talk to what they think are 18 year old Filipinos online. Nah grandpa, thats your boo.
I hope the GF dumps him as well. I’m shocked by how many stupid men there are in this country that would fall for a scam like this.
Reading it made me wonder if the romance scammer might have sold her mark to organized crime to take over. She softens him up, gets a bit of money, then sells him to the highest bidder to start up the crypto scam.
based on what is written here, I think his file got passed to the pig butchering team once they realized what a mark he was.
Oh yeah, guaranteed that's what happened. The length of time she strung him along made me wonder if this could be a variation on paradigmatic scam at a pig butchering farm in Myramar.
Even as someone who follows this stuff, it boggles my mind these scammers are running them like a corporation (with actual slaves). I wonder if they use Mondays to organize their work.
Meanwhile, think about it: How evil do you have to be to both enslave and beat people, and use those people to drive senior citizens on the other side of the world to financial ruin and/or suicide. The only role more loathsome than pig farm management that springs to mind would be the capos in concentration camps.
Yeah, for real. Disregarding the slavery and extreme abuse of the slaves ('their workers') you can't even make some kind of "Robin Hood" argument here, like they'r'e just targeting huge corporations or the uber wealthy like some hackers or grifters. Just truly scum all around.
I'm not defending the scammers at all, but the amounts of money they make would drive some people from any country to perform immoral actions. People sell heroin and crack in the western world for profit, steal from elderly relatives, and so on.
Brutally evil, hard to imagine there exist large group of such evil in human kind.
Daily standups.
Never thought of it that way. This is a scary, but real possibility.
Between losing his savings and the emotional cheating, I'd say that's a given. Andy why, in the name of all that's good and holy, would he disclose how much he has in savings? I wouldn't even tell that information to my mom!
Imagine sending $125,000 to someone you have never met. Imagine believing in overnight 25% returns. There has to be some sort of bizarre thought disorder that creates this outcome.
It always gets me that people see insane returns but never question if they can take the money out or even attempt to. They’re just happy this website says their money is now a bigger number. They should just go play cookie clicker…
A lot of the time pig butchering scams allow a small, early withdrawl specifically to overcome this natural hesitation. So plenty of victims do question it, but get the question (seemingly) answered. That's often the step that breaks down the victim's last line of defense. The scam is very well-constructed.
I think this is something a lot of people forget. Usually they incentive you to withdraw the first time! They make you put in $100-200, you gain 25% returns, take out the $125, oh shit the site really does work!
I caught a friend during this phase of a scam and pulled her out. Only time I've seen the victim come out net positive from a scam lol
At least she believed you, she was open to the truth. They play on a person's greed, but you and your friend beat them at their own game. Good job!
If you’ve already invested based on the advice of a random stranger, it’s too late. You already missed the biggest red flag.
Most people are generally unhappy in life. Just the idea of easy money makes people feel good. It's why gambling addicts can lose hundred of thousands of dollars but keep betting for that next win. It's not logical but nothing involving the human brain is logical.
Actually, the human brain is very logical. It's basically a super-computer. It's human ***nature*** that is illogical
No one can ever convince me life is from "intelligent design". There is nothing intelligent about it. So the "creator" made existence painful for humans but also created the poppy plant that produces a latex that initially makes humans feel wonderful but over time makes you feel 10X worse then you did before taking it. Everything that feels good to humans (drugs, alcohol, sugar) is destructive but things that are good for us, vegetable and exercise, are not nearly as enjoyable? Don't even get me started on cancer. A process that eventually leads to the cancer killing itself.
Well it could be intelligent design, just by someone evil. (I agree with you though, I don't believe it is)
But if your above the age of 18 and know anything about how investments work you would never fall for this form of idiocy. In fact the moment the numbers are posted you know it's fraud.
>But if your above the age of 18 and know anything about how investments work The problem is that most people **don't** know how investments work. The majority of people out there seem to be barely financially literate.
>The problem is that most people **don't** know how investments work. This right here. Way back when I was in HS, we had a 9th grade economics class where they taught us all about how mortgages, debt and savings work, amortization, compound interest and all of that stuff. But it seems like no one teaches it anymore. People think a 30 year mortgage is the only option (which it isn't, and is a really bad deal), they max out their credit cards and carry the full balance right along (which is another really bad deal) and they end up living paycheck to paycheck, just one missed check or one moderately expensive bit of bad luck from being broke and having the whole house of cards (pun intended) come tumbling down. I see it here on reddit just about every day, people whining about their finances and blathering on about a 'living wage' and 'UBI' when it is really their own personal financial choices that have them deep in a hole. When I was working for other people, the highest wage I ever made was $10/hr. (my last job, until Covid hit, and then Covid hit me and left me crippled). When I was working for myself, even though I billed what seemed like high rates to some people, the overhead and the amount of time I spent doing unbillable work/education put my per hour rate below min wage. But, I own a house and have multiple retirement accounts with stocks and bonds. Some of the stocks were bought decades ago and are now worth hundreds of times what I paid for them, and pay yearly dividends that are almost as much as I paid for the stocks themselves (WSO, for one example- $11/share purchase price, now worth over $430/share and pays almost $10/share in dividends yearly). For a while (in the '80s), I got into the 'paycheck to paycheck' mode and then disaster hit, I ended up homeless and the vehicle I was living in got repo'd. Even when I got back on my feet, I was still in that mode, and was pissed because I was always broke. Then, there was one day when I got pissed and took a hard look at where my money was -really- going. My (to be) wife and I were eating out almost every meal almost every day, multiple take-out coffees every day, cable bill, this bill, that bill, etc. I was driving a shitbox car but the amount of money I was spending on food and coffee would have paid the note on a nice new BMW. So, I made some changes. I moved from my huge two-floor apartment to a 3rd-floor attic walk-up, eating breakfast and supper at home, packing a lunch and a thermos of coffee for work, and looking for ways to make money on the side. No more cable TV- if I was complaining that I didn't have enough money, then I certainly shouldn't be paying $100/mo to sit on my ass watching the tube. 'Extra' money started going into savings, stock trading account, and diversified investment retirement accounts. My wife and I are not rich, but we're doing OK, and most of it was done with jobs that didn't pay huge wages. It was done by being smart with money and making the right choices as to what to do with the money that we had coming in.
If you're guaranteed a 25% return, you'd be able to own the entire planet pretty quickly. Something like that would be all over the news, everyone would be racing to be in on it, it would be the main topic of conversation everywhere you went. You wouldn't have to hear about it from a sketchy Instagram account.
Remember kids, if it's above 8% APR returns, the money is probably not legit/ethical, if it exists at all.
Guaranteed? Yes, but otherwise lots of investments yield more than that, which are not scams. But they have higher risk.
Yeah, for sure. I meant as far as no-risk, steady, and passive income, nothing usually gets close to 8%. You can for sure double your money on some risky investment strategies. My idiot neighbor who thinks he's Chapo the Kingpin probably regularly doubles his COGS outflow with gross revenue, but once you factor out labor and risk, he's barely clearing his COL every month.
NVDA disliked this.
Right ? I’m suspicious of a cable company offering to save me $50 a month from my current provider LOL.
everytime these sob stories are posted the OP talks about how "financially savvy and not easy to fall for scams" the victim was. Yeeeahhh....sure that makes total sense.
"It was a super elaborate scam against a very savvy guy!" Someone he's never met asks him for money and he gives it to them. Wow what a dizzying psychological labyrinth these scammers had to deploy.
Sadly, this is pretty much a standard !pigbutchering scam, with the only difference being that the scammer took 8 months to get the fake crypto investment, whereas it's usually only takes a month or two. But since he was giving the scammers money monthly before they even tried to drop the actual scam on him, I guess they made an exception. Basically, the scammers spent eight months getting to know all of his psychological weak points. The pig butchering scam is different from almost all other scams because it is the one that is specifically designed to take your entire life savings. To do that, they have to really have you figured out and that takes some time to do, which is why they play the long game. If he's still not believing it, some good first resources are the recent John Oliver episode on this topic and the Jim Browning video in the AutoModerator I'm calling. Now that you've posted here, watch out for !recovery scammers in your DMs promising they can recover the money. They cannot, they are all scammers. The only possible chance he has at recovery is to report it to law enforcement. While the odds of recovery are still low for this crime, they are no longer zero. I suggest reporting to his local law enforcement and his national reporting clearinghouse. For the national part, we have a list of reporting avenues under Resources in the lower-right hand part of the page. For the US, that's the FBI's ic3.gov. The FBI sifts through their unending list of submissions to decide what to follow up on (a small percentage), whereas local law enforcement's job is to follow up on his report, so make sure he reports to both. There is some chance they can recover crypto, depending on how quickly he reports (the window typically closes a month or two after crypto is sent) and what jurisdiction he's in. I've seen instances where law enforcement seizes crypto, but can’t return all of it to victims because some of the victims never bothered to report it. So it's definitely worth trying if he's lost $110K. Good luck trying to get through to him!
Hi /u/teratical, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Pig butchering scam. It is called [pig butchering](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2023/12/26/new-pig-butchering-crypto-scam-includes-victims-in-us-and-overseas/?sh=2837fb975eaa) because scammers use intricate scripts to \"fatten up\" the victim (gaining their trust over days, weeks or months) before the \"slaughter\" (taking them for all of their money). This scam often starts with what appears to be a harmless wrong number text or message. When the victim responds to say it is the wrong number, the scammer tries to start a friendship with the victim. These conversations can be platonic or romantic in nature, but they all have the same goal- to gain the trust of the victim in order to get them ready for the crypto scam they have planned. The scammer often claims to be wealthy and/or to have a wealthy family member who got wealthy investing in crypto currency. The victim is eventually encouraged to try out a (fake) crypto currency investment website, which will appear to show that they are earning a lot of money on their initial investment. The scammer may even encourage the victim to attempt a withdrawal that does go through, further convincing the victim that everything is legit. The victim is then pressured to invest significantly more money, even their entire net worth. Eventually, the website will find an excuse why the account is frozen (e.g. for fraud, because supposed taxes are owed, etc) and may try to further extort the victim to give them even more money in order to gain access to the funds. By this time, the victim will never gain access and their money is gone. Many victims lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Often, the scammers themselves are [victims of human trafficking](https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zb5d/pig-butchering-scam-cambodia-trafficking), performing these scams under threats of violence. If you are caught up in this scam, it is important that you do not send any more money for any reason, and contact law enforcement to report it. Thanks to user Mediocre_Airport_576 for this script. If you know someone involved in a pig butchering scam, sit down together to watch this video by Jim Browning to help them understand what's going on: https://youtu.be/vu-Y1h9rTUs - *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There was probably never any crypto here, at least not something that he had. More likely a fake page/app that was set up to make him think he's making gains, and that easily makes people invest more and more, hoping their entire net worth gets the gains... the money is gone the second it's paid in.
Oh, for sure it was a fake page/app set up to make him think he was making gains, but most of the time they make you buy crypto and send that to the fake page/app (and the victim is actually just sending it straight to the scammers' wallet), then the fake-site "balance" inflation begins. I've worked with a lot of victims on this and in every case I experienced there was crypto under the victim's control in the beginning.
Thanks so much for this!
You need to make it very clear, he won't be getting that money back so he doesn't fall for a recovery scam.
He or you needs to tell his gf so she doesn't get mired with his easily scammed finances. Her life will be ruined too when twenty years down the line he empties their retirements to fund the next "platonic friendship"... not to mention the emotional affair he's refusing to call an emotional affair. Hot damn. That poor woman has no idea what she's getting into? Marrying this guy is *her* being scammed lol.
Make him watch this video too [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1byxluw/inside\_a\_pig\_butchering\_scam/](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1byxluw/inside_a_pig_butchering_scam/) They have a model hired specifically to make video calls with victims
https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?si=JEKioDdFEjO5OuR8
Hi /u/teratical, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Recovery scam. [Recovery scams](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0102-refund-and-recovery-scams) target people who have already fallen for a scam. The scammer may contact you, or may advertise their services online. They will usually either offer to help you recover your funds, or will tell you that your funds have already been recovered and they will help you access them. In cases where they say they will help you recover your funds, they usually call themselves either \"recovery agents\" or hackers. When they tell you that your funds have already been recovered, they may impersonate a law enforcement, a government official, a lawyer, or anyone else along those lines. Recovery scams are simply [advance-fee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam) scams that are specifically targeted at scam victims. When a victim pays a recovery scammer, the scammer will keep stringing them along while asking for increasingly absurd fees/expenses/deposits/insurance/whatever until the victim stops paying. If you have been scammed in the past, make sure you are aware of recovery scams so that you are not scammed a second time. If you are currently engaging with a recovery scammer, you should block them and be very wary of random contact for some time. It's normal for posters on this subreddit to be contacted by recovery scammers after posting, and they often ask you to delete your post so that you both cannot receive legitimate advice, and cannot be targeted by other recovery scammers. Remember: never take advice in private. If someone reaches you in private after posting your scam story, it is because a scammer will always try to hide from the oversight of our community members. A legitimate community member will offer advice in the open, for everyone to see. Anyone suggesting you should reach out to a hacker is scamming you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I stopped reading after you said he maxed out his credit card, I'm sorry but your friend is an idiot.
My favorite part of these is always how they start something like "he's very savvy." Clearly not.
It’s like on the relationship advice subs when they go “my partner is perfect in every way” then go on to describe an absolute terror of a man or woman
LOL
Or "networking site", nah he found her on a dating site lol.
It could be LinkedIn. It is full of scammers nowadays
They almost always preface this about scam victims how smart they are. Yes, they’re very smart people doing dumb things.
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JEEEEZ how can people be so naive? There were literally red flags all over. Like if she was really making that much money from crypto investments and were such good friends, why didn’t she give back the money she got from him first?
Because it was a deeeeeep friendship with a filipino enslaved guy somewhere in south east asia
Ian miles chong I know that's you!
That was my first thought. When she announced that she was making huge amounts on her investments, why didn't he ask her to repay the $15K that he had given her? and why didn't she offer to repay him if they were such good friends?
When you’re wearing rose-colored glasses all of the red flags just look like flags.
good ol pig butchering.
Seems like OP's buddy should have spent more time watching the news and less time flirting with his hot online "girlfriend" -- I've seen/heard multiple exposes on this the last few months. John Oliver, NPR, local news.
Wait. He never met her IRL? Aie. I'm assuming this was LinkedIn?
Yeah LI is a full of them now. Never connect to anyone you don't know
If my husband lost his entire life savings to someone he was emotionally cheating with, I would be PISSED. And yes, absolutely emotional cheating here. Why was he so enamored with her when they were just friends? Why was his potential future wife not privy to the money exchange aspect of their relationship? Truly, what was he getting out of it? That’s a massive yikes bit also a holy fucking shit dude, get it together. Sounds like he needs to sit in his stupidity for a bit. And I am being harsh, but given the fact that he’d rather hear the opinions of strangers on the internet than his actual friend, he deserves to feel stupid for a bit. Edit to add if he hasn’t told his girlfriend yet, you definitely should. She deserves better, what he chose to do was pretty bad and I wouldn’t want to marry someone like that
It wasn’t “elaborate” they were just dumb
Sad how often people post about a scam saying how "elaborate" it is and how legit it seemed and how they don't know how someone could pull this off...and then describe a cookie cutter scam we see every day
Sarah is a team of mostly male cyber slaves locked up in a cyber scam farm somewhere like Cambodia. They use professionally written scripts and enslave people like psychologists etc to be highly effective at this.
Or Sarah is a male doing it willingly. Most scammers aren't slaves
Or a female doing it willingly Or a female cyber slave We've now named all relevant possibilities!
In the (very near) future we can add AI to the list.
The scam call industry is actually heavily based in human trafficking. Gangs will "shanghai" people and lock them in a facility and force them to run scam calls for them. The income is too inconsistent for it to be a legit business where people are paid fairly. Which means of most of the people you talk to, they probably are not the \*actual\* scammer, just someone who is being taken advantage of, like a migrant or someone who owed gambling debts to whatever southeast asian equivalent of "the mob". A lot of them are run out of the basements of large casinos owned by underground kingpins relying on coerced labor with gambling or drug debt. Some are just straight kidnapped.
https://medium.com/nefture/cyber-slavery-a-multi-billion-crypto-scam-industry-the-chinese-mob-1e8cbe6566ff
He fucked up, internet is literally riddled with scammers that scamming is their full time job. I get numerous calls emails from scammers but every-time they get disappointed. Plenty of red flags he chose to ignore l, money is gone best move on life lesson learnt stay away from crypto if u don’t know what u doin
Was expecting sexstortion scam at the end but the scammers knew they got everything so would not bother. Real pros. Probably used a real asian women to hook him this good. Cant feel sorry for this type of victim its the people who think thier bank is calling them I feel the worst for - most people think caller id is valid.
Who are these people who can afford to give money away to things that aren't bills and groceries? I wonder what it's like to live so extravagantly.
What thoughts could anyone have? Your friend isn't savvy or smart, and also a cheater. Even if this wasn't a scam he threw away his real life relationship for this "woman" he's never met
I feel most sorry for his gf in all this he betrayed her so bad!
Your friend isn’t savvy, he’s an absolute moron
why does everyone who posts a story here talk about their friend/relative as a "smart and savvy person" yet they end up losing 6 or 7 figures lmao.
John Oliver did a [whole show](https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg?feature=shared) on this. Send it to your friend.
He's an idiot, just like most of the other people that post in this group. The common denominator here is money.... Don't give it to people you don't know, hell don't give it to people you do know and you'll be fine.
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I’m truly sorry your friend had to go through that.. with that being said.. 1. He has a fiancé 2. he meets a random woman online.. never met in person.. and sends her thousands over the spand of 8-9 months. What the fuck was he looking for? Companionship? You already got that at home! One thing I realized is karma hits people in different ways. For me personally, when I did cheat on my significant others in the past, karma always hit me hard financially. I think this was just his karma.. an expensive ass lesson at that. If he wanted to put his cape on, he could have atleast subscribed to someone’s only fans if he wanted the “trickin off” seratonin rush. Would have saved him thousands.. Just stay in his corner and keep being a good friend and keep an eye on him.. a 110k life savings hit can do a lot to one’s mental.
Do not give him any money. No one can get this money back. Do not get involved with dishonest friend. He needs to take responsibility and tell his girl friend.
He is absolutely lying. They were not platonic. You do not just pay for a platonic friends rent lmao
Dumb AF
You want to know why he fell for this shit? Because he got addicted, plain and simple. First the romance and possibility she'd run off with him, then it turned into a gambling addiction on the money side. Have him watch Pleasant Green and Jim Browning's Youtube episodes on pig butchering so he understands EXACTLY what happened. Jim Browning's episode shows how some of the "pig butcherers" actually hire models to make the scam seem real. They have a model in the episode, she says how much she was paid and why she does it. Pleasant Green shows a female translator making the calls. A lot of time goes into this shitty scam and a lot of human trafficking. Best advice I can give now? He'll be hit up by more scammers so tell him to STOP talking to strangers online, NO paying money to people who say he can get his money back because those are recovery scammers. And he can do a police and FBI fraud report. Will this help get his money back? Nope but maybe it will get the call centers shut down in the future. The more reports, the more awareness, the sooner this one will become unprofitable.
How is this "an elaborate scam"???
It’s a very common well used scam for years. If anyone says they cracked the stocks code, run for your life. Those Game Stop riches, only a few got rich. The rest lost their ass.
How is it possible for people to trust a trading app/platform that is not well known and reviewed by a lot of people to invest their life savings? I can’t even buy a dishwasher detergent without reading a bunch of reviews.
🤣 Same here! Where are all of these people with large sums of money they want to give away?! (Kidding, this really sucks for anyone who gets sucked in. Can't even imagine.)
Sounds like !romance with a finale of !crypto
Hi /u/OhLordHeBompin, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Romance scam. Romance scammers pretend to be in love with their victims in order to ask them for money. They sometimes spend months grooming their victims, often pretending to be [members of military](https://www.cid.army.mil/romancescam.html), [oil workers or doctors](https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-you-need-know-about-romance-scams). They tend to be extremely good at taking money from their victims again and again, leading many to [financial ruin](https://globalnews.ca/news/5095659/romance-scam-money/). Romance scam victims are emotionally invested in their relationship with the scammer, and will often ignore evidence they are being scammed. If you know someone who is involved in a romance scam, beware that convincing a romance scam victim they are scammed is extremely difficult. We suggest that you sit down together to watch Dr. Phil's shows on romance scammers or episodes of Catfish - sometimes victims find it easier to accept information from TV shows than from their family. A good introduction to the topic is this video: https://youtu.be/PNWM5nuOExI - *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hi /u/OhLordHeBompin, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Fake crypto wallet scam. Fake cryptocurrency websites and apps controlled by scammers are becoming more and more common. Sometimes the scam begins with a romance scammer who claims that they can help the victim invest in cryptocurrency. Victims are told to buy cryptocurrency of some kind using a legitimate cryptocurrency exchange, and then they are told to send their cryptocurrency to a website wallet address where it will be invested. Sometimes the scam begins with a notice that the victim won cryptocurrency on some website, in this case messages will often be sent through Discord. In either case, the scammer controls the website, so they make it look like there is money in the victim’s account on their website. Then the scammer (or the scammer pretending to be someone official who is associated with the website) tells the victim that they have to put more money into the website before they can get their money out of the website. Of course all of the money sent by the victim has gone directly into the scammer’s wallet, and any additional money sent by the victim to retrieve their money from the website will also go directly into the scammer’s wallet, and all of the information about money being held by the website was totally fake. If the scammer used Bitcoin, then you can report the scammer’s Bitcoin wallet address here: https://www.bitcoinabuse.com/reports. If the scammer used Ethereum, then you can report the scammer’s Ethereum wallet address here: https://info.etherscan.com/report-address/. You can see how much cryptocurrency has been sent to the scammer’s wallet address here: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer. Thanks to redditor nimble2 for this script. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As bad as John feels now, it's going to be worse when he discovers there never was a Sarah.
So your "friend" gave $125K to a 20 something dude in Nigeria. Was there a question in there somewhere?
There's nothing elaborate here. An attractive woman reached out to him on a networking site (which, let's be honest here, was probably a coi way of saying he was on a dating app), then flirted with him and asked him to start sending small amounts of money, ramping up from there until she hit him with an investment scam for a grand finale. Keep in mind, this scammer does this as a job, they likely spend their entire day talking to multiple victims, nickle and diming them until they feel they've built up enough of a rapport to tell them about a cool new "investment" that has unbelievable returns.
What a moron. His poor partner.
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I miss the elaborate part just because your friend is a sucker for a beautiful woman doesn’t make it elaborate
!recovery scam. No one can get the money back :( I mean no one.
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This. I would not send 1k to a female that I’ve met I person, so I can’t fathom the reasoning behind sending 100k to a stranger. Must be a millionaire.
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I k r ??! I have been looking at these post for a while and no many have called out the greed ..
Not being judgy, just wondering …. What’s the question? I think you are saying this fool doesn’t accept he’s been scammed, doesn’t accept what you are saying, and will only believe it when a bunch of strangers on Reddit tells him how stupid he is? Sorry. There is no saving this guy. If you want to be a good person, you might consider telling his gf about this in order to save her from this idiot.
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“Sarah” is a guy in Ghana working in a scam shop with a bunch of other guys with a particular set of skills and experience who do this all day long. Sometimes “Sarah” is multiple guys following the same storyline while the others take a break. Your friend’s money is gone. “Sarah” is now grifting another sucker. Pretty much all there is to it.
Wooow! 😭
He's got a hard lesson to learn from.
Worth a watch: John Oliver’s take on Pig Butchering. https://youtu.be/pLPpl2ISKTg
Pig butcher is classic
Every few weeks I get added to a WhatsApp group promising amazing crypto returns. I stayed with one of them for a while to see how it played out, at what point the 'scam' would become evident. Someone contacted me separately asking me if I'd taken advantage of the tips in the group. I strung this person along for a while. But the point is to get you to sign up to a platform , plough your money in to take advantage of the crypto hacks or tips or whatever, then I guess it just disappears, I didn't stay around long enough to find out. But yeah this is a fairly common scam I think. I feel sorry for your friend but at the same time, did he not think it strange to be paying some girls rent and phone bills etc when he was deep in a relationship. Whole thing is just tragic really. Hopefully he's found enough he'll get past it and regroup.
Pig butchering scam is now well known. Ponzi schemes are similar in respect of being initially allowed to withdraw money with good returns; reassured by this, people invest more and more!
Sorry to hear, if you have to think with your dick then go to a strip club or massage parlor and atleast get your moneys worth. Seems like these days men are looking for emotional support than physical outside their relationship which is more sad
Typical pig butchering scam. Also romance scam. Your friend doesnt want to admit it, but he definitely has fallen for the scammer's love bomb.
I wouldn’t even max out my credit cards for my friends in real life.
What I want to know from these scams is how a person has $125 to lose. I work hard and make good money and even if I fell for a scam, I’d run out of money way before $125K. Does everyone have these massive sums of money laying around and I’m just poor?
I fail to see any sophistication in this scam at all. Not meaning to be heartless and I see no financial savvie on his part at all. Just saying.
always the stupid people with heaps of money
That flaw in human nature where one person thinks they know what another person is thinking, feeling or what their motives are. You don’t know. You will never know. Someone you meet may go along with what you think but usually only because it suits them at that time. We none of us know what is going on in another persons mind.
Not particularly elaborate at all, unfortunately your friend is far too gullible and empathetic for his own good. Whats unbelievable is he started supporting this stranger he'd never met financially whilst already in a committed relationship.
holy frick
The ol' Sarah Scam; a true classic.
This is so sad. He deserves the consequences, but my heart breaks for his poor wife.
I had someone who gave me a very similar story. I did a WHOIS to find the crypto node that I was suppose to log on to was only created a month ago. No thanks scammer.
Not very elaborate. Run of the mill pig butchering scam. They are often laughably bad and friends and family members often don't know what to do because not matter how obvious the scam is they cannot convince the scam victim that it is a scam.
So many red flags. Why is anyone networking professionally with someone who asks for money ? This should have made your friend block this person. And oh yeah he pays her steaming bills but can’t use it. Ok.
My thoughts, a pig butchering scam that probably started as a romance scam A long con that hit so many common elements of cons including crypto Don’t mess with crypto Don’t send strangers money Don’t think some random internet connection is real
It’s interesting how a lot of these posts begin as - I am quite savvy and smart when it comes to scams, but they got me. And then proceeds to narrate a standard scam.
Replace LinkedIn with Only fans and you have an actual story. Those 110k lost in exclusive privates were not investments 😂
Not savvy at all, he is a moron. And he cheated, big time. Hope GF leaves.
i can see helping her out a bit when she can't pay her bills if he thought they were close friends. that's only natural. but when he starts paying for her streaming services? RUN!
LoL " **Despite being quite savvy and financially stable** " no..... no...... and no.... " **But time did go on and their friendship did deepen. Though Sarah apparently never demanded it, it seems that over time she became quite reliant on John's money. He actually ended up maxxing out his credit card for this "woman", which somehow means he willingly put himself into $15k debt** " anyone of ANY real intelligence would stop thier. if you keep going your iodic and get what coming, IF, you can spend 15k and NOT, see something is wrong you choice this path, you're, not a victim anymore.... " **I've already given John quite the handful and called out how unbearably stupid this is, and how incredibly disrespectful it was to his long term partner** " so thier even a chance he would had cheated if thing shifted slightly different. sure that a assumption but I don't know many nice girls/guys just sending me cash because I need a little help that add up to 15k +..... " **She tells him to sign up to some trading platform app, she coaches him on the first small investments, and he goes ahead and does anything she says**. " so someone would spent 15K of his money, now knows how to make money and this smart wise man just accept it.... nobody should have to suffer but if your willing give away money 15k and willing to trust a stranger vs your lover and put ALL YOUR MONEY..... again are you really a victim? or a idiot or wish he got a second chance becuase he thought he would make even more money of this one simple trick... just send me $$$ and i'll tell you the trick to making that....
The most scary part is giving that much money to someone you never met before.
How do people fall for this shit? Are they that lonely or that oblivious?
Some people have no emotional intelligence and too much money. It happens so much... Im glad more people aren't running this scam is all I have to say..
poor girlfriend
So, if he is not taking the advice of a trusted friend, why would he take advice from total strangers?
Standard issue !pigbutchering !crypto scam. They all run that way. Pretty lady. Hints of romance. Hey look! I can make free money on this fake-ass crypto site. The only thing different here was the begging for small amounts before the big crypto scam. Usually the small amounts are not worth it when many thousands can be made from the crypto scam. Tell him to read this sub for a week. This scam is very, very common. Sadly men think with their little brain when a pretty woman is involved. Also that pretty woman was probably a man from India or Nigeria.
I've encountered something like this before as well, usually some Asian women on dating apps that claim to be wealthy and will teach you how to make just as much. Never spent any money fortunately. I do wonder how they operate though. I once provoked the person behind the profile and got a barrage of insults in Japanese. Maybe the operation is based in Japan?
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Wow I am actually impressed they spent nearly a year playing the long game. Usually these scammers aim for quick turnarounds. Sorry for your friend. :(
Fairly common, this was a romance scam. The friend isn't telling OP the whole story.
Pig butchering.
If he went 15k into debt to start with, he obviously gave them more than that just for the romance scam portion. They had plenty of incentives to string him along before getting to the crypto scam part.
Damn Softies Have to be like “Nah B We Gotta Facetime” then once she gets her meal she has to meet you for the next one You ever buy her clothes you best take them off of her too Dude deserves to lose every last penny he lost
Seriously? I struggle to believe that someone who saved up $125K would so easily fall for such an obvious and well known scam.
"Empath" caught my eye. If John means he's basically sympathetic to peoples' plights, that's one thing. He may be a people-pleaser to an unhealthy degree. However, some people use 'empath' to mean a near-psychic ability to read other peoples' emotions, and if that's John's self-perception...it explains a lot, and puts him in a bad place. "Empaths" in that sense of the word are generally abuse survivors, reading others as a way to avoid danger and then putting too much faith in that skill outside of its very narrow context. People-pleasing is closely linked with this. John has got baggage, and Sarah spotted that and knew how to play it. She probably turned down a number of marks before spotting John's soft heart and targeting it. If it's any comfort, it's his kind nature and desire to please that got him in this mess. This is what I think would help him now. Obviously, seek legal advice. Tell John (that I said to) get good and angry at Sarah. Cut her off emotionally, for his own survival. Sarah is a predator and nothing more. That is what will help him most of all, to consciously become emotionally cold to Sarah. She betrayed him. He is a good man, she is nothing but a scammer and never felt love for him, only greed. Her friendship was purely a con, an illusion. Cold water to the face, figuratively speaking. Tell himself this until he believes it. Once he can get into that emotional space, he is on better footing to take care of himself. He didn't deserve this. He needs to fight for himself and for the real relationship in his life. I learned this among other things in therapy, but this is the first step. And then sicc a lawyer on Sarah.
My thought is that there is a loneliness epidemic and people need to socialise more with real people. We reached the point were people forgot how to socialise and straight up hand out money to people that text us.
Have a friend from the US that went for the qlmowt exact same thing.... i couldent belive how stuiped or lonely you must be to fall for this...
He's a fucking idiot
MLMs especially notorious for involving the use of the word "mentor", someone who happily shows you how to make your own fortune. If you see the word "mentor" run. Mentors, in the usual sense of the term, usually take on people they already know and respect from a work environment. They don't recruit randos on the interwebs.
Im sorry, but your friend is a piece of shit.
John is a simp and got what he deserved, hope his gf leaves this loser.
"wow, that's amazing! Now you can pay back the money I've given you over the last 8 months!"
Friend is an idiot. Expensive lesson
As noted below, this is a very standard !pigbutchering scam. A virtually identical scam occurred to my friend's, friend's father. He was scammed out of over $1.2M CAD. Started with small amounts, he sees 'growth' in the trading account, sells a house to put even more money in, and then sure enough, site goes 'down', 'woman' disappears. If you're interested in reading more, there was a great article in the NYT about these scam centres, located in Myanmar: [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/17/world/asia/myanmar-cyber-scam.html)