Here’s a story of a relationship that, like so many, starts online. Carina is in her 40s, has a Ph.D. in chemistry, and works in the biotech industry in California. She meets a man named Evan online. He says he’s Dutch, sends pictures, and Carina thinks he’s incredibly attractive. So attractive that she was surprised he was interested in her.
They move their chats from the dating app to WhatsApp, and their relationship deepens. Evan starts calling Carina “honey.”
But this story ends in heartbreak and financial ruin — because the whole thing was a scam. There is no Evan. He’s not a real person. Carina was lured into what she thought was a trusting, loving relationship, but in the end, she was scammed out of tens of thousands of dollars.
This story is just one arising from a vast, dark global industry worth billions and is linked to forced labor and linked to China. Sue-Lin Wong of The Economist went around the world investigating this scam industry, and she reports on it in the eight-part podcast “Scam Inc.”
“It starts out as what sounds like two people falling in love online through a dating app, but very quickly turns very dark,” Wong said. “And the reality is that this is actually a sophisticated scam that many, many people have fallen for. It’s known as a pig butchering scam.”
The term is a direct translation of a Chinese phrase. Originating in China, this kind of scam has since spread all over the world and become a massive multi-billion dollar industry.
Criminals will find a target and fatten them up the way a pig is fattened —in this case, the scammers build trust with their targets — before going in for the slaughter and stealing money from them.
“The scammer will spend a long time getting to know you, trying to find out all about you, your family, your financial situation, your vulnerabilities,” Wong said. “In this case, the scammer realized that Carina had a lot of student debt and so decided to go after that vulnerability and convince her that if she invested in crypto, she’d make a lot of money and be able to pay back her student loans really, really quickly.”
Carina started with $1,000, but Evan talked her into investing more, talking her into borrowing $30,000 from her 401K. Carina thought she made money with these crypto investments, but when she tried to collect the money, she can’t. She called Kracken, the company she thought she invested in, but she was told they can’t find an account for her. When she explained what happened to her, the person on the line told her, ‘I’m really, really sorry to tell you this, but I think you’ve been scammed.’
Carina had been led to a fake website for this trading platform and had lost tens of thousands of dollars. She realized Evan was a scammer and that their relationship was fake. She told Wong that she thought about ending her life.
The financial and psychological consequences of this kind of deception are significant, especially since the kind of scam Carina fell victim to — a romance scam — preyed on her specific vulnerabilities.
“Scams have actually been around since the beginning of time, since human beings figured out how to lie to each other. But the reason this industry has now become so enormous is because it’s been supercharged by social media, by cryptocurrencies, and increasingly by AI,” Wong said. “And that’s why I argue in this podcast series, ‘Scam Inc,’ that it’s actually only just getting started and this industry is going to just grow bigger and even more terrifying.”
Many people who hear Carina’s story will probably think this could never happen to them, that they are too clever to be scammed.
“To be honest, when I started out this investigation, I had that perspective. I thought to myself, you know what, ‘I’d never be so stupid to fall for a scam,’ ” Wong said. “And over the course of my reporting, I completely changed my view. And by the end of this project, I came to the conclusion that I could fall for a scam. And, in fact, any of us could. We’re all vulnerable. And one of the reasons is that these criminals are so sophisticated and deeply understand human psychology and how to manipulate all of us.”
The story Wong tells in “Scam Inc.” isn’t just about the victims; it’s about the scammers, who are also victims in this criminal enterprise. One is a Filipina woman called Rita, who answered a job ad, got hired, and flew to Thailand.
“Rita thought she had gotten a job at a call center in Thailand, but when she landed at Bangkok airport, she was actually picked up and driven for hours into another country, Myanmar, and into this industrial park that’s surrounded by barbed wire, security cameras, it’s patrolled by security guards with guns, and on fear of torture and death, forced to scan people around the world, including Americans and Canadians,” Wong said.
Wong spoke to a few people who were tricked into becoming scammers, forced to follow a playbook to lure unsuspecting people into online relationships — some romantic, some seemingly professional or simply friendships — then get them to hand over money.
Inside the compounds where the scammers worked, there were high stakes. Those that didn’t perform well could be punished, Wong said.
“Rita told me some terrifying stories of other people she met inside the scam compound she was trapped in. She said a couple of people disappeared and returned with only one kidney. So basically the criminal bosses had said, ‘You’re not earning enough money. You’re not scamming enough people. And so we’re going to punish you by extracting your kidney,’” Wong said. “It’s horrific.”
Wong said that because Myanmar is in the middle of a civil war, “there’s a lot of horrific criminal activity going on and many ways to disappear a body.”
Rita managed to escape this compound.
“The fact they got out is so rare. The United Nations estimates hundreds of thousands of people are trapped in just Myanmar, in Cambodia alone,” Wong said. “And these scam compounds are now proliferating all over the world to different regions.”
Rita had successfully scammed a Canadian man. After that, her bosses trusted her and rewarded her with a smartphone with an internet connection. She used it to message all the Filipino politicians she could think of. Finally, one senator replied and arranged a rescue of Rita and 11 other Filipinos she was trapped with at the compound.
But is it possible for people who’ve been scammed to get any of their money back?
“Crypto is often traceable through the blockchain. The problem is that it’s very, very difficult to get back, especially if it’s left American borders,” Wong said. “This is also why the criminals are able to hone their techniques, reinvest in their businesses, buy the best in latest technology to come after us all because they’re making so much money. You know, it’s estimated that this industry might be worth more than $500 billion a year.”
Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Cocoran adapted it for the web.
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