Activists set up legitimate-looking social media accounts that they can use to target potential victims, and they follow scripts to interact with the targets. Managers of scam operations also monitor money laundering efforts after victims have made payments. With billions made from fraud, the perpetrators of these scams have quickly reinvested some of the ill-gotten gains Incorporate artificial intelligence and make scams more efficient,
Meena Chiang, founder of anti-human-trafficking firm Humanity Research Consultancy, says she's not a fan of the name “pig slaughter”, not only because of its dehumanizing impact, but also because it “contains people's imagination about the nature of the scandal.” Limits “Factory.”
“Those hundreds of compounds with hundreds of thousands of employees don't just deal with romance-investment scams, they also deal with 'work scams,' 'sextortion,' 'sports gambling scams,' 'fake-authorization-related scams,' and more. And much more,” Chiang says, pointing to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime calling this behavior “organized fraud.”
“Focusing on just one type of scam would risk missing the bigger picture that scams are being organized and industrialized by transnational criminal groups,” says Chiang, “and scam tactics are constantly changing as criminals evolve their Are able to withdraw money. victim.”
Interpol's Nick Court says the organization believes the “pig slaughter” umbrella covers a wide range of criminality. He notes that there may be several different names for each sub-category of activity, but almost all of them fall under the international legal definition of fraud. He also says that although not everyone agrees that phrases like “romance baiting” are an ideal replacement for “pig butchering”, it is still necessary to move away from the original name.
The Court says that over the past few decades, law enforcement agencies, researchers, and those working with a variety of victims have changed the language used to describe domestic violence, sexual assault, and other crimes such as online child sexual abuse. Similar initiatives have been started to develop. Exploitation. He says the goal in all of these cases is to reduce stigma and try to create a safe space for people to come forward and report crimes.
The court says, “We know that in different types of crimes, the use of language, the use of words matters a lot.”