Qiao Er was idly scrolling through Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, one hot summer day in the southern Taiwanese port city Kaohsiung, when she came across a profile of a wealthy and attractive Chinese man.
She liked a couple of videos, clips of him playing tennis, cruising around in a Ferrari and feasting on a lobster the size of a child’s bike.
Then, the unexpected happened. A message popped up in Qiao Er’s inbox from the stranger, starting a months-long online romance that would leave her bankrupt and broken-hearted.
All over the Chinese-speaking world, thousands of victims like Qiao Er are losing their life savings to cryptocurrency fraudsters that have nimbly adapted to authorities trying to crack down on the so-called “pig butchering” scam, in which victims are “fattened up” through online romances.
In London, New York and Kaohsiung, the Financial Times spoke to three women who together lost over $2mn in what they said were highly methodical scams.
With an estimated 80mn ethnic Chinese residents outside China, Hong Kong and Macau, including millionaire business owners, scammers have plenty of scope for new targets after Beijing imposed a domestic ban on cryptocurrency investments.
The pandemic provided a useful shield for the scammers to develop relationships with the women while using the…
