Once carefree and comfortable, Huang is now haunted by debt — the target of a scheme operated by international crime groups that force human trafficking victims to do online scamming work.
She is among a growing number of Chinese people lured into handing over large sums of cash by scammers posing as potential love interests.
Known as “pig butchering,” the schemes are operated by crime syndicates in Southeast Asia suspected of abducting Chinese citizens and others, and forcing them to swindle their compatriots.
The scammers groom targets for weeks before cajoling them into plowing money into fake investment platforms and other ruses.
‘Just my type’
Huang’s ordeal began after she uploaded her resume to a popular Chinese recruitment Web site last year.
The 28-year-old real-estate professional was contacted by a recruiter calling himself Lin, and the two struck up an online romance.
With similar interests, Lin seemed to be “just my type,” said Huang, using a pseudonym to keep friends and family from finding out that she had been scammed.
A carefully crafted backstory of childhood abandonment and poverty encouraged her to “feel sympathy and pity” for him, she said.
The pair never met in person, but Lin convinced her he was genuine with video calls and a screenshot of his purported identity card.
At Lin’s urging, Huang first put 50,000 yuan…
