Random messages from people with unknown numbers acting as an old friend or apologizing for a wrong number may not be as innocuous as they seem, according to the Michigan Attorney General.
Scammers have been luring in potential victims with the promise of being a long-forgotten friend, a new friend, a wrong number or lover via text messages and social media apps, according to the attorney general’s office.
The new scam is rising in popularity on sites like Tinder and WhatsApp.
It is called “pig butchering” and combines a romance scam with an investment spin. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the term “pig butchering” refers to a time-tested, heavily scripted, and contact-intensive process to “fatten up the prey before slaughter.”
In these cases, the scammer has convinced the fraud victim to invest on a bogus cryptocurrency website. The long con allows the victim to make small gains on the fake investment and even withdraw these gains a couple times to prove the legitimacy.
The scammer persuades the victim to invest larger sums, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, into the fake website. Then the scammer vanishes along with the money.
Related: Cryptocurrency scams on the rise. Michiganders have lost thousands.
Cryptocurrency scams jumped from the seventh riskiest scam in 2020 to second riskiest in 2021, according to the 2021 Better Business Bureau Scam Tracker Risk Report. More than 66% of people who reported falling victim to a cryptocurrency…
