Pig-butchering scam
Also called: romance investment scam, sha zhu pan
A long-running fraud that builds a personal relationship for weeks before ever mentioning money.
The name is grim and accurate: the victim is fattened before slaughter. It usually begins with a wrong number, a friendly message, or a dating app match, and money is not mentioned for weeks.
What arrives first is attention. Daily conversation, genuine interest, someone who remembers what you said. Only later, casually, does an investment come up — often crypto, on a platform that looks entirely professional and shows your balance growing.
Small withdrawals work. That is deliberate, and it is what converts caution into confidence. The larger deposit follows, and then withdrawal requires a fee, then a tax, then a compliance deposit, each one paid in the hope of releasing what is shown on screen. Nothing was ever invested.
Two things worth stating plainly. First, this is run by organised operations using scripts, often by people who are themselves trafficked and coerced — it is not one lonely opportunist. Second, being caught by it says nothing about intelligence. It is engineered against loneliness and ordinary human warmth, both of which are strengths.
If someone you have never met in person introduces an investment, that is the entire warning sign. No other detail is needed.
Words on this page
- Interest — The price of using someone else's money — paid by borrowers, earned by lenders.
- Cryptocurrency — Digital money run by networks of computers rather than a government or bank.
- Broker — The business that buys and sells investments on your behalf — the shop, not the merchandise.
- Expense ratio — The percentage of your money a fund charges each year, taken automatically whether it performs or not.
Related terms
Covered properly in Learn.
This term appears in the glossary of The Quiet Fortune, Volume II.