Pig butchering
Sha Zhu Pan · Crypto investment scam
Pig butchering is a long-running investment fraud in which a scammer builds trust with a victim over weeks, then steers them to a fake crypto trading platform and takes everything they deposit.
FinCEN’s 2023 alert describes the stages: an unsolicited first contact, a relationship, a fraudulent platform showing fabricated returns, and demands for taxes or fees before any withdrawal. The name translates the Chinese term “sha zhu pan”.
The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report records 61,559 complaints about cryptocurrency investment fraud with $7.228 billion in losses, the largest source of reported losses that year. FinCEN and the FBI both describe the scams as largely run by criminal organisations in Southeast Asia using trafficked workers.
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