The Story

Picture this, you’re sitting at home minding your own business, you may have just finished your assignments or even some extra work, and you get a text on WhatsApp that reads: 

“Welcome to Telco Inc. We are a company that helps with the promotion of social media influencers via liking and subscribing to their channels such as YouTube and Instagram. By joining us, you’ll be paid handsomely and you won’t even need to leave the chair. We have team members who have earned up to RM5,000 a week just by working on providing likes and subs.” 

So you think to yourself, and you ponder. 

“Really one or not? Really can earn so much meh?”

As you ponder, you eventually convince yourself to give it a try, just out of curiosity’s sake.

“I mean, I can use the extra cash la. Okay la, let’s do it!”

You’ve made up your mind and decided to give it a shot. So, you decided to join the group chat to see what it’s like. The agent tells you that you would have to go on to numerous YouTube channels to like and subscribe to the content via a link and take a screenshot to verify that you’ve done the task. 

The agent sees that you’ve completed the task and asks that you contact another agent for the payment, and so you do. The other agent, let’s call her Alice, asks for the task number and verifies that you’ve indeed completed the task, and proceeds to ask for your bank account number. You give it to her and moments later, you receive a notification that RM15 has been credited to your account.

Surprised, you decide to check into your bank account, and notice that you have indeed received the money. Convinced that you’ve actually made easy money, you decide to continue to process over and over and over again. 

“Wow! I can actually continue doing this forever!”

Then comes a road-block. The first agent that recruited you tells you that you would need to complete a “certain” task first before you can continue with what was originally planned. So you think to yourself:

“Better get this road-block out of the way. The task not going to be too bad right?”

Thus, you’ve made the choice of clearing the obstacle standing between you and easy money. You contact the first agent, Nick. He tells you that in order to continue earning money by giving likes and subs, he would require you to first open an account to an investing account on a cryptocurrency platform. Nick continues by instructing you to put RM100 into the investing account, and aliases you with Alice to make sure that the amount of money instructed of you is indeed deposited into the investing account.

Once the amount is deposited, Nick then instructs you on what you to do on the platform. Promising you the RM100 you put in and 150% in returns in a few minutes on the crypto that you have just invested into. Anxious but still willing to move forward with it, you wait. Soon after, Nick tells you the investment was a success, and he aliases you with Alice to withdraw the RM250 you’ve just earned, and so you do.

With a reinforced sense of confidence, you then proceed to do the task that was originally set out for you to do and clear any more road-blocks along the way. Thinking that with the money earned from the likes and subs you gave, it really shouldn’t be a problem. 

On the nth cycle, you’re once again met with the same road-block as the first time. However this time, it’s about to get much worse. Nick tells you that you’ll need to invest RM500 into the current crypto market and there would likely be an opportunity to earn even more if there was a spike in the market. Being confident, you do exactly that. 

Minutes later, Nick messages the group and says that the chance to earn even more has actually arrived. This time, he asks for you to put in another RM1,000 on top of the initial RM500 that you put in. Promising that you would get back a total of RM3,750 if you just put in the amount needed. Here, you start feeling anxious and worried, but you decide to play along with it. As they always kept their end of the bargain. Hence, you drop another RM1,000 from your personal bank account.

“They won’t cheat my money right? They’ve always paid me, so they’re still quite trustworthy right?” 

Ten minutes go by, and a notification comes. It’s Nick. He’s here saying that a rare opportunity has arrived as the market has hit an all time high. Asking you to put in this time, RM3,000. You’re shocked; in awe; shaking nervously; and getting the cold sweats. 

“What do I do?! My bank account already empty, and I really need this money back.”

Desperate, you ask your close friend for a loan of RM3,000. You tell him the situation you’re in, and he stops you before you could finish.

“Bro, you got scammed already la.” he says nonchalantly.

“But they’ve always paid me back. Are you sure this is a scam ah?” you ask shakily.

“Trust me bro, you need to stop now. Don’t fall even deeper, you’ll regret it.” he replies.

As the fear sets in, you take a deep breath. Nerves calmed but still shaking. You cut your losses and decide to take snapshots as evidence. You make a police report in the dead of night about what had just transpired. 

You exit the police station, vowing to yourself that you would never believe in these online scams ever again. Though you lost an amount of money, you treat this like an expensive life lesson, never to be done again.

–  This was Kent’s experience. A victim of pig butchering.

The meat of the scam

How Pig Butchering Scams work. (Source: Datos Insights)

It is reported in a study that over US$75 billion (RM355 billion) have been stolen from victims globally and Malaysia is no exception.

Pig butchering scams or better known as (Sha Zhu Pan 杀猪盘) is but one of the many types of online scams that have surfaced over the years. This scam, as its name suggests, revolves around having the farmers (scammers) fatten the hogs (victims) before bringing them to slaughter. 

These scams often start with a proverbial “wrong-number” text. Where the scammers would hope to lure interested victims into investing in cryptocurrencies. The scam works on the basis of trust. 

Scammers not only use wrong-number texts to hook in victims, but also use other methods of winning the victims’ trust via social media apps. Think Facebook, X, Instagram and so on.

These scammers would usually coerce victims, get to know them on a deeper level. But would refuse to meet face-to-face when a date is brought up. Giving excuses or even delaying the meetup. 

Pig butchering works when the trust is built, scammers would offer their victims an opportunity to earn incentives through investing in cryptocurrency. Pressuring them if they refuse to comply. As the peer pressure sets in, victims are likely to partake in the investment because they don’t want to lose the trust built with their new partners. 

This process will repeat itself to a point where the scammers have drained most if not all their savings, and the scam then ends once either the scammer can no longer exploit the victim for more money or when the victim finally notices what is actually happening. Leaving the victim high and dry.

Pig butchering can happen to the best of us. No matter how educated an individual is, once trust has been established, it becomes hard for an individual to see what’s behind the online mask. 

Victims of these scams are often left vulnerable and weak, they could be your friends or family, it is important that you remain open-minded as you are dealing with them, be sensible and not make fun of their turmoil.

Perhaps the best takeaway to avoid scams like this, is to make sure that one doesn’t reply to anonymous texts that promise you riches, no matter how desperate you are for extra cash; and be wary of adding new friends on social media, check and verify if it is a person that actually exists and has some relations to your other friends and family.

Disclaimer: Some of the information in this story has been altered by the author for the ease of understanding the article.