I've been using the Internet since the 1990s and tend to think of myself as pretty clued-up when it comes to scams, but they really are getting very clever when compared with older, more obvious scams...
The other day, a message popped up on Telegram:
"Hello, it's me A____ I'm in Oxford if you fancy a coffee?"
I replied with "Who are you? I'm nowhere near Oxford".
This was followed by a series of apologies for having the wrong person, and a thank you for being understanding.
That was that, until several days later, a new message appeared...
"Hi, the way you responded to my silly mistake was very nice - do you fancy a chat?".
She claimed she was new to the UK and just looking for friends - I was suspicious, but went along with it for a bit, trying to find out the scam angle.
She then sent me a couple of photos, and asked if I wanted to move from Telegram to Whatsapp as that was her work account.
I did a reverse image search on her photos (nothing) and a lookup of her number (also nothing), so I started to think that maybe I was being paranoid, that she was just an innocent girl wanting a chat.
Couldn't be more wrong - as the conversation went on over a couple of days, I started to notice more and more 'scammer grammar', like "hello dear", but I still couldn't work out what the scam might be.
So I decided to dig deeper, and Googled 'wrong number scam'.
It turns out there is a very highly organised scam known as 'Pig Butchering' - the idea is to randomly befriend /romance people online through wrong number texts, dating site messages and so on.
My case was textbook - although more women fall victim to this than men.
After a few weeks or even months, the scammer starts to talk about how they earn their money investing in bitcoin, and to encourage you to do the same, on the platform they recommend - they don't directly ask for money, they just use friendly chat, emotional manipulation and more to scam you through a third party.
They literally spend weeks and months grooming their victims (fattening up pigs) before disappearing with all the money! (butchering).
Apart from the money the victims lose, the people performing the scams are often trafficked into modern s1avery by Chinese gangsters, who seduce them with fake jobs and trap them in compounds, not allowing them to leave, and even beating them if they fail to earn money - it's a massive billion dollar operation employing hundreds of thousands of people all the way from Cambodia to Dubai!
It's immense!
So, as a warning to others, if you're concerned that you might be getting scammed, Google 'Pig Butchering' and be very careful of any random wrong-number messages you receive!
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Thanks for the warning OP
