Pig Butchering (Romance-Investment Scam)

It began in China around 2016, where organised gambling-linked gangs ran 'sha zhu pan' scams on Chinese-speaking victims; no single first case is credited, but the industrial form is traced to the casino compounds of Sihanoukville, Cambodia after the country's 2019 online-gambling ban, and the Prince Group case (charged 2025) is its most notorious.

The name is a translation of the Chinese term 'sha zhu pan' ('killing-pig game'), used from about 2016-2017 for scams that 'fatten' a victim with attention and fake profits before taking everything. It began as a scam aimed mainly at Chinese-speaking victims and was run by organised crime groups linked to online gambling. After Cambodia's 2019 ban on online gambling and the COVID-19 border closures, many casino and gambling compounds in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos turned to industrial-scale scamming, often staffed by trafficked workers held against their will (UN OHCHR, Aug 2023). From about 2020 the scripts were translated and aimed at victims worldwide, mostly paid in cryptocurrency. The FBI now calls crypto investment fraud the single largest source of reported losses to Americans.

A stranger makes contact through a 'wrong number' text, a dating app or social media, and builds a friendly or romantic relationship over weeks. The conversation moves to an encrypted messaging app, and the contact mentions how much they earn trading crypto, gold or forex. The victim is steered to a fake trading website or app that shows invented profits, so they invest more and may even be allowed a small early withdrawal. When the victim tries to take the money out, they are asked for 'taxes' or 'fees', and then the platform and the contact disappear. Many of the people typing the messages are themselves trafficking victims forced to work in scam compounds.

It is cheap to run at scale: compounds staff thousands of trafficked workers on scripted chats, with fake trading apps, SIM banks and crypto wallets as the only tools, and the operator needs no technical skill. Returns dwarf most crimes: UNODC estimated $18-37 billion was lost to scams in East and Southeast Asia in 2023 alone, and Chainalysis put all crypto scam revenue at about $17 billion in 2025. Prosecution is rare because the operators sit in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, victims pay in crypto that is laundered through services such as Huione, and the people typing the messages are themselves victims.

The FBI logged $7.2 billion in crypto-investment fraud losses reported by Americans in 2025, the largest single loss category, and UNODC estimated up to $37 billion lost across East and Southeast Asia in 2023. The largest case is the Prince Group, where the US moved to forfeit 127,271 bitcoin worth about $15 billion in October 2025. Beyond money, the UN estimated in 2023 that 120,000 people in Myanmar and 100,000 in Cambodia were held in compounds and forced to scam, and victims have lost homes, pensions and in some cases their lives.