By J. Mesa
Valentine’s Day passed yesterday, and scammers treated it as their busiest week of the year. The Federal Trade Commission counted more than $1 billion in reported romance scam losses in 2023. The real number runs higher, because most victims tell nobody. If you own a business, this matters to you twice: your family is a target, and so is the bookkeeper who holds the keys to your bank account.
What is a romance scam?
A romance scam is a fraud in which a criminal builds a fake relationship with you online, earns your trust over weeks or months, and then asks for money. The scammer invents a person. That person has stolen photos, a believable job, and a reason they can’t meet you. Common cover stories include a military deployment, an offshore oil rig, a medical mission, or a construction contract overseas.
The request for money comes after the trust. A customs fee. A hospital bill. A plane ticket to come see you. You pay, a new emergency appears, and the cycle repeats until you run out of money or patience.
What is pig butchering?
Pig butchering is a romance scam with an investment scam attached. The name comes from a Chinese phrase about fattening a pig before slaughter. The scammer fattens you with attention first.
The sequence follows a script:
- A stranger contacts you. The opener is often a “wrong number” text, a dating app match, or a friendly message on LinkedIn or Facebook.
- The stranger moves the conversation to WhatsApp or Telegram and chats with you every day.
- After a few weeks, the stranger mentions an uncle or a mentor who taught them to trade cryptocurrency. They show you screenshots of their gains.
- They walk you through opening an account on a trading site. The site is fake. The scammer controls it.
- You deposit a small amount. The site shows a profit. You withdraw a little, and the withdrawal works. That test withdrawal is bait.
- You deposit more. Sometimes much more. The dashboard shows a fortune.
- You try to cash out. The site demands a “tax” or a “verification fee” first. You pay. The money is gone, and so is your new friend.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported $4.57 billion in investment fraud losses for 2023, and crypto schemes like this one drove most of that figure.
Who do romance scammers target?
Everyone. Older adults lose the largest sums, because they have retirement savings and home equity. Younger adults report scams more often. Recent widows and widowers, people going through divorce, and people who relocated for work are frequent targets, because loneliness makes a daily “good morning” text feel valuable.
Education does not protect you. Engineers, nurses, and business owners have lost six figures. The scammers work in teams, follow tested scripts, and practice on thousands of people. You are facing a call center, and the person typing to you may be a trafficking victim forced to work the script.
What are the warning signs of a romance scam?
Watch for these signals in yourself or in someone you care about:
- The person can never video chat, or the video is short, dark, and glitchy.
- They say “I love you” within days.
- They ask you to leave the dating app and move to WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal.
- Their job keeps them overseas or out of reach.
- Every plan to meet falls apart at the last minute.
- They ask for money, gift cards, crypto, or your bank login.
- They coach you on an investment that only works through one website or app.
- They tell you to keep the relationship or the investment secret from your family and your bank.
That last sign matters most. A scammer needs you isolated. Anyone who tells you to lie to your bank teller is robbing you.
How do I check whether an online match is real?
Run three tests before you get attached.
- Reverse image search. Save their profile photos and upload them to Google Images or TinEye. Stolen photos often show up under a different name.
- Live video. Ask for a video call and ask them to wave or hold up three fingers. A real person can do it in ten seconds.
- The money rule. Decide today that you send no money to anyone you have not met in person. Write the rule down. Tell a friend about it.
For investments, search the platform name with the word “scam.” Check the firm with your state securities regulator and FINRA BrokerCheck. A legitimate broker holds a registration. A fake trading site holds a web address registered last month.
How do romance scams hurt a business?
Three ways.
First, embezzlement. A person deep in a scam will borrow from anywhere to keep the “relationship” or the “investment” alive. If that person runs your payroll or pays your vendors, your operating account sits within reach. Courts have sentenced bookkeepers and even a bank CEO for stealing from employers to feed a pig butchering scheme.
Second, money mule work. Scammers ask victims to receive and forward money “as a favor.” An employee who agrees may route stolen funds through accounts tied to your business, and the bank will freeze those accounts.
Third, access. A scammer who spends two months chatting with your office manager learns your vendors, your schedule, and your software. That information feeds a business email compromise attack later.
Protect the business with controls that do not depend on any one person’s judgment. Require two people to approve wire transfers and new payees. Review bank statements yourself each month. Cover romance and investment scams in your security awareness training, and say it out loud: this happens to smart people, and nobody here gets mocked for reporting it.
What should I do if I sent money to a scammer?
Move fast. Hours count.
- Stop all contact. Do not explain, and do not send one more payment to “unlock” your funds.
- Call your bank or card issuer and ask them to reverse or recall the transfer. For a wire, ask for a recall the same day.
- If you paid with gift cards, call the card company with the card numbers and receipt.
- Report to the FBI at ic3.gov and to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Include wallet addresses, transaction IDs, phone numbers, and screenshots.
- Change the passwords on any account you discussed with the scammer, and turn on multi-factor authentication.
- Tell someone you trust. Shame keeps victims silent, and silence helps the scammer.
Can I get my money back?
Sometimes, if you act within a day or two and the money moved through a bank. Crypto transfers are far harder to recover.
Expect a second wave. After a loss, “recovery agents” will contact you and promise to retrieve your funds for an upfront fee. They are the same criminals, or their colleagues. The FBI, the FTC, and your bank charge nothing to take a report, and no legitimate firm guarantees recovery.
How do I talk to a family member who is being scammed?
Skip the lecture. A person in a scam believes they are in love, and an attack on the relationship pushes them toward the scammer. Ask questions instead. Have you seen them on video? What happened the last time you planned to meet? Would you run their photos through an image search with me? Offer to sit with them while they call the bank. Keep the door open, because most victims come back to the one person who did not shame them.
Your next step
Set a two-person rule for payments in your business this week, and bring this topic to your next staff meeting. If you want help building controls and training that cover fraud like this, contact Cerberus Cybersecurity or review our services.