Pig butchering: the romance and investment scams run from compounds

Series: How minds are moved · Social engineering: the attack on one mind at a time · 4 of 6

On 14 October 2025, the US Department of Justice filed to forfeit 127,271 bitcoin, worth about $15 billion at the time, the largest forfeiture in its history. Prosecutors in Brooklyn said the coins belonged to Chen Zhi, chairman of Cambodia’s Prince Group, and charged him with running forced-labour scam compounds. The same day, the Treasury sanctioned 146 people and companies linked to the group. Prosecutors say the money came from a scam with an ugly name, pig butchering. That scam has people on both ends of it: the victims who are “fattened” with friendship and fake profits, and the workers who, according to UN reports, are often held captive to do the fattening.

Contents · 9 sections

TL;DR #

• Pig butchering is a long scam that mixes friendship or romance with fake investing, usually in cryptocurrency. It runs for weeks or months.
• Much of it is run from guarded compounds in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos. The UN human rights office estimated in 2023 that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and about 100,000 in Cambodia were held and forced to run scams.
• The US Treasury says Americans lost more than $10 billion to Southeast Asian scam operations in 2024. A UNODC report in 2026 estimated 2025 losses across East and Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand at $88 billion to $114 billion.
• Crackdowns are real but uneven: sanctions, raids, extraditions and death sentences in China. UN analysts say the operations move rather than stop.
• The warning signs are consistent: a stranger who becomes a friend, then a mentor, then an investment guide.

What the name means #

The term comes from Chinese criminal slang, sha zhu pan, “killing pig plate”. The victim is the pig. First it is fattened with attention, trust and small paper profits. Then it is “butchered”: every coin is taken, often after extra “taxes” or “fees” to release money that never existed.

The US Treasury’s financial-crimes unit, FinCEN, issued a formal alert about it in September 2023 and gave banks a list of red flags. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report shows why: investment fraud was the costliest category, at $8.6 billion in reported US losses, ahead of every other type of online crime.

How it looks from the victim’s side #

I describe this as the victim experiences it, so that it can be recognised. It is not a guide.

1. A stray message. “Hi, is this Anna? We were supposed to meet for golf.” Or a match on a dating app, or a comment on a hobby group. When you say it’s the wrong number, the sender is charming and apologetic, and the chat goes on.
2. Friendship. Daily messages for weeks. Photos of good food, travel and a successful life. The person is attentive, patient and never asks for anything.
3. The mentor. Eventually they mention, almost in passing, that an uncle or a mentor taught them a trading method. They show you their gains.
4. The platform. They help you open an account on a professional-looking trading site or app. It is fake, but its dashboard is convincing.
5. The first win. You deposit a small amount, it “grows”, and you may even withdraw a little. That is the hook.
6. The big deposit. Larger amounts follow, sometimes from savings, retirement accounts, loans or a remortgaged house.
7. The wall. When you try to withdraw, there is a tax, a fee or an “anti-money-laundering deposit”. You pay it. Then there is another.
8. Silence. The friend and the platform disappear.

This week LSN News, my news engine, picked up an Associated Press story that ran in 30 outlets. It shows another side of the scam. A man’s photos had been stolen and used for dozens of fake romance personas, and some victims later tracked down the real man, sure he was the one they had been talking to. The face in these scams usually belongs to someone who has no idea it is being used.

Who is typing the messages #

This is the part many victims never learn. The “friend” is often a trafficked worker in a guarded compound.

In August 2023, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that at least 120,000 people in Myanmar and about 100,000 in Cambodia may be held in situations where they are forced to carry out online scams, with Laos, the Philippines and Thailand also named as destinations or transit countries. The report described torture, arbitrary detention, sexual violence and forced labour. Most victims were men, many of them educated, lured by fake job adverts for customer-service or IT roles. The figures are estimates. The report itself says the hidden nature of the compounds makes counting hard.

When the Treasury sanctioned 19 targets in Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko area and in Cambodia in September 2025, it described the same methods: false job offers, debt bondage and violence to force people to work. UNODC said in 2026 that people from at least 80 countries and territories had been identified in compounds across the region.

So the scam has two sets of victims, and both are manipulated. The worker is controlled by debt, confiscated passports, quotas and punishment. The target is controlled by friendship and hope.

The business and the governments around it #

The record shows actors from many sides, and none of them comes out clean.

• In Myanmar, according to UN and US government reports, many compounds grew in border areas controlled by armed groups allied, at various times, with the military. The Treasury sanctioned the Karen National Army, an armed group in the Shwe Kokko area, in May 2025.
• In Cambodia, the Treasury described Chinese-built casinos converted into scam centres. Prince Group, a large Cambodian conglomerate, rejected the US allegations as baseless. In January 2026 Cambodia arrested Chen Zhi, revoked his Cambodian citizenship and extradited him to China.
• China has run its own crackdown. In September 2025 a court in Wenzhou sentenced 11 members of what prosecutors called the Ming family crime group, from Myanmar’s Kokang region, to death. Thousands of Chinese nationals were repatriated from Myanmar compounds.
• In October 2025 Myanmar’s military raided the KK Park compound. About 1,500 people crossed into Thailand. The junta later said it was demolishing the buildings, but satellite images analysed by AFP showed much of the complex still standing weeks later, and some analysts called the operation a public-relations exercise.

UNODC’s April 2025 report estimated that hundreds of industrial-scale scam centres made just under $40 billion a year in profit, and found the model spreading to Africa, South Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific. Its analysts say raids scatter the operations into villas and smaller sites instead of ending them.

What it can and cannot do #

Pig butchering is slow, which is both its strength and its weakness. Weeks of contact build real attachment, and the fake platform shows gains the victim can see. But a slow scam also gives the victim, the family and the bank many chances to notice. FinCEN’s alert gives banks a list of red flags to watch for, and a single question from a bank employee can stop a large transfer.

It does not target only the lonely or the naive. Reported victims range from retirees to young professionals, including people who work in finance and technology. What they share is not low intelligence but a moment of isolation, plus a stranger who was patient enough to wait for it.

How to notice it #

• A “wrong number” or random contact turns into a daily friendship.
• You have never met in person or on a live, unplanned video call, and there’s always a reason why not.
• The conversation drifts to money, and especially to a special method, an uncle, or a mentor.
• You’re steered to a platform or app you hadn’t heard of, not to a regulated broker you can look up.
• You’re shown screenshots of gains, and your own early gains look too smooth.
• Withdrawing requires a fee, tax or deposit first.
• You are asked to keep it from family or your bank, “because they won’t understand”.

What to do:

1. Check any trading platform against your national financial regulator’s register.
2. Never pay to get your own money out. That is the butchering stage.
3. Tell someone you trust. Scams feed on secrecy.
4. If you have paid, contact your bank and the police at once, and beware of “recovery” services that promise to get the money back for a fee. They are often the same people.

Frequently asked questions #

Why “pig butchering”? #

It’s a translation of the Chinese slang term sha zhu pan. The victim is fattened with trust and fake profits before everything is taken.

Are the people messaging me criminals or victims? #

Often both. UN agencies have documented that many workers are trafficked and coerced. That doesn’t change what you should do. Stop engaging, don’t send money, and report the account.

Can the money be recovered? #

Sometimes, if the bank acts fast or law enforcement seizes funds, as US prosecutors are trying to do in the Prince Group case, where a forfeiture case is pending. Usually it can’t. So-called recovery agents who ask for upfront fees are a second scam.

Are crackdowns working? #

They disrupt the business but haven’t ended it. Sanctions, seizures and extraditions are real, but UNODC reports that the operations move and spread. Your own warning signs are a more reliable defence than any raid.

The lesson #

Pig butchering is social engineering played slowly. It takes a stranger, turns him into a friend, the friend into a mentor, and the mentor into a bank you can never withdraw from. Behind the friendly messages there is often a person who is also trapped. Neither of them chose the arrangement, and both pay for it. The scam needs secrecy and patience to work. The best defence is to break the secrecy early and tell someone, before the fattening ends.