My Conversation with a Pig Butcher

Many who grew up in English-speaking countries will recognize the nursery rhyme called “This Little Piggy” that involves playing with a child’s toes. Few realize that the words of the rhyme recount the harsh realities of a pig’s life on the farm. The first pig is brought to market, i.e. slaughtered. The little piggy who stayed home, was likely kept to be fattened and/or used for breeding, etc., etc. 

Well, just as most adults sing the song to their children blissfully unaware of the cruel agricultural reality masked by the simple lyrics, so I embarked almost three years ago on an adventure with a “pig butcher” and narrowly escaped a romance scam unharmed to cry “wee, wee” all the way home.

Beware Unusual Crypto Tokens

In this, I was helped tremendously by my vague familiarity with the modus operandi of criminals behind pig butchering schemes and even more so by my extreme wariness of cryptocurrency investments.

And I have to say that the whole process was so casual and until nearly the end within the realm of possibility that I’m not surprised that so many people fall for it. The scripts used by the scammers working the phone chats, if they are even using scripts, are of very good quality. These people sound much more natural than your average participants in a corporate video.

To give you an idea of what (almost) pig butchering looks like. I will share with you snippets from conversations with “Coco”- a Hong Kong Chinese woman who supposedly was staying with her parents in Israel as of September 2023. However, as soon as I suggested we go for a date she mentioned she had a flight back to Hong Kong. Thus began a two-month long-distance courtship. The lack of an actual physical meeting was initially easily explained by the outbreak of war in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that led to the cancellation of many flights and the evacuation of foreign nationals.

Before and after Oct. 7 though, “Coco” made sure to establish her bona fides. She sent a short video of her immaculately designed apartment in Hong Kong. We talked about the high price of real estate in both Tel Aviv and Hong Kong and the importance of family. She shared that she was celebrating the Chinese mid-autumn festival, which would have many delicious dishes. A week or so later she was celebrating China’s National Day.

Suspicious Company Name & Website

At some point, Coco began discussing the activities of her supposedly Hong Kong based employer, who conveniently enough was launching a cryptocurrency called BLH. I received intriguing photos from the cryptocurrency’s supposed launch event.  She sent me a link to her company supposedly known as In-Pex, however the company named InPex with website www.inpex.com is a Japanese oil and gas exploration company. Her company, with the hyphen in the name and in the dot com URL doesn’t have a non-branded website trail online. ChatGPT also gives its website a low trustworthiness score, primarily because the WHOIS records do not disclose the actual ownership details.

To quote ChatGPT: “Scam-checking services mark the domain as having a very low trust score [emphasis in original] and note it was registered only recently, with no verifiable organization publicly attached to it.”

Without doing almost any research, I didn’t click on the website, nor did I invest in Coco’s crypto launch because subconsciously I knew things seemed off. I don’t click on website links to unknown sites from strangers, and certainly don’t take crypto investment tips from strangers. However, we kept talking.

Now for the interesting part. Read the partial transcripts below and judge for yourself on Coco’s ability to interact effectively with her mark, me. Looking at it analytically with most of the text in front of you, it might be easier to determine that she is pushing a cryptocurrency. However, in a 2-month extended conversation with much chit chat, it might seem much less obvious.