In recent years, the cryptocurrency world has seen a dramatic and frightening rise in highly-sophisticated and fraudulent relationship and romance scams that seek to, and ultimately do, steal from cryptocurrency victims hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
The Chinese phrase for the scheme is sha zhu pan, which — roughly translated to English — means pig butchering. The scheme is given that unflattering name because it describes the process in which the offender builds a relationship with the victim over months — frequently romantic, in which the offender showers the victim with messages of love and affection to emotionally “fatten them up” — similar to fattening a pig, before enticing the victim to invest in a fake cryptocurrency venture and, metaphorically, slaughtering the victim by stealing all of his or her invested assets. Silver Miller has represented numerous victims of relationship scams, which have proven themselves to be some of most confounding schemes plaguing cryptocurrency.
Quite commonly, a relationship scam follows a fact pattern like this:
- Victim meets scammer on a dating website or when the scammer “accidentally” sends a text or social media message to victim to initiate what appears to be an innocent conversation.
- The relationship begins innocently enough with light banter as the scammer -- who is using a fake name -- obtains personal information about the victim and builds a sense of trust from the victim.
- Once the scammer senses that trust has been established, the scammer raises the subject of cryptocurrency trading and entices the victim into exploring investment opportunities that the scammer promises are easy and lucrative. The investments usually begin in small amounts and escalate upward as time goes on.
- The scammer provides the victim false reports of great success with the investments and entices the victim to invest more and more into the fake investment scheme.
- The scammer also has easy and believable excuses as to why the scammer and victim cannot meet in person, which allows the scammer to shield his/her true identity and motive.
- When the scammer is satisfied with the amount extracted from the victim -- or if the victim seems too wary of what is going on -- the scammer cuts off communications and absconds with the victim’s funds.
- At that point, the victim is left with significant financial loss and an effort to chase down a person who was only known online by a false name.
