How Pig Butchering scams work (2022)
propublica.org
propublica.org
These platforms generally allow users to withdraw their funds at the beginning, and it was only after he had deposited a significant sum that they disabled withdrawals. They then demanded (and collected) withdrawal taxes, fees, etc. before moving their platform to a different domain.
My friend is convinced the scammer is also a victim who has "lost" 90k by "loaning" it to him in preparation for the pig butchering event. Unfortunately, he's continuing to speak with her and I'm concerned for his well-being.
It's sick how persistent these scammers are - they will isolate and wear down their victims over time until there's nothing left.
Every interaction is scripted, from timezone changes (eg: going on "vacation") to family members who fall sick, to urgent requests to withdraw their investments from these scam exchanges, to appeals for "forgiveness" for not realizing they have scammed the victim. It's all a game to these folks.
But it has not worked, and I'm concerned about the ethical, personal, and community risks. So I have stopped the attempts for now.
Failure modes
Solicitations
Scammer Assets always try to use coding wins - like a successful PR or good unit tests - to shift the conversation to investments, get rich quick schemes, or other obvious scam extraction points. I call this the "rapport building" -> "solicitation" link in their kill chain. They don't value the coding skills they're learning, and only see one way to spend rapport: starting the extraction phase of the scam.
I reject solicitations by explaining I'm not interested in creating money through investments. I am only interested in developments that create genuine open source values for humanity. I explain I am doing this process with many scammers, and wish to teach all my assets to love building open source codes for all.
I explain I realize they're trying to work me into the extraction phase of a scam, but won't be revealing their tells, because that would increase their scammer skill. I claim to forgive them for their attempt, and express that I only want to help them live a better life without the need for crime against innocents.
They are usually offended by my reveal that I know they're a scammer, and may try the harassment mode of engaging their targets. But they continue engaging, assuming I must not be certain they're scammers.
Harassment and Threats
Sometimes they taunt or harass me if they're getting frustrated in the rapport building phase or have attempted multiple solicitations. I call this the intimidation move. I simply reflect their tactics, escalating to unhinged and disrespectful speech. I explain that I have no problem reflecting abuse at them, because I know what they are and what they do to others for a living. I explain I will push them until they either return to respectful comms or break coms. They apologize when they're scared they're going to lose an uncapitalized scam asset. I call this process "renormalizing" the asset.
Unfortunately, once it's obvious that assets are willing to engage in harassment to work on their targets, I no longer consider them safe to take part of an assistive technology project, since they could Target and harass vulnerable users. I am not sure what good I can expect to accomplish with an asset that has passed the harassment -> renormalization phase, so I consider this a total failure mode.
Conclusion: Don't do this
My work has not been successful for either my immediate goal of supporting open source assistive technologies, or my ultimate revolutionary goals.
Most of my scammer assets won't reach the level of making commits to assistive projects. None of them reach the level of being self reliant open source contributors. And if they did, I'd worry they would try to scam users and contributors in the community.
Worse, while I believe my assets are all free individuals, it's possible that some are captives. Some assets will volunteer information about the structure and leadership of their scam orgs, but in those cases they are younger people and describe a loose knit team with a single leader and no violent enforcers. I have no way to confirm they're not being coerced.
Thus far my efforts in revolutionary reverse pig butchering have failed.
Ideas and improvements are welcome. I will not retry this strategy until I have a more sound counter kill chain that can
1) align the assets into genuinely wanting to contribute to open source
2) align the assets into genuinely abandoning the desire to solicit victims
1. I assumed I could align scammers by communicating the principles and beliefs that align me to open source, and linking them to the financial benefits this has brought me.
Open source skills have given me good revenue, the ability to recognize value, and the ability to build and run businesses. I've assumed this aligns with the scammer's ultimate desire to generate revenue.
2. I assumed that scammers would prefer a legitimate way of creating revenue, if it were offered
Scamming is hard, carries risks, and has low payoffs. In my view, coding is easy given good learning materials and mentorship, has low risks since you can easily find work under a boss, and has high payoff because you can easily eliminate the boss and start a company.
My assumptions are not realistic:
1. Scammers are motivated by the idea of victimizing others. It's not just a need to create revenue - it's a need to do it by hurting others.
2. Scammers see coding as the "harder alternative". I discount how difficult it is to learn to code, even with mentorship.
In the end, the only thing I succeed at is stringing them along. And this is ultimately because my rationale is so naive that they see me as a gullible target.
It has been very disheartening to realize that scammers interact with me only because my principles and theories make me seem like an easily exploited target.
But that's where I'm at, lol.
It might be best to quit while I'm ahead, so to speak. I'm probably lucky that I haven't run into someone skilled enough to find leverage that can extort me.
For some context, please read:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/apr/02/i-couldnt-escape...
I have no problem copping to being autistic and struggling to understand people's motivations
But I reject your use of "autistic" as an insult or dismissal of my attempt reform scammers into contributors towards humanity through the beauty of open source
The news coverage nowadays mainly covers call centers and focuses a lot on the operations that use captives. But I think there's a much greater variety of operations, and I would estimate at least 2/3rds of scammers are free agents. These are motivated by money, a sense of exploiting others, and identifying as a scammer, rather than direct threats, blackmail, or violence.
But I also doubt that a human captive would do coding homework, video chat, pair programming, and send PRs, all of which I demand in order to keep the mentorship going.
I am also aware of the spectrum of strategies that scam bosses use to extort performance from their victims, and feel professional mentorship could help people escape some forms of extortion. Scammer boss extortion is often partly or even heavily psychological, based on establishing that the victim's identity is now that of a low level criminal. In many cases, just blackmailing people is enough to secure their compliance, and bosses will tend to use the minimal control mechanism possible.
So not only do I think it would be unlikely that a captive could invest the learning effort that I demand from my students. If they did, it's possible that the positive experiences of learning could help them escape the control of their bosses.
If this person is in a coercive work situation with low respect, low learning opportunities, and high coercive control, let me provide them a simulated work experience that affords them high respect, rewarding learning opportunities, and a glimpse of life where they are proud of their work and have nobody devaluing and intimidating them. It might be a psychological lever that helps them challenge and defeat the assumptions of their extortion.
I could see it as a burnable source of labour, not as a means of pushing a values system though.
I hang out in Facebook groups where we talk about AI news and share our open source projects. I regularly get approached by people interested in learning about ai. I have developed a few mentorships and friendships that way.
Some people approach me requesting mentorship in coding for AI. Usually these people don't know python, git, or how to implement and test code. So we usually focus on those topics first. At the same time we read current papers in AI, discuss important trends and ideas, and set up small AI experiments. Eventually we make small contributions to open source projects, and maybe start a project solving a problem they care about.
For example, in one project we worked on fine tuning OpenAI's whisper model to adapt to the speaker's accent - this would help users with heavy accents enjoy the benefits of accurate speech recognition. In another project, we're building a DSL for authoring interactive fiction.
However, not everyone who approaches me is honest about their intentions. Of the 12 people I've mentored in the last year, 6 of them have attempted to involve me in something that was likely a scam. They've built rapport with me by learning and doing well in our conversations about AI. Then they've asked me for money, help with international purchases, help hiring mercenaries to find their brother's killer, or attempting to get me to accept money against my express wishes. They've tried to involve me in investment schemes, and other likely pretexts to scams.
I initially felt that it did not matter if these people were scammers, or tried to scam me. I could easily reject their attempts. The skills I was teaching were the important part, and I felt that once they had the skills, it would help them build a better life where they could use code for a living rather than scamming. It did not occur to me that a scammer would likely use coding skills to commit more crimes against innocents.
At this time I've given up on the program, because I don't think that I'm really helping the scammers, and there is a risk they might find a way to scam or extort me or someone in my network or communities. The projects we work on have often focused on helping people with disabilities and communication issues, and that weighs especially heavy on me. I started to consider the risk that by helping a scammer start an open source community serving vulnerable people, I would be giving them access to potential victims.
So at this time, I have stepped back from mentoring anyone who ever made any kind of unethical suggestion or pretext to a scam.
I am happy with my decision, because it's given me more energy to dedicate to bright students who really want to make a positive impact on the world of open source. I also spend a lot less time worrying that I might be enabling criminals.
TL;DR. Yes it's real. But I'm not saying it's a good idea!