David Templeton, an investigator with the RCIPS’s Bureau of Financial Investigation, has written this scenario, using a fictional victim, as a cautionary tale of how people get conned in the notorious so-called ‘pig butchering’ scam.
When 42-year-old Davina Terry joined CaribbeanMatch.io (non-existent website), she was looking for love. She connected with ‘Jerry’ – a charismatic young man who shared her interests in dancing, sport, wine and sailing. The pair spoke often and developed a deep connection. Within a couple of weeks, they had moved their means of communication away from the dating platform and onto a popular message app.
Jerry would message most mornings, telling Davina what he was up to, where he was travelling to and sending photos of the interesting things he was doing. He travelled often for business, but mostly for leisure pursuits and seeing friends, which was why the pair kept their chats to messages and photos. Davina opened up about her life, her career, her family and the recent devastating loss of her remaining parent. Jerry was kind, asked questions about the things that were important to Davina and remembered the things they had discussed previously.
After a couple of months, just in passing, Jerry dropped into conversation that the reason he was able to move to part-time work and follow his passion in sailing was due to one of his high-net-worth clients. His well-connected client, who was now a close friend, had given him an opportunity to invest money in an investment platform that made high returns by trading cryptocurrency futures. Quite technical, but was really not that difficult when he was taken through it. The opportunity was usually only open to those with large sums invested in other products, but his friend had made an exception.
Following the death of her father, Davina was actively considering a place to invest a small part of her recent inheritance. Due to the relationship she had built with Jerry over the last few months, she decided to test a small amount into the investment platform; she was lucky enough to have the opportunity after all. She was directed to a private investment platform on her cellphone and created a log in.
The application looked very technical, with live trading data, moving pictures, nice graphics and profit-and-loss charts. Jerry advised that Davina should start small with just a CI$1,000 investment and guided her through the process of purchasing virtual currency from her bank account and sending it to the platform’s treasury. Over the next couple of weeks, Davina was coached through some initial trades and she saw that she was making a modest profit. She decided to invest another $8,600 to push her over the minimum investment threshold for a higher rate of return.
Upping the level of investment really improved her trading profits and she became comfortable using the platform. After just a month of trading, Davina’s profile on the website now showed nearly three times her initial investment. She decided she would be a fool not to invest something more significant; a rate of return like this could lead to truly generational wealth. Over the next few months, the now nearly $350,000 she had invested grew to well over $1 million.
After discussing the situation with Jerry and with some friends on island, Davina decided that it would be sensible to withdraw her initial investment and continue trading with just the profits. At the point of withdrawal, she discovered she would need to pay a 20% withdrawal tax. Davina found and sent the additional $70,000 to unlock the withdrawal amount. When Jerry went silent and the investment platform disappeared, it suddenly dawned on Davina that she had been conned.
There was no relationship – Jerry was a work of fiction, the pictures specially made by actors and models, the investment platform was just a simulation, and the investments she had made had been stolen and laundered months ago. It was all part of one of the fastest-growing types of scams in the world: the pig butchering scam.
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