BrianKrebsIt's nice to see what appears to be real movement toward law enforcement here and globally to go after the perpetrators and enablers of pig butchering scams. These four accused were living in the United States, allegedly working w/ human traffickers throughout E. Asia to trick or kidnap people into perpetrating romance scams over the Internet 24/7.
I wish I still didn't get several desperate emails from people a month, full of shame and anger and frustration at having fallen for a pig butchering scam and lost their life's savings. The FBI said this year that pig butchering scams are now a $3B problem.
I'm not particularly proud of some of my early responses to these messages, which basically said, "sorry, but your money is almost certainly gone forever, and anyone offering to help you get some or all of it back for a fee is scamming you."
While this is still mostly true, I always now advise every single crypto scam victim -- pig butchering, theft, whatever -- to be sure to file both a police report and a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3.gov), which collects stats on cybercrime and sometimes bundles victim reports into cases for DOJ/FBI prosecutors and investigators.
It is not out of the realm of possibility that you could see some of this money back many years from now if they ever catch the people responsible and/or are able to seize their financial accounts. Again, an outcome like this is unlikely and could take years. However, if you don't file official complaints it can be hard to learn if any of that ever comes to pass, because if they do one day seize some money from a crime group, they would try to contact victims and help them with remuneration.
One thing I've learned is that very often stolen funds are not gone forever in some badguy bank account but instead held by the U.S. govt in legal limbo because they were seized in the process of law enforcement actions. But the money just sits there in the govt's possession while the legal process goes forward, and meanwhile victims have no idea that some or all of their money is being held by the govt, and can't access that either b/c it's officially "evidence" of a crime.
IMHO, there is a yawning disconnect between the government's ability and eagerness to seize ill-gotten crypto funds and any process to figure out who got robbed and notifying them within some kind of time frame that is likely to be meaningful to their lives. So many people really have lost everything, and yet they really haven't. Anyway, the process here is super spotty, but I think it will improve over time. It has to.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/07/massive-losses-define-epidemic-of-pig-butchering/
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