US people have been suffering major financial losses as a result of pig slaughtering scams, a fast expanding criminal activity including online romance, phony cryptocurrency investments, and human trafficking.The issue is getting worse, according to Erin West, a deputy district attorney in Santa Clara, California, who stated in a recent interview that she gets five to six letters a day on average from people who have been victims of pig slaughtering.
“We are receiving 5-6 emails a day from people who are victims of pig butchering. The most recent victim lost $5 million dollars and that’s not even the biggest amount one victim has lost to this scam.”
To make matters worse, the money that has been stolen is being transferred to international criminal groups operating in Cambodia and Myanmar, where they are utilizing enslaved people as a kind of virtual labor force to carry out false promises of pig butchering.Over 4,300 complaints about pig slaughtering have been received by the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), with a total of losses exceeding $400 million, according to TRM Labs, a recognized blockchain intelligence business.There’s no indication that the spike in pig slaughtering will stop, according to reports from FBI field offices.
In spite of losing around $2 billion to bitcoin thefts, there was a minor decrease in hacking activities that targeted the cryptocurrency sector in 2023.Hackers were able to steal $2 billion in digital assets over the course of the year, according to a recent analysis from De.FI, a well-known web3 security company best known for its REKT database.Although that quantity is still concerning, there hasn’t been a crypto hacking incident since 2021.From the historic theft of the Ronin network in 2022, where hackers stole over $600 million in cryptocurrency, to the most recent attack on Mixin Network, which netted almost $200 million, the REKT database lists the most destructive cryptocurrency hacks.
“This cumulative amount of stolen funds, spread across multiple incidents, highlights the ongoing vulnerabilities and challenges within the DeFi ecosystem,” stated De.FI in its report.
“2023 served as a testament to both the persisting vulnerabilities and the progress made in addressing them, despite muted interest in the space during the first half of the year due to the ongoing bear market.”