Scammers target job seekers as fraud ecosystem becomes ‘industrialised'

Khaleej Times

20-02-2025

Scammers received at least $9.9 billion in crypto revenues from their illicit activities, recent research shows.
According to Chainalysis' 2025 Crypto Crime Report, this figure is estimated to rise to an all-time high of $12.4 billion as ongoing analysis uncovers more illicit activity.
Chainalysis' findings also highlighted high-yield investment scams (50 per cent) and pig butchering (33 per cent) to be the two most prevalent fraud and scam types.
Interestingly, despite pulling in half of all scam revenue in 2024, high-yield investment scam inflows declined by 36 per cent YoY. On the other hand, pig butchering revenue increased by almost 40 per cent YoY, and the number of deposits to pig butchering scams grew nearly 210 per cent YoY, potentially indicating an expansion of the victim pool. Conversely, the average deposit amount to pig butchering scams declined 55 per cent YoY.
A pig butchering scam is a type of investment fraud where scammers build trust with victims over time before convincing them to invest in fake opportunities — often related to cryptocurrency, forex trading, or stocks. The term comes from the idea of 'fattening up the pig before slaughter,' meaning scammers groom their victims emotionally and financially before stealing their money.
Jacqueline Burns Koven, head of cyber threat intelligence at Chainalysis said: 'The combination of lower payment amounts and increased deposits could indicate a change in strategy for pig butchering scams. Scammers could be spending less time priming targets, and therefore, receiving smaller payments, in exchange for targeting more victims.'
This evolution of scammers' strategies is further evidenced in the growing number of employment or work-from-home scams that Chainalysis researchers observed. Though employment scam inflows represented less than one per cent of total on-chain value that scams received last year, thousands of people have unwittingly paid into fake job platforms.
'On the back of landmark initiatives, such as the UAE government's recent 'Remote Working in the UAE' report, the country's job market can be expected to see a rise in remote and hybrid work opportunities. While the majority of these will be legitimate, scammers will no doubt be keen to take advantage. The tools and techniques they have been honing in recent years with romance scams, can be easily adapted to now trick anxious, perhaps vulnerable, job seekers,' Koven stated.
A major contributor to the growth in pig butchering and employment scams is the ongoing 'industrialisation' of the fraud ecosystem, epitomised in the staggering $375.9 million in cryptocurrency payments made to scam technology vendors on Huione Guarantee in 2024 alone, one of the most prolific marketplaces for illicit tools and services.
When comparing crypto flows from 2021 through 2024 based on a compound annual growth rate, Huione scam infrastructure providers' revenue has increased exponentially, with AI service vendors' revenue growing by 1900 per cent, indicating an explosion in the use of AI technology to facilitate scams. These AI vendors offer technology that helps scammers impersonate others or generate realistic content that tricks victims.
Through 2024, Chainalysis also tracked nearly $95 million in crypto payments to data vendors on the marketplace. These vendors sell stolen data such as personally identifiable information (PII) that bad actors can exploit for illicit purposes, often with information on 'quick kill' targets i.e. potential victims who are most susceptible to being scammed. 'With easy access to comprehensive victim databases, and AI-powered tools, scammers are better equipped than ever. It's time to move past the outdated notion of scammers as unsophisticated opportunists and recognise fraud as the thriving, highly organised ecosystem it is today. Effectively disrupting and dismantling it will require a coordinated effort from regulators, law enforcement, and the private sector,' added Koven.
'Both fraud detection and compliance rely on granular, real-time data. Efforts to combat scams must focus on both prevention and enforcement, requiring stronger investigative resources and greater enablement of government agencies and local authorities. As scams continue to evolve, investigators need access to deeper intelligence, faster insights, and specialised expertise to detect and disrupt these emerging threats,' Koven said.