‘I lost $1m to a pig-butchering scam'
Jacqueline Crenshaw turned 60 last year and celebrated with a $80,000 (£59,000) party on a yacht. But she was hiding a secret from her 130 guests.
She had been scammed by a man with whom she'd been in an online relationship for a year.
'I learnt this three weeks before my party. Already $70,000 had been put into it. I couldn't cancel it, I had 130 guests coming,' she says. Her boyfriend – who she knew as Brandon Miller – had promised to pay for everything.
'I had to scrape together another $12,000 to pay everyone. The party went off without a hitch. It was actually amazing, and no one knew. I was holding in this information.'
Gifts of such extravagant amounts are a hallmark of a type of fraud called 'pig-butchering' scams, designed to effectively 'fatten up' the victim by building trust and legitimacy. The fraudsters often push victims into making 'investments', which are never actually invested.
Crenshaw is still calculating the scale of the scam, though experts think she was defrauded out of $1m, including credit cards taken out in her name. She should be looking forward to retirement, but that's no longer possible.
Crenshaw is a pillar of her community. She has worked in healthcare for more than 40 years, and manages a radiology team at the largest hospital in Connecticut. With no children, and 10 years out of her last serious relationship, in the early summer of 2023 she tried online dating.
'I thought I was one of the sharper tacks in the box,' she says. 'It wasn't that I was lonely or anything like that. I have a big job, a busy job, but I was 59 and just wanted to share all the things.
'I had everything I needed, I didn't need anything from anyone. But I did want companionship.'
She signed up for a dating app called BLK, which advertises itself to black Americans. Crenshaw says: 'I talked to a couple of people, and I was like, 'I don't know if this is for me,' but then there was this one particular picture. He had these blue eyes, and I thought, 'Wow, his eyes are really pretty.' So I commented, and a day or so later he responded.'
He told her that he was a widower with two young children, originally from New York but working in Virginia. The children were in Brooklyn with their nanny – or so Crenshaw was told.
They spoke every day over text messages and phone calls, but never on video. 'The one thing that most people ask, which is probably the craziest thing, is that I never saw his face,' she says. But he built trust slowly, persistently, and she was eventually won over.
After weeks and months of discussions, and messages supposedly from his children, they began talking about investing and cryptocurrencies. The scammer told her he'd got into crypto during lockdown. 'Several weeks went by and then he started asking me about investing,' she says.
Crenshaw initially withdrew $40,000 from a retirement account, known as a 401(k), to invest, to which her boyfriend added $60,000, as a 'gift'.
Then he told her she'd get a cheque for $100,000 as her 'return'. 'Lo and behold, I got a cheque for $100,000,' she says. 'The cheque was made out to me from a woman in Florida.'
This set off alarm bells. Worried that this was a fraud, Crenshaw went to her local police station in East Haven, Connecticut, in September 2023. 'The officer just blew me off: 'Ha ha ha, just see if it clears,' he said. If he had taken five minutes and made a call, I wouldn't be talking to anyone about this right now.'
Still unsure, Crenshaw called the bank which had issued the cheque, but was reassured that it was a legitimate payment. She would later discover that the woman who had sent her the cheque had been told that she was an investor, and that she'd sent more cheques to other 'investors'.
'Pig-butchering' scams gain the trust of their victims over a long period, and usually combine an element of romance with the lure of making money through investment schemes or cryptocurrency. The assets involved can range from crypto to whisky, or holiday cottages abroad.
These scams can be particularly devastating because they are combined with romance scams. Romance scams have come to prominence after the so-called 'Tinder Swindler' was unmasked.
Victims are tricked into believing they're in romantic relationships so they will lower their guard and feel obligated to help the fraudster, who they sometimes believe to be in financial difficulty.
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission said that $823m was lost to romance scams in 2024, up from $547m in 2021.
In the UK, the number of reported cases of romance fraud fell between 2023 and 2024, although levels are still nearly double what they were in 2020, according to industry body UK Finance. An estimated £30.5m was lost last year, with three quarters of the romance rackets beginning online.
Crenshaw was reassured when the $100,000 cheque cashed, and the relationship continued apace. Having looked after her late parents, and with six siblings and 50 nieces and nephews, she says it was a revelation to be the one being looked after.
'To keep my sanity, I label it a financial and emotional fraud. This person would have been the best boyfriend, best husband ever, always a step ahead of me. When I had doubts he used to talk me off the ledge.
'The other thing that I think helped bring my walls down is that we prayed every day. He taught me how to pray. It became a routine, it was every day. I thought, 'Wow, this person really cares about me.''
The busy hospital manager would return home from long shifts to find food deliveries on her porch. She was plied with gifts for birthdays and Christmas, including a pillow with both of their names on it. 'All this time, I'm like, 'Oh my goodness, it's finally my turn'. He was like a gift from God. Someone was finally going to take care of me.'
Eventually, her boyfriend introduced a third person to their relationship: Mike, a 'broker', who helped to talk Crenshaw through more complicated 'investments'.
She opened multiple wallets, or accounts, online, drawing further on other retirement accounts, including taking $400,000 from a 403(b) retirement account. She also took out a $189,000 loan against her home.
Emails showed that her investment 'profits' had jumped to more than $1m. Her online partner began sending her $3m house listings for properties in upmarket parts of Connecticut that they could buy and move in together.
He also promised to pay for her 60th birthday party as a grand romantic gesture. He offered a 'blank cheque' – but it was really her money he was using.
Months after she'd approached them, the police department that she had initially contacted called. There had been an anonymous tip-off. She recalls that the officer said: 'Hi Jacqueline, we got an anonymous tip from a gentleman with a thick Indian accent, stating that you were being scammed and he felt sorry for you.'
She adds: 'It was like the earth fell out from beneath me. I was just paralysed, thinking of all the money.'
The police wanted Crenshaw to string the scammer along. But when he realised that she knew it was a fraud, he started using her details to apply for loans and credit cards. She says: 'Once he felt that I knew, I started getting decline letters from credit unions and credit cards. I was traumatised just going to the mailbox.'
She handed over as much evidence as she could, and reported the fraud to the state police. One wallet was traced to Nigeria, another to Singapore.
In total, she estimates that the fraud has cost her $1m – in losses, tax bills and loans taken out in her name. It's likely that her money is gone for good, and the real identity of her online boyfriend may never be known.
Crenshaw has decided to be open about her experience, in the hope that it will stop the same thing happening to someone else.
She's also supporting two fraud measures in the Connecticut state legislature – one to allow law enforcement to seize illegal crypto wallets, and another to better train police about fraud.
'I just want to help people, because people have taken their lives. People are so fearful of the embarrassment, and that's why it's not stopping. It's only got worse. Losses, massive, massive losses. It's just rampant. With AI, it's going to get even worse,' Crenshaw says.
She should be thinking about retirement, but that seems a long way off now. Her home will have to be sold, as she tries to tackle her debts. She earns too much to file for bankruptcy, and so her only option is slowly paying off the loans as she can.
'I do look at the glass half-full because I have a good job and I have my health. I know that people would probably have had a stroke or a heart attack by now, because of the devastation,' she says.
Jonathan Frost, of international fraud consultancy firm BioCatch, says: 'The unfortunate assumption of those who haven't been exposed to these situations tends to be that the victims are at fault or they're somehow foolish.
'It's not the case at all. In fact, more often than not, they tend to be highly educated people. The social engineering aspect of it is so powerful that it overwhelms their otherwise good judgement.'
He says that Crenshaw's case is notable because she was pushed to take money out of her home. This is part of what makes her case so devastating. 'One of the interesting aspects of this case is the equity release part of it. People tend to make the assumption that many victims are being robbed of, not necessarily spare cash, but cash. Whereas, in reality, a lot unfortunately end up divesting their assets in the course of these deceptions,' Frost says.
East Haven police were contacted for comment.
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