Maryland woman loses millions in crypto "pig butchering" scam as FBI warns of more targets

CBS News

01-04-2025

Baltimore's FBI field office is warning about a
growing cryptocurrency scam that is costing some victims
their life savings.
The scammers, frequently based in Southeast Asia, slowly gain the trust of their targets and then convince them to give money to buy cryptocurrency.
A Maryland woman said she lost millions of dollars.
She told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren she is embarrassed about the ordeal but wanted to tell her story to protect others.
"I put in over $3 million into this, and it showed that I was making almost maybe like 80% profit," the victim said.
WJZ disguised her voice, and we are protecting her identity at her request.
"I never thought I would actually fall into something this crazy. I was so humiliated. It was very hard," she said. "You trust somebody, and you get betrayed. It really hurts more than the money part."
The victim told Hellgren the female scammer first reached out to her unsolicited through a Korean messaging app and spent several weeks earning her trust.
The scammer then slowly asked for money to invest in crypto for her.
The victim shared screenshots with WJZ Investigates.
The victim said the investment portfolio looked like the real thing, and she was first directed to the legitimate Coinbase website before being taken to other sites.
"When she got a lot more of my trust, more money would be poured in," the victim said. "Unless you know what you're doing, you're not going to be able to tell—especially if you've never done crypto before."
Often, the FBI said victims can withdraw a small portion of their money first to build trust. The scammers eventually take it all.
The victim called it "the biggest mistake I've ever made."
"I actually did see a couple red flags, and I decided to ignore it because I just kind of told myself, well, I've got to trust this person," she admitted. "It got to a point where I put so much in, I was just desperate for it to work."
Sarah Lewis, an agent in Baltimore's FBI field office, learned this victim was being scammed through Operation Level Up, the bureau's program to crack down on these crypto scams.
The scammers often prepare their targets in case law enforcement gets involved by coaching the victims on what to say.
"When I spoke to her initially, she told me she wasn't being scammed, and she gave me specific language I knew came directly from the scammer," Lewis said.
Lewis said many victims do not believe her when she calls. She asks them to do their research and warns them not to give more money to the fraudsters.
"I tell them you don't have to believe me, but don't send them any more money," she told WJZ Investigates.
Because of how vicious it is, the scam is commonly known as "pig butchering." Many victims are in their 50s and older, but not all of them.
"They find the victims: They fatten the pig by increasing the amount of money that the victim is depositing into this fraudulent account that they believe they're investing in, and then the slaughter happens when the scammers disappear and the victim loses all of their money," special agent Lewis explained.
Her colleague, special agent Jeremy Capello, said targets are often victimized again.
"They will have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars to this scam, and then they are contacted again by these same scammers pretending to be recovery companies, where they will tell the victim, 'We can recover your cryptocurrency if you pay us a fee,'" Capello said.
Of the websites that the criminals create, he said, "You would never know it's a fake website."
Most victims will never see their money again, although it is urgent for victims to act quickly to report what happened to authorities and give them the best chance of recovering anything.
"Once that money leaves, it goes to the bad guys, and it's gone," Capello said.
In one Maryland case, a man in his 80s was scammed over Facebook and ended up taking his own life after losing his life savings.
The victim who lost millions told WJZ she was lucky to have a strong family support system.
"It's money, and as hard as it is and how humiliating as it is and how hurtful as it is, it's not worth your life," she said.
The FBI said the fraud is a vicious cycle and some of the scammers are victims of human trafficking and forced labor—threatened to make these contacts as they work out of warehouses in Southeast Asia.
The FBI cautions you should not respond to unsolicited messages and never invest your money with people and organizations you do not know.
Agents said many times that the scammers will not want to communicate over the phone and will direct victims to encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp.
Nationwide as of January 2025:
If you believe you might be a victim of this pig butchering crypto scam, you can report it to the internet crime complaint center at
ic3.gov
.