November 20: Srinagar Though the Ministry of Home Affairs Cyber Monitoring Wing, Cyber Dost, has advised people to take care, the “Pig Butchering” scam has now begun to deceive and steal money from individuals in the realm of cybercrime.
A sophisticated new twist that blends romantic fraud with a financial spin is included in the new scam called “Pig Butchering.”
A tried-and-true, meticulously planned, and very hands-on method of fattening the prey before slaughter is referred to as “pig butchering.”
Southeast Asia is where the frauds started, and they are quickly spreading worldwide. A group of con artists that mine dating apps and other media platforms for potential victims are mostly responsible for carrying out this fraud.
Assuming the identity of an inaccurate number or an old friend, a con artist creates a phony profile and uses it to contact prospective victims via social media, WhatsApp, Tinder, or other dating apps, as well as odd SMS. Although no such instance has been reported in Kashmir so far, a Cyber Police officer said that the objective is to approach the victim in a friendly manner and try to become their new friend or lover. Multiple calls result from the new friend’s creation of reasons to carry on a discussion. In order to infiltrate their victim’s everyday life, they gradually build a friendship.
They gradually offer the concept of making a business investment, according to the official, while establishing confidence with the victim.
In reality, he said, the victim is being coerced into making an investment by “gradual drawing into what looks to be benign talk about investments and earnings.”
Doubt
According to authorities, the strangers are sending apparently innocent text messages out of the blue while they find the individual being lured into “pig butchering.”
Then, the strangers said, they attempted to shift the discussion to WhatsApp or another social networking platform.
“The suspects running these scams are those who avoid video calls with multiple excuses or outright refuse to initiate any kind of video call,” the authorities said, going on to say that these individuals engage in small talk about their intimate knowledge of investments.
They claimed that when the investment app is launched, it prompts a warning that it is “untrusted” or that the computer’s antivirus software flags it as possibly dangerous. “Most of the time, the URL of the investment platform doesn’t match the official website of a popular cryptocurrency market or exchange but may be very similar,” they said. But it seems too good to be true—the investment opportunity.
