What Are the Signs of Pig Butchering?

If you've been building a rapport with a stranger through text for some time, there's a chance you might be wrapped up in a pig butchering scheme. Learn the signs of a pig butchering scam and watch out.

Pig butchering scams take bits and pieces from romance and investment scams to create a larger, lethal kind of scam. The amount of time and energy scammers put into pig butchering is a big part of what makes it so dangerous.

While not every pig butchering playbook is the exact same, there's a lot of commonalities between them. If you strike up a conversation with a stranger online and hit even just one of these warning signs, you should be concerned and on alert.

Text messages from nowhere

Be wary of strangers that sent texts out of the blue and are extremely "clingy" even after your primary interaction is over. For example, if someone texts you believing to be someone else and you clarify, yet they insist on chatting with you afterwards. If they send alleged pictures of themselves at this time too, cut the conversation right then and there, as it's most assuredly a prospective scammer.

Moving your conversation somewhere else

If you find yourself chatting it up with one of these strangers and they ask to move the conversation off-platform and onto another app like WhatsApp, that should raise some eyebrows. Especially if you feel like the timing is way too fast. WhatsApp is a particularly popular app for these scammers.

Making excuses for video calls or selfies

If you're chatting with someone who refuses or makes excuses about not video calling, you should be concerned as well. If someone is getting to know you romantically or on a friend-level, there should be no problem with video calling.

Being messaged about a financial opportunity

If you find the person on the other end of your conversation enthusiastic about an investment opportunity, bringing it up out of the blue, or steering the conversation hard into that territory, you need to cut it off. One way or another, this is always the ultimate play for pig butchering scams.

If you make it beyond that point and are linked to a financial site or app to download, sometimes you'll get a warning that what you're trying to access is untrusted for one reason or another. The scammer might even mention this ahead of time and say not to worry about it, but you've got a multitude of reasons why you should.

Stay on alert for pig butchering

Not every instance of pig butchering is going to play out with those exact steps. But the general idea is that scammers come from out of the blue to establish a relationship and introduce some sort of financial element to the relationship. That financial aspect of the relationship involves the victim giving them money or items of great value.

Keep a look out for the warning signs, and keep your friends and family informed about pig butchering scams as well. If nothing else, be there as someone they can lean on if they've found themselves in the middle of one of these scams.

And keep your guard up, too. Pig butchering can happen to anyone.