Two arrested for laundering $73 million in 'pig butchering' scheme

[TomPluz]

Daren Li, 41, was arrested on April 12 at Atlanta’s airport, and Yicheng Zhang, 38, was arrested on Thursday in Los Angeles for their alleged involvement, the Justice Department said in a statement on Friday.

“The fraud scheme involved more than $73 million laundered through U.S. financial institutions to bank accounts in The Bahamas, and converted to the virtual asset USDT, or Tether,” the DOJ said.

Li, Zhang and others allegedly controlled an "international syndicate" that laundered funds made through "pig butchering" crypto investment scams, according to the statement. Pig butchering scams involve scammers gaining victims' trust, convincing them to give them large amounts of money and then running off with it. Lawmakers and regulators have raised concerns over those types of scams over the past few months.

You can read more of this news here: https://www.theblock.co/post/295202/prosecutors-arrest-two-for-laundering-73-million-in-pig-butchering-scheme

This is my first time to encounter the "pig butchering" term for a scam involving fooling people to just send someone money and then run away with it. Well, the strategy is not something new but maybe the use of USDT in laundering the money can be a new twist. Now, these two sweet talking guys are now facing the full force brunt of the law for the things they did and I am wishing that all their victims will get the justice they all deserve. Let's see how many years these two crooked, evil personalities will be minting soon. Scammers are right now still having a feast and thanking heaven for the use of cryptocurrency but the law is watching them so they should be warned.

[robelneo]

 Scammers are right now still having a feast and thanking heaven for the use of cryptocurrency but the law is watching them so they should be warned.

You are right on that

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in a statement. “While fraud in the crypto markets takes on many forms and hides in many far-off places, its perpetrators aren’t beyond the law’s reach.

Cryptocurrency still has many loopholes, but regulators and the judiciary are upgrading and creating new rules to ensure investors and holders are protected. They have to do this, and the Cryptocurrency community should support it. Otherwise, we will only deal with Cryptocurrency in the black market, and there will be no adoption in the mainstream.

[Faisal2202]

This is my first time to encounter the "pig butchering" term for a scam involving fooling people to just send someone money and then run away with it. Well, the strategy is not something new but maybe the use of USDT in laundering the money can be a new twist. Now, these two sweet talking guys are now facing the full force brunt of the law for the things they did and I am wishing that all their victims will get the justice they all deserve. Let's see how many years these two crooked, evil personalities will be minting soon. Scammers are right now still having a feast and thanking heaven for the use of cryptocurrency but the law is watching them so they should be warned.

To be honest, the term "Pig Butchering" is also new to me, I was calling this scam phishing one till now, but did not know that, different methods have there unique names. Well, I like this name, although it did not suit best for the scam method, but still, its cools. Besides the cool name, I don't know how people can trust an unknown person and even send them your funds. This is definitely not a new thing.

Because till now I have read many such cases, where a victim first fished by these scammers, they either promise you huge returns or luxurious life, these people act a brokers, most people don't know how things works, so they give there money to these fake brokers, and end up a viticm of pig butchering. Its a great thing they have been captured, as with them other will also be captured, I hope the authorities will not go easy on them.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

People will only think that scam is only found in crypto related activities, whereas they have all forgotten that this has always been a normal occurrence since olden days with fiat currency and there have been many ponzi schemes that are promising on giving high returns on investment to people aside from crypto, just from the example made by OP here on this thread, we have them in series like that, they call for people to invest in them and later turned a scam.

[Zed0X]

So I read that it's basically fattening a pig before slaughtering them. That's a long build up and I can see why some people would fall victim to this scheme.

I also didn't know there's a term for that but we have a similar saying in our local language 'pinapataba muna bago katayin'.

People will only think that scam is only found in crypto related activities,

Who are these people that you are referring to? Whoever they are, I doubt they are that ignorant to think it's only happening in crypto.

[Lucius]

As for the term itself, I know it personally because it was mentioned on BTT, although it sounded quite cruel to me then (and now) because it implies something that is by its nature very cruel and bloody, while this is actually a simple fraud.

As for the specific case, the whole thing just shows that scammers know how to use various methods with which they can get really large amounts of money, but it also shows that they don't understand that such things should not be done in the US and that they also use stablecoins, which are completely centralized and it can be frozen regardless of which wallet it is in.

I hope that the victims have learned something, and that at least some of them will get their money back, although it is usually a very long process.

[hugeblack]

The first time I heard the term “pig butchering scams” ​​was in 2020 after Covid-19 pandemic, and it was a long-term scam in which scammers were persuaded by fake identities, and then these scammers convinced them to invest and gave them profits so that the real people would invite their friends and so on until suddenly everything disappeared.
so It is closer to pyramid scam, except that their nature is long-term and they give profits in the beginning.
I don't know, but scammers' use of USDT should be limited and within the scope of traditional fraud and not organized groups, due to the ease of freezing these tokens.

[NotATether]

Well, it's good that they are arresting the money launderers who are helping out with this scheme, but what about  the masterminds of the whole pig butchering scam?

I would've tried to locate them and put them behind bars to dismantle the entire operation. Since they are putting the proceeds inside bank accounts, it really shouldn't be too hard for some government to carry out.

[Davidvictorson]

This is my first time to encounter the "pig butchering" term for a scam involving fooling people to just send someone money and then run away with it. Well, the strategy is not something new but maybe the use of USDT in laundering the money can be a new twist. Now, these two sweet talking guys are now facing the full force brunt of the law for the things they did and I am wishing that all their victims will get the justice they all deserve.

Funny how I just saved my 85year old father from a pig scammer about three months ago. Thankfully, he had me going through his phone to help him out with some settings, and I just happened to see all these text messages that were just like this. It really was scary, they get very personal. My father would have fallen for this scam and it would have been easy for him to go into his retirement fund and send everything to them. He was just the perfect target.

[Baofeng]

I also heard this term before, it was like this victims are being fatten up by this criminals in a make believed stories and then slaughtering them later when they gain the trust of their victims.

So this is a million dollar scam and for sure this is sophisticated attack by the group to target people and how to get their trust to give them the money and supposedly putting it to invest and grow. But they are going to run off with this huge amount of money and the victims didn't know what hit them. And this criminals really know psychology, I mean how can people fall for this trap and just trust someone with your hard earn money?