Home » News & Events » Scammers Use Financial Grooming to Steal Victims’ Savings
By Ken Budd, AARP
Her name, she said, was Jessie. Dennis Jones, 82, met her on Facebook. The divorced, beloved grandfather and father had chatted online with Jessie for months, and he felt close to her, even though they’d never met. On a family vacation, he revealed to his son and daughter that he was exploring a major cryptocurrency investment opportunity. But the investment, and the friendship, were frauds. Jones invested his life savings — and Jessie still pressed him for more money. He was financially ruined. Soon after, a distraught Jones ended his life.
“There wasn’t enough [money left] even to pay for his headstone,” Jones’s daughter Laura said on a recent episode of the AARP podcast The Perfect Scam.
This story isn’t unusual, unfortunately. Jones was the victim of a financial grooming scam, often known as pig butchering. It’s typically an overseas-based fraud where scammers connect with you online, form a relationship, then lure you into bogus cryptocurrency investments. The criminal may take weeks or months to establish trust — grooming the victim — and finding commonalities (“You’re a widow? I lost my spouse as well… “), before eventually mentioning that they’ve recently made a lot of money on a certain investment platform. Maybe you’d be interested in giving it a try?
“Pig butchering” comes from “shā zhū pán,” a Chinese mob term that means fattening a pig before slaughter. Given the term’s crudeness, AARP refers to it as “financial grooming.” INTERPOL calls it “romance baiting.” And it’s a serious, growing problem.
Losses to investment scams, fueled largely by financial grooming, rose from $3.31 billion in 2022 to $4.57 billion in 2023, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). They can be devastating. In September 2024, for instance, an Illinois widower had nearly $1 million stolen from her in a financial grooming scam, she told a local news station. That same month, a North Carolina man revealed that he’d lost $750,000.
“My inbox is flooded with emails,” says Erin West, a former deputy district attorney in Santa Clara County, California, who spent five years focusing on battling financial grooming and, in some cases, managing to get the stolen money back to victims. She’s since founded a nonprofit called Operation Shamrock, dedicated to preventing these scams. “I hear from [victims] even though [Operation Shamrock] is not a reporting platform. By the time they get to me, they’re desperate, and nobody has helped them.”
Financial groomers are masters of manipulation. Using a fake online persona, they will contact the target through a dating app, social media platform, or an unsolicited message, such as a wrong-number text (the recipient will respond with something like, “You have the wrong number,” and a conversation ensues). Then, there will be a long get-to-know-you period, where the victim is convinced that they’ve established a new romance or friendship before the criminals reveal an amazing investment opportunity. Usually, it involves cryptocurrency, but it could be gold bars or other commodities, Stokes says.
Because victims may be reluctant at first, scammers often start by suggesting small, low-risk investments and providing fake returns. Victims see fabricated profit reports and testimonials, and “highly polished documents, websites, or links to what appear to be legitimate investment platforms,” West warns. “They will tell you to open accounts on online investment websites and instruct you to deposit money via wire transfer to shell companies, or direct transfers on legitimate virtual asset service providers (VASPs) or cryptocurrency exchanges,” according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The criminals also apply psychological pressure. They might urge quick action (you’ll make less money if you wait, they’ll say). Once you invest, scammers will push you to invest more money and use money-laundering tactics to move digital assets “across multiple jurisdictions and exchanges, making them nearly impossible to track,” according to TRM Labs, a company that helps financial institutions and government agencies investigate financial crimes. You’ll likely encounter issues ranging from hidden fees to difficulties withdrawing money. After the victim’s finances are drained, the scammer vanishes.
In November 2024, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, announced that it had taken down more than two million accounts linked to scam centers in five countries. But financial grooming shows no signs of slowing. Some ways to stay safe:
1. Research investments. “Never invest in something that you do not completely understand,” says scam expert Steve Weisman, founder of Scamicide.com. Do your homework. Stokes recommends the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website, investor.gov, which offers advice for new and inexperienced investors.
2. Talk to a financial advisor. If the investment is legitimate, consulting an investment advisor shouldn’t be an issue. But scammers will tell you not to do this. They’ll say, “Don’t tell anybody about this,” or emphasize that you can only trust them. That’s a good sign that you should talk to someone else.
3. Ignore out-of-the-blue communications. If you receive a call, email, or text from someone you don’t know — or a message on social media — don’t respond. “We need to believe that everyone who is entering our lives digitally is a scammer unless proven otherwise,” says West. Also, be wary of people “who can seemingly never meet in person,” the U.S. Secret Service advises. That rule used to apply to video calls, but AI is changing that. In October 2024, police in Hong Kong busted a financial grooming ring where criminals reportedly used deepfake software tools to participate in live video calls.
4. Avoid messaging platforms. If your new friend wants to move your conversation to a messaging service like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, that’s a red flag. The reason: Many dating apps and social media platforms are on the lookout for financial grooming scammers, so the criminals want to talk on platforms where they can’t be watched.
5. Watch for early affection. Scammers use proven, well-tested scripts. One tactic: “Within a matter of days, they’re using cute names, calling the victim ‘honey’ and ‘my love,’” says West. “You would not expect to be saying these kinds of words of love in just a matter of weeks.” It’s called love bombing, and it’s a serious red flag for a romance scammer.
6. Conduct a reverse image search. This is an online tool that reveals information such as when and where a photo was taken, and where it appears online. With Google Image Search, for example, you can click its camera icon and then drag or upload an image. Scammers reuse images on fake company websites. The CEO on one site might appear as the treasurer on another site or the head of HR on a third site, all with different names.
7. Research the apps. Fake companies also have fake apps. Apps used in financial grooming scams may seem legitimate, but they’re not typically on app platforms such as Google Play or Apple’s App Store, Weisman notes.
8. Share your experiences. If you’re using a dating app, “report suspicious user profiles to the dating site administrator and cease all contact with suspicious users,” IC3 recommends. The same is true with social media. Victims of financial grooming scams should report their cases to IC3 at IC3.gov.
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