NEW DELHI: The government has issued an alert about a new cyber fraud scheme called the ‘pig butchering scam,’ which targets unemployed youth, students, and vulnerable individuals. Victims not only lose money but are also forced into cyber slavery, officials said on Wednesday.
In the latest annual report published by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs last month, they said, adding that unscrupulous individuals and entities have been noticed using Google services platforms to initiate these crimes.
A senior official stated, “According to reports from the cyber intelligence wing, a new online fraud module known as ‘Pig Butchering Scam’ or ‘Investment Scam’ has been noticed doing the rounds in cyberspace, which targets unemployed youths, housewives, students, and needy people, who are made to either lose large sums of money daily or are enticed to do cyber slavery.”
He said, “Google Advertisement platform provides a convenient facility for posting targeted advertisements from across the border. This scam, known as ‘Pig Butchering Scam’ or ‘Investment Scam,’ is a global phenomenon and involves large-scale money laundering and even cyber slavery.”
According to sources, it is believed that such fraud first originated in China in 2016. In such fraud modules, they said, miscreants target gullible individuals with whom they first build trust over time and then convince them to invest in cryptocurrencies or some other lucrative scheme before stealing the money collected.
The officials said the analogy to pig butchering is derived from the fattening of swine before their slaughter.
The officials said that in this model of fraud, cyber criminals, after acquiring the trust of victim individuals, also bring them on board and engage them in different kinds of online crime as slaves.
The officials said that once the trend came to light, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the MHA partnered with Google to share threat intelligence for urgent action periodically to effectively deal with the menace.
Besides Google, the cybercriminals are also using sponsored Facebook links to launch illegal lending applications in India, the officials said, adding that such links are being proactively identified and shared with the social media platform for necessary action.
Authorities urge the public to remain vigilant and avoid falling victim to these deceptive pig butchering scams.
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