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Deconstructing a form of hybrid investment fraud: Examining ‘pig butchering’ in the United States

Maras, Marie-Helen ; Ives, Emily R. (2024) — Journal of Economic Criminology

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DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconc.2024.100066 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   United States
Tags:   Cryptocurrency Fraud, Cyber Enabled Fraud, Hybrid Investment Fraud, Investment Fraud, Online Fraud, Pig Butchering, Romance Baiting, United States
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Synopsis

            
The study used exploratory qualitative case-study analysis of 1,314 NexisUni news reports and court documents dated January 1, 2018-November 1, 2023. Searches used pig-butchering transliterations and combined romance, investment, cryptocurrency, confidence, trust-based, and catfishing terms. Domain spoofing was used to induce targets to download fraudulent apps or access fraudulent investment websites controlled by offenders. Hybrid investment fraud included romance-and-cryptocurrency schemes as well as friendship- and professional-relationship schemes. The 59 cases are not representative of all U.S. hybrid investment fraud.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies a dearth of U.S. academic research on pig butchering/hybrid investment fraud, especially on victim and offender characteristics and perpetration methods. It also finds that inconsistent, limiting terminology complicates case identification and can exclude friendship/professional-relationship and non-cryptocurrency cases. Existing fraud typologies do not adequately capture multidimensional hybrid fraud.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Exploratory qualitative case-study analysis of 1,314 NexisUni news reports and court documents dated January 1, 2018–November 1, 2023. Searches used pig-butchering transliterations and combined romance, investment, cryptocurrency, confidence, trust-based, and catfishing terms. The authors retained 59 distinct U.S.-victim cases (24 court-document and 35 news cases), coded fraud type, losses, duration, victim/offender information, and tactics/tools/MO, and used independent coding, discussion, and final quality checks to address intercoder consistency.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The 59 cases are not representative of all U.S. hybrid investment fraud. Case identification was difficult because “pig butchering” was inconsistently used and alternative labels were narrow. Information was dispersed across news and administrative, civil, and criminal documents. Results depended on search dates, terms, exclusion decisions, available document detail, and the study period. Private legal-database content changes over time, and even identical NexisUni searches produced varying result counts.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Future research should examine hybrid investment fraud beyond romance and cryptocurrency-only cases; develop more diverse, regionally and globally varied empirical data; modify fraud typologies to capture hybrid fraud; and use consistent terminology, particularly “hybrid investment fraud,” to improve identification and study of the phenomenon.

          

              

    
    

        
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