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“Why did I fall for it?” Exploring internet fraud susceptibility in the pig butchering scam

Ziyi Xie ; Zhizhuang Duan (2024) — Security Journal

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DOI: 10.1057/s41284-024-00457-x (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   China
Tags:   Internet Fraud Susceptibility, Investment Fraud, Pig Butchering, Platform Policy, Prevention, Qualitative Interviews, Romance Scams, Self Esteem, Social Support, Victim Experience, Victimology
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Qualitative research
Examines experiences, meanings, or processes, often through interviews or observations. It can explain how something happens without estimating how common it is.
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Synopsis

            
This qualitative study used in-depth semi-structured interviews with 18 Chinese fraud victims and 13 Chinese people coerced to work in Southeast Asian scam syndicates. Victims were recruited from social-platform self-reports and court cases, while coerced workers were reached through community-corrections volunteering. Comparing both perspectives, the authors identify limited social support, lack of security, and low self-esteem as conditions associated with susceptibility and with amplified emotional and financial harm. Cross-perspective interviews reduce reliance on victim accounts alone, but the three factors are not a complete or causal vulnerability profile. Recruitment from public reports, judgments, and correctional contacts and the relatively small Chinese sample limit transferability to other victims, offenders, schemes, and settings.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies limited research on pig-butchering scams, particularly deep examination of victims’ personality traits through an internet-fraud-susceptibility lens. It argues that demographic analyses produce uncertain and contradictory results and cannot readily explain causal pathways to victimization. The authors therefore focus on susceptibility during the relationship-building (“raising pigs”) stage.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Qualitative semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 18 Chinese victims and 13 Chinese individuals coerced to work in Southeast Asian scam syndicates. Victims were recruited from Chinese social-platform self-reports and China Judgments Online cases; perpetrators were encountered through community-corrections volunteering. Interviews were recorded for victims and paper-recorded for perpetrators, then transcribed/verified. Researchers used inductive line-by-line open, axial, and selective coding; only themes mentioned more than three times and corroborated across victim and perpetrator interviews were included.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
Cross-verifying victim and perpetrator interviews partly mitigated the subjectivity of victim-only accounts, but the authors state that the three identified factors may not capture all dimensions of internet-fraud susceptibility. The qualitative sample was limited to 18 victims and 13 Chinese perpetrators, with perpetrator access constrained and inclusion criteria comparatively lenient. Victim inclusion also required at least three months of emotional interaction and self-reported mental or social effects, limiting coverage of other victimization trajectories.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Use larger samples of pig-butchering-scam victims and perpetrators and mixed quantitative–qualitative methods to examine the wider range of characteristics shown by different participants in these scams.

          

              

    
    

        
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