Meta Removed 2 Million Accounts Linked to Organized Crime 'Pig Butching' Scams

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNET:

Meta says it's taken down more than 2 million accounts this year linked to overseas criminal gangs behind scam operations that human rights activists say forced hundreds of thousands of people to work as scammers and cost victims worldwide billions of dollars.

In a Thursday blog post, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp says the pig butchering scam operations — based in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines — use platforms like Facebook and Instagram; dating, messaging, crypto and other kinds of apps; and texts and emails, to globally target people... [T]he scammers strike up an online relationship with their victims and gain their trust. Then they move their conversations to crypto apps or scam websites and dupe victims into making bogus investments or otherwise handing over their money, Meta said. They'll ask the victims to deposit money, often in the form of cryptocurrency, into accounts, sometimes even letting the victims make small withdrawals, in order to add a veneer of legitimacy. But once the victim starts asking for their investment back, or it becomes clear they don't have any more money to deposit, the scammer disappears and takes the money with them.

And the people doing the scamming are often victims themselves. During the COVID-19 pandemic, criminal gangs began building scam centers in Southeast Asia, luring in often unsuspecting job seekers with what looked like amazing postings on local job boards and other platforms, then forcing them to work as scammers, often under the threat of physical harm. The scope of what's become a global problem is staggering. In a report issued in May, the US Institute of Peace estimates that at least 300,000 people are being forced to work, or are otherwise suffering human rights violations, inside these scam centers. The report also estimates global financial losses stemming from the scams at $64 billion in 2023, with the number of financial victims in the millions.
Meta says it has focused on investigating and disrupting the scam operations for more than two years, working with nongovernmental organizations and other tech companies, like OpenAI, Coinbase and dating-app operator Match Group, along with law enforcement in both the US and the countries where the centers are located.

Meta titled its blog post 'Cracking Down On Organized Crime Behind Scam Centers,' writing 'We hope that sharing our insights will help inform our industry's defenses so we can collectively help protect people from criminal scammers.'

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