Stop Calling Online Scams ‘Pig Butchering,’ Interpol Warns

The rise of so-called pig butchering investment scams over the past few years largely caught the world unawares, capitalizing on conditions surrounding pandemic lockdowns and global economic instability to fool people into giving away their money to attackers. But as researchers and law enforcement have scrambled to raise awareness about the crisis—including scammers’ use of forced labor—any way they can, the term “pig butchering” itself has emerged as an attention-grabbing and recognizable symbol. Because the term was coined by scammers themselves, though, officials from the intergovernmental law enforcement organization Interpol now say that they will stop using it.

The wording originated from a Chinese version of the phrase, shāzhūpán, in which scammers were referring to victims as pigs who were being gradually fattened for slaughter. The attacks are typically investment or romance scams in which attackers cold contact many people at a time and then develop a rapport with those who respond, eventually convincing them to send money, typically in cryptocurrency, to scammers under the guise of making a potentially lucrative investment. Invoking scammers’ derogatory terminology, though, is dehumanizing and further perpetuates the stigma that many scam victims feel about having been deceived. Interpol says that, beyond its own organization, it is encouraging everyone to stop using the term and replace it with more straightforward names like “investment scams” or “romance baiting.”

“‘Pig butchering’ is a phrase which would appear to have been created by the gangs to talk about their victims and how they deal with them,” Nick Court, an assistant director in Interpol’s financial crime and anti-corruption program, tells WIRED. “I think we’re giving the gangs too much credit if we use that phrase. More importantly, we’re damaging how victims may perceive themselves. I don’t think anyone would want to be called a victim of pig butchering.”

Interpol says its web pages, previous press releases, and working materials such as factsheets will be updated to remove the terminology, with prior news announcements on its site including an explanation about the change in terminology. The agency says it has advised the 196 member countries it works with of the change in language too.

In recent months, both independent researchers and some at major tech companies have told WIRED they had concerns about the phrase “pig butchering,” its origins, and implications.

The criminal enterprises behind the scams run complex logistical operations, spanning both physical and digital activity. More than 200,000 people are believed to have been trafficked to giant “scam centers” in Southeast Asia, where they are forced to scam victims abroad and can be beaten or tortured if they refuse or try to leave.

Workers set up legitimate-looking social media accounts they can use to target potential victims, and they follow scripts for interacting with targets. Managers of the scam operations also oversee efforts to launder money once victims have made payments. With billions being made from the fraud, those running these scams have quickly reinvested some of the ill-gotten gains to incorporate artificial intelligence and make the scams more efficient.

Mina Chiang, the founder of anti-human-trafficking firm Humanity Research Consultancy, says she is not a fan of the “pig butchering” name not only because of its dehumanizing impact but also because it “restricts people’s imagination of the nature of the scam factories.”

“Those hundreds of compounds with hundreds of thousands of workers don’t just work on romance-investment scams, they also do ‘task scams,’ ‘sextortion,’ ‘sport gambling scams,’ ‘fake-authority-related scams,’ and many more,” Chiang says, pointing out the United Nations’ Office on Drugs and Crime has called the behavior “organized fraud.”

“Focusing on only one type of scam would risk missing the bigger picture that scams are being organized and industrialized by transnational criminal groups,” Chiang adds, “and that scam tactics are constantly changing as long as the criminals are able to extract money from their victims.”

Interpol’s Nick Court says the organization recognizes that the “pig butchering” umbrella includes multiple types of criminality. He notes that there may be multiple different names for each sub-category of activity, but almost all of it falls under the international legal definition of fraud. He adds, too, that while not everyone agrees that phrases like “romance baiting” are a perfect replacement for “pig butchering,” it is necessary nonetheless to move away from the original name.

Over the past few decades, Court says, law enforcement agencies, researchers, and those who work with various types of victims have launched similar initiatives to evolve the language used to describe other crimes, such as domestic violence, sexual assault, and online child sexual exploitation. In all of these cases, he says, the goal is to reduce stigma and attempt to create a safer space for people to come forward and report crimes.

“We do know that across a range of crime types, the use of language, the use of words matters a great deal,” Court says.