A Pig butchering scam (殺豬盤) (Yale: saat jyū pùhn, Pinyin: shā zhū pán) is a type of financial fraud in which scammers build long-term relationships with victims to gain their trust - fatten them up - before finally defrauding them of assets and money - butchering them.

This scam gained global notoriety during the COVID-19 pandemic as criminals exploited the increased time people spent online. Scammers used social media, dating apps and messaging platforms to groom victims, or fatten them up, taking advantage of the internet’s borderless nature to operate across jurisdictions - making resolution of these crimes complex.

A definition of the term

The Economist’s Sue-Lin Wong describes the term pig butchering (14m47s):

Further reading