Romance and pig butchering scams: the people hurt, the signs

Norm Jones spent his career in telecommunications and cybersecurity. He is not the person most of us would picture losing $250,000 to a stranger online. Yet NBC News reported in 2023 that this is what happened to him, after a woman who first messaged him on Facebook became his online girlfriend and a major part of his daily life.

If you are reading this because something similar has happened to you or someone you love, you are in far larger company than the shame suggests. Below are real cases, an explanation of how the scams work, what they do to the mind, and what to do next. The article mentions suicide, because the reports do. Help lines are at the end.

Four people, one pattern

Jones, then 54, got his first message in November from a woman using the name Aranya. She was already friends with several of his Facebook friends, which lowered his guard. They moved to Telegram. She seemed to live a jet-setting life funded by crypto and kept steering him toward an investment website. He cashed out retirement accounts and tried to borrow against his house.

He grew suspicious in February, when plans to meet in New York fell apart and her story changed. By March his credit was damaged, he could not withdraw anything, and an FBI report had brought no reply. NBC reported that he attempted suicide that month and survived. After months in a crisis center, he moved in with a friend. "I'd be happy to help just one person in the world never go through what I went through," he told NBC.

Dennis Jones, 82, was a grandfather who loved the water and wanted to leave his family an inheritance. His children told AARP's podcast The Perfect Scam, in an episode published in October 2024, that he met a woman called Jessie on Facebook. She said she had made money in crypto and offered to teach him.

His son Matt noticed a red flag when Dennis said he had made $40,000 in a week. A friend of Matt's who worked in cybersecurity looked at the website and, within 24 hours, called it a well-known scam. Dennis warned the woman, and his account was locked. The family reported the case to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center and heard nothing back. They later learned the scammers had returned with fees and loans he was told would unlock his money.

Dennis took his own life. His children chose to speak publicly because they hope one family will recognise the trap in time. Matt said people assume greed, but his father "just wanted to make it to the end of the road." His sister Laura said the family could not compete with someone offering companionship, unlimited time and the promise of security.

Chris Leeds, 43, was a roofer from Dolgellau in Gwynedd. The BBC reported on his inquest in July 2021. After his long relationship ended in 2018, he began talking to women online. Two women he met online asked him for money to travel to the UK. A friend told the inquest that Chris knew he had been scammed the first time. The friend found him dead on 5 December. Coroner Kate Sutherland said he "may well have been scammed and had been suffering from embarrassment." His brother Phil called him a "gentle soul."

Carol Goodall, now in her sixties, met a man on a dating site at the end of 2015. The Guardian reported that he proposed within months, then suggested she sell her house so they could buy a bigger one together. He turned out to be known to police as a conman, and was jailed for ten years in 2020 for defrauding two women. Goodall never got her £250,000 back. She told the Guardian she struggled to get out of bed and go to work, and that there had been times she wanted to end her life.

How a romance scam becomes a pig butchering scam

The FBI describes cryptocurrency investment fraud, which the media calls pig butchering, as a confidence scam. The criminals target people online and build a friendship or relationship before introducing a fraudulent crypto investment. Victims are coached to put in more and more money, only to find they cannot withdraw it. NBC described two phases: win trust through a fake romance, then convince the victim to pour money into a scheme that appears to be making them richer.

Reuters reported that pig butchering began in China and is now run by criminal organisations in Southeast Asia that use victims of labor trafficking to contact people around the world, citing the US Treasury. The FBI says the scam compounds operate from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. Jeremy Douglas of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime called the perpetrators "ruthless transnational organized crime syndicates."

The scale is large. NBC cited an FBI report showing US victims reported losing $3.3 billion to investment scams in 2022, more than double 2021. Reuters noted that the true figure is unknown because victims are often too embarrassed to report. In the UK, Action Fraud logged 8,863 romance fraud reports between November 2020 and October 2021, with losses near £92 million, the Guardian said.

Reuters followed one victim in detail. In March 2022 a 71-year-old man in California received a text from someone calling herself Emma. She mixed small talk, trading tips and photos of a slim young woman with encouragement to send crypto to a website that imitated the real exchange BigONE. By July 2022 he had put in about $2.7 million, his family said. He found out only when he could not withdraw. "I trusted her," he told Reuters.

Photos and even video calls do not prove a person is real. The Guardian told of a woman called Anna, who lost £350,000 to a man whose pictures, she later learned, belonged to an actor. She had spoken to him on video, but was told technology can superimpose a moving image onto someone else's face.

The fake trading app, step by step

The investment platform is a website or app the scammers control. The numbers on its dashboard are simply numbers they type in. Reuters noted that victims sometimes receive real returns at first, to make them believe the scheme is legitimate. The usual sequence, drawn from the FBI, NBC and Reuters accounts, looks like this:

1. A friendly message arrives from a stranger, by text, Facebook or a dating site, often as a "wrong number" or a mutual friend.
2. Daily chat builds trust. The person suggests moving to an encrypted app such as Telegram.
3. Sooner or later they mention investing, perhaps hinting at how they got rich themselves, and point you to a platform.
4. You deposit a small amount. The screen shows a profit, and a small withdrawal may even go through.
5. The deposits grow. Savings, retirement accounts, a home loan: the pitch is always that this is the moment to act.
6. When you try to withdraw a large sum, the account is frozen. You are told to pay fees, taxes or a verification deposit first.
7. After you realise, a "helper" or the same person may return with a rescue offer. Dennis Jones's daughter said the family learned it is common for it to happen again.

Behind the screen, the money has already moved. Coinfirm, a blockchain analysis firm Reuters worked with, described stolen crypto moving through dozens of wallets in a "complex layering scheme." Recovery is very hard.

None of this requires you to be foolish. Keith Grinsted, who runs a support group called Goodbye Lonely after being targeted himself, told the Guardian that loneliness is the root cause of the problem. Carol Goodall said she was very lonely when she met her partner, and Chris Leeds had just ended a long relationship. Many of the people in these reports describe the same opening: they were lonely, and someone offered attention.

What it does to a person's mind

A scam like this delivers several blows at once: the money, the loss of a relationship that felt real, and the humiliation of telling anyone. Heidi Kar, a trauma advisor at the Education Development Center, told NBC that two of the most common reasons people go from thinking about suicide to acting are the end of a romantic relationship, real or not, and the threat of financial ruin. She added that nuanced data is impossible to get, because suicides are underreported.

Erin West, a California prosecutor who has handled hundreds of pig butchering cases, told Reuters that many victims lost more than $1 million and that she had never seen "this level of absolute devastation." She told NBC that victims are hard to talk out of the scam, describing it as "a spell being cast." Amy Nofziger of AARP's Fraud Watch Network said that referring a victim to a suicide hotline has become "pretty much a daily occurrence."

The FBI's Operation Level Up, launched in January 2024, tries to reach victims before they lose more. As of December 2025, it had notified 8,103 victims, and 77 percent did not know they were being scammed. Eighty victims had been referred to an FBI victim specialist for suicide intervention.

A 2025 paper in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health by Luke Balcombe reviewed the literature and described the experience of 25 Australians caught in an investment scam. Treat it as a perspective paper: the author was one of the victims, and the paper itself says no causal relationship has been established. It reports insomnia lasting one to two months while victims waited to hear if banks could recall payments. Anxiety and depression lasted longer for those with major losses, and post-traumatic stress was common one to two years later, whatever the amount lost.

Some victims withdrew from friends out of shame, and most did not see a doctor early on. A few found solace in talking to fellow victims.

The Guardian quoted trauma therapist Olivia James, who described "betrayal blindness," the tendency to ignore doubts when someone promises love. She said the hurt, together with financial loss, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Norm Jones is the counterweight: after months of care he told NBC, "My family knows and I know I'm going to survive."

Warning signs and what to do about each

These signs come from the FBI's Operation Level Up page and the Guardian's interviews with Victim Support and City of London Police.

Warning sign	What it looks like	What to do
Unsolicited pitch	A stranger texts or messages you, then brings up an investment	Stop replying. Search their photos with a reverse image search
Move to a private app	Asked to switch to Telegram or another encrypted chat	Treat it as a red flag, and tell someone you trust
High returns, time pressure	Big profits quickly, with urgency to deposit now	Pause. The FBI's advice is to Take A Beat
Pulling you from your support	Asked to limit contact with family or financial advisors	Do the opposite. Show the messages to a person you trust
Withdrawal problems	Fees, taxes or deposits demanded before you can take money out	Stop paying. Do not send anything more
Never meets, never video calls	Always away, cannot meet, or video only works oddly	Never send money to someone you have not met in person

If money has already gone: the first steps

1. Stop sending money. Do not pay any more fees or taxes to get your funds released, however convincing the reason.
2. Call your bank immediately and ask whether the payment can be stopped or recalled. In the Australian case study, a few victims avoided large losses after cancelling a payment or a successful bank recall.
3. File a report. In the US, use the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov; the FBI says rapid reporting can help support recovery of lost funds. In the UK, report to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040.
4. Keep evidence before you block anyone: screenshots of chats, profile names, the website address, wallet addresses and transaction IDs.
5. Stop contact. Block the person once your evidence is saved. They may try to return.
6. Tell one person. This is the step that most often feels impossible, and the one that most often helps.

Reporting may feel like shouting into a void. Dennis Jones's family said nobody answering left a door open in his mind. The FBI says Level Up agents are not investigating individual cases, but reports can connect victims to ongoing or future cases. Report anyway.

Phone and PC steps

• Windows 11: open Settings, then Apps, then Installed apps. Find the fake trading app or any remote-access program the scammer asked you to install, select the three dots and choose Uninstall. On Windows 10 it is Settings, Apps, Apps & features.
• Android: open Settings, then Apps, tap the app, then Uninstall.
• iPhone: open Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage, tap the app and choose Delete App.
• Messaging apps: open the chat, tap the person's name or profile, and choose Block. Do this after you have saved screenshots.
• If you shared passwords, a code or a screen, change those passwords from a device you trust and turn on two-step verification for email and banking.
• Facebook: the Guardian reports that scammers study public profiles. Go to Settings & privacy, then Settings, then Privacy, and limit who can see your posts and friends list.

Recovery scams: the second hit

People who have been scammed are targeted again. The FBI is blunt: do not pay for services that claim to recover lost funds, because these are often scams as well. Operation Level Up staff will never offer methods to recover lost money, give you accounts to send money to, ask for passwords, or ask you to change security settings.

Fraudsters impersonate the FBI and Operation Level Up. Genuine emails come from an @fbi.gov address, and the FBI says not to act until an agent has verified their identity. Agents will not contact you through social media or ask you to switch platforms. A scammer may also coach you to ignore law enforcement, which is further proof you are dealing with a criminal.

How families can help without shaming

Dennis Jones's children described what worked and what backfired. Pushing hard to prove the scam made their father pull away, and he felt that everyone thought he was dumb. When Laura told him he must feel betrayed, he answered, "Yes, yes, I do." The Guardian's Victim Support interviewee, Lisa Mills, said victim-blaming is a particular problem and that many victims turn to strangers rather than loved ones.

• Begin with the person, not the mistake. "I'm worried about you" lands better than "how could you?"
• Name the feeling. Betrayal, grief and embarrassment are real, even if the relationship was invented.
• Go gently on the scammer. Dennis kept defending the woman, and pushing back made him withdraw.
• Stay in touch even when they withdraw.
• Watch for a second approach. Fees, "recovery" help or a new friend can follow the first loss.
• Find peer support. AARP's Fraud Watch Network runs online small-group victim support; its details are at AARP.org/fraudsupport. In the UK, the Guardian pointed to Victim Support and the peer group Goodbye Lonely.
• If they mention not wanting to be here, stay with them, ask them plainly, and call 988 or your local emergency number.

How to protect yourself and the people you love

The FBI's advice reduces to a few habits. Slow down when someone urges you to act. Be wary of anyone who wants to move you to a private app or talk you out of asking your family. City of London Police put it simply: never give money to someone you have not met, however well you think you know them.

If you need to talk to someone now

If you are thinking about ending your life, or you are worried about someone who is, you do not need to explain the scam first. In the United States, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In the UK and Ireland, call Samaritans free on 116 123. In an emergency, call your local emergency number. The people who answer have heard stories like yours before.

The money may not come back, but many people do recover from this, rebuild their finances and learn to trust again. Norm Jones, who survived, told NBC he hopes his story spares someone else.

Frequently asked questions

What is a pig butchering scam?

It is a confidence scam in which a stranger builds a friendship or romance online, then guides you to put money into a fake cryptocurrency investment platform. The FBI says victims are coached to invest more and more and then cannot withdraw.

How is a crypto romance scam different from an ordinary romance scam?

An ordinary romance scam asks for money for emergencies, flights or fees. A crypto romance scam adds a fake trading site that shows growing profits, so the victim believes they are building wealth. NBC described it as a two-phase pattern: trust first, then a scheme that appears to make you richer.

I was scammed out of money. Can I get it back?

Sometimes, but it is hard. Contact your bank immediately, because a recall can work if it is quick, and report to ic3.gov or actionfraud.police.uk. Crypto is very difficult to retrieve. Never pay anyone who offers to recover your money for a fee, as the FBI warns these are often scams.

Why do smart people fall for romance scams?

Because the scam targets emotion and routine, not intelligence. Trauma therapist Olivia James told the Guardian that people may ignore doubts when someone promises love. NBC reported on a victim who worked in cybersecurity. Loneliness, a recent loss and a trusted-looking mutual friend are common openings.

Where do I report a romance or crypto scam?

In the US, file at ic3.gov and tell your bank. In the UK, report to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040, and contact your bank. Keep screenshots, wallet addresses and transaction IDs. Reports can help link your case to wider investigations.

How can I tell if an investment app is fake?

Warning signs include a stranger who introduced it, pressure to deposit quickly, guaranteed profits, and fees or taxes demanded before you can withdraw. The FBI lists inability to withdraw, or surprise fees to do so, as a sign. If you cannot get your money out, stop depositing.

How do I help a family member who has been scammed?

Start with kindness, not blame. Dennis Jones's family found that confronting him made him defensive, and that acknowledging he had been betrayed helped. Offer to handle practical steps, keep in touch, watch for follow-up scams, and know the help lines listed in this article.