How these schemes are built
A pig butchering scam is a long-con investment fraud, usually involving cryptocurrency, in which someone builds trust over weeks or months before introducing a trading site or app that they control. The balances it shows are invented, and small early withdrawals are often allowed to build confidence. When a larger withdrawal is requested, the platform demands a tax, a fee, or a deposit to unlock the account, and those payments disappear too. Many of these operations run from overseas, and some rely on people who were trafficked and forced to work in them. Victims include careful, educated people, and there is nothing unusual about having been targeted.
Stop paying and preserve everything
Do not send more money to release your balance, however official the demand looks. Be wary of anyone who contacts you offering to recover the funds for an upfront fee, since recovery scams commonly follow the first loss. Save the full conversation history, usernames, phone numbers, website addresses, and screenshots of the platform, and export the wallet addresses and transaction IDs for every transfer. Bank and card records showing how money left your accounts are important as well. Report to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center and to your bank or exchange promptly, because the speed of reporting can affect what can still be frozen.
What recovery work can involve
Cryptocurrency moves across a public ledger, so transfers can sometimes be traced to an exchange that knows who holds the receiving account. Where funds land at a cooperative exchange, law enforcement action or a court order may be able to freeze them, and in some cases civil suits have been brought against unidentified defendants for that purpose. Much of the money, however, moves beyond reach quickly, and we will be candid with you about that. In a first meeting we review the transaction trail, the amounts involved, and whether tracing work is worth its cost in your situation. We also talk about taxes, reports to regulators, and protecting your other accounts.
