The pig butchering dating scam is mostly common in Asian countries but this type of scam has expanded to Russia, Ukraine, and other FSU countries that were more notorious for dating scams only.
So, instead of just asking for money to come to a Western man’s country as dating scammers did before, “a beautiful Russian girl” is not poor anymore, she is now wealthy and earns money on cryptocurrency. She is patient until the man is emotionally engaged with the relationship.
The scammers offer the man to try to earn money on the cryptocurrency trading platforms and even land him some money that starts to grow very quickly.
The scammer motivates the man to invest his own money.
You can read the testimonial of Marco, a victim of a cryptocurrency “pig butchering scam” to see what happens next:
My story begins on an app called Boo. I was meeting lots of ladies from different parts of the world and just chatting. Along comes a profile of this beautiful Russian lady but her name was Wendy Gomez. Gomez, I thought, that’s a weird Russian name. Sounds Mexican.
Anyways, we match and she starts the conversation. So we chat and get to know each other. She first asked if I was Italian because my English was so good. So I said I was from South Africa. She told me her Dad was Australian and her Mom was Italian.
The conversations we had were very deep, we talked up life growing up and issues we had with our parents growing up. We talked about our past relationships and what we want out of life. It seemed she was being very genuine towards me telling me some personal stuff about her life. I felt very comfortable talking to her. But she would also reinforce to me how she was lucky to find me and that I am unique. The kind of stuff a guy like me would eat up. To me, she came across as genuine given the fact we spoke about very personal things. I think after about a month of chatting to each other and getting close we started talking about investing in property and crypto.
We spoke about how cool it would be to be financially free and I said investing in property is very good. She then revealed to me that she has her aunt who works for a crypto trading company that will be able to give us a 30% profit on a 30-second option trade and I must sign up for a bitso account.
She gave me the link. By this time we were in a romance, she wanted to make a life with me and she really went wholeheartedly into playing the “lover”, so we had many long conversations about this stuff, nothing seemed superficial, and she came across as very genuine.
While all of this was going on I did feel suspicious about her and I did think she was a scammer so I would tell her this and confront her. She would respond with long messages about how she was not a scammer and she actually pushed to have video calls to ease my suspicions. So we had a couple of video calls and I was talking to the woman in the photos, she would call me and send me voice messages. There was no doubt I was talking to the actual woman in the pictures.
So she really went out of her way to prove she wasn’t a catfish. Little did I know, she was the actual scammer using a fake name on a private telegram account. When I asked her if we could chat on WhatsApp and if I could have her number. She wanted to keep things separate as she uses WhatsApp for her business. So I never ever got her actual number.
By this time, she had really convinced me she was a real person and in love with me. One day she told me her aunt had given her a trade tip, but I didn’t have the money to do this at the moment so she sent me her money for me to trade with.
Again this would have rather solidified her, in my mind, as being genuine. So after she did that I then added my own money to my profile and I was using both my money and her money to make trades.
Anyways, she had planned to come see me in South Africa and she wanted me to move to Italy with her as she didn’t want me living in SA anymore and she wanted to build a life with me in Italy.
One day, she told me there would be no more trades happening and I could withdraw the crypto. So I said to her I must send her money back, so she gave me her address and I sent the amount she lent me back to her. This is where the problems began. Suddenly the platform decided to freeze the transaction. So I contacted the support and they claim that as I was sending crypto to another account on the platform they have flagged the transaction as money laundering and locked the account.
Apparently, they locked hers as well. So I contacted support and told them it’s not money laundering and I can prove my ID. They then said to me that I needed to pay 4,000 USDT and they would unlock both accounts. While this was happening “Wendy” was freaking out and got angry with me that her account was locked and demanded I fix the situation.
So I did, I scrambled to find 4,000 USDT and sent it to the platform. Of course, the platform turned around and then told me that because I did not make the payment in 24hrs, I must pay the same amount again. But they had never given me this 24hrs before or told me about this.
So I freaked out at them, and it told “Wendy” as well. Wendy then contacted the platform and the platform told her that I was being rude and offensive, in the end, the platform blocked me and Wendy blocked me, and I have never heard from them since.
So I went on a mission to find out who Wendy was. I used Pimeyes and uploaded her photos and the results were shocking. This lady had created a multitude of fake accounts across multiple platforms such as Mingle, Boo, Linkedin, and Clubhouse.
I then found a Russian website that had her photo advertising personal training with her picture and her real name being Anastasia Kuprienko, which gave out her real contact number and her address, all Russian-based. I then contacted her on WhatsApp and sent her all her photos. She replied first in English and then when I confronted her she switched to Russian and then blocked me. I have no doubt that Anastasia Kuprienko is her real ID, the number is real. I lost 34k USD in total.
This was a highly elaborate scam that required time to build trust and rapport before even mentioning anything about crypto investing, she also sent me money to try it and this was part of the scam.
The platform is a scam, they all work together. If you ever come across this lady, by her picture, just know she is a criminal scammer and should be brought to justice.
I know now what a cryptocurrency dating “pig butchering” scam means now and want to share my experience with other men.
