Pig butchering — the term is a translation of the Chinese sha zhu pan, fattening the pig before slaughter — fuses two frauds that used to be separate.
The approach is a wrong number. A message that appears misdirected, apologetic, friendly. Or a dating app match who is warm, attentive and quickly moves the conversation to a private messaging platform.
Then weeks or months of contact with no financial content at all. Daily messages, good-morning and good-night, photographs, conversations about family and work and the future. This phase is the investment, and it is deliberate: attachment forms on frequency and intensity of contact, and by the time money is mentioned there is a relationship in place and a reciprocity obligation with it.
The financial element arrives casually, as something they do rather than as a proposal. Cryptocurrency trading, on a platform they use. They are not selling anything. They may initially decline to help you get involved.
The platform is fabricated. It shows an interface, a balance, and gains. The first deposit is small and it appears to grow, and — the critical element — an early withdrawal is permitted and arrives. That withdrawal is the proof, and it is what converts caution into escalation. It is also chapter 284's intermittent reinforcement, deployed once, at the point of maximum effect.
Deposits then increase. When a large withdrawal is attempted, it is blocked pending a fee: tax, an anti-money-laundering deposit, a verification charge, a percentage of the balance. Paying it produces another fee. This is chapter 137's advance-fee structure appended to the end.
The structural tell is the one this chapter is built around, and it is available from the beginning.
The relationship and the investment arrive from the same source.
That is the detection principle, and it does not require you to evaluate the platform, the returns, or the person. Any romantic or friendly contact that originated online and that introduces a financial opportunity is disqualified by that fact alone, regardless of how well the relationship is going and regardless of whether they seem to want anything.
Two further checks. Search the platform's name with the word scam and check whether it appears in any regulator's warning list. And attempt a full withdrawal early, while the amounts are small — a genuine platform processes it, and a fabricated one produces a fee.
The counter-response, once recognized: stop depositing immediately, do not pay any release fee, preserve every message and wallet address, and report to IC3 and to the Secret Service, which has recovered funds in some cases through blockchain tracing.
Do not pay the recovery firm that contacts you afterwards. That is a second, separate fraud aimed at the same list.
This counters Law 29.