Fighting Financial Crime

 Pig Butchering and how it's affecting America.

White iPhone displaying calls from different Scam numbers taken by Lindsey LaMont.

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend an event hosted by the Fintech Technology Association of Oregon. The event was centered around financial crime, scams such as Pig Butchering and Sextortion. I listened to keynote speakers like Erin West, the Founder of Operation Shamrock, Craig Timm from ACAMS, and Yoav Koren, as a VP at Charm Security, which is an AI company that helps prevent and resolve financial crime. 

Pig Butchering was the main focus of the presentation. It is a common practice among scammers where a “wrong number” or “A friend from years ago” reaches out to you. They begin to build a strong relationship with you, and eventually ask for some money: an investment opportunity, or to ask for help. Naturally, you then go on to provide them with capital, but through a crypto wallet or an investment platform. The person then goes ghost, with no communication, the victim becomes frantic, and that’s when the scammer swoops in again to squeeze you for more. Eventually, after squeezing as much money out of you as they can, they finally stop. 

 I’ve had a personal connection to this scam as well. On Christmas 2019, my mom received an email from her former boss, requesting that she purchase $10,000 worth of eBay gift cards to hand out to colleagues as presents. Unsurprisingly, she then purchased these gift cards and sent the codes to “her email”. Soon, the next day, after discussing it with her boss, it was revealed that the email account had been hacked and she had been scammed. Fortunately, after talking to eBay, they were able to void and recover over $7,000 worth of that stolen money. However, most people aren’t that lucky, with many losing their whole life savings. This type of scam has caused over 75 billion dollars in losses for victims since 2021. 

We would assume that these people contacting you are the bad guys, but the truth is, they aren’t. In Erin’s eye-opening keynote, I learned that in countries like Myanmar and Cambodia, tens of thousands of people are trafficked every year to perpetrate these scams against their will, for absolutely no pay. The opposition isn’t on the other end of the phone; it’s the crime bosses who build these crime centers into weapons of mass financial destruction. 

Attending this event made me realize how deeply intertwined technology, crime, and human exploitation have truly become. I have realized, one of the best ways to combat financial crime is to educate oneself on the dangers of scams and understand what to look out for. Operation Shamrock's website and Charm Security are great places to find tools to educate yourself and others. As these scammers evolve, we must too.