Pig-Butchering Scam Statistics
Reported losses and complaint volumes for pig-butchering (sha zhu pan) crypto investment fraud, drawn from FBI IC3 and DOJ sources.
Last reviewed: 7 July 2026
Pig-butchering scams — known in Mandarin as sha zhu pan (slaughtering the pig) — combine romantic grooming with fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms. Organised crime syndicates, often operating from forced-labour compounds in Southeast Asia, run operations that build fake relationships with victims over weeks or months before steering them to fake trading apps that appear to show growing profits.
Because victims often do not report out of shame — or because they do not recognise that the romantic relationship was itself part of the fraud — actual loss figures are believed to be a substantial multiple of official complaint totals. The FBI launched a specific counter-operation (Operation Level Up) in 2024 precisely because the scale had become so large.
Key figures
$7.228 billion in losses across 61,559 complaints in 2025 — a 48% increase in complaints and a 25% increase in losses over 2024
US crypto investment fraud (primarily pig-butchering) losses reported to FBI IC3
Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Internet Crime Report (2025)
3,780 victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud notified in 2025; 78% of those victims were unaware they were being scammed
Victims notified and unaware they were being scammed — FBI Operation Level Up
Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Internet Crime Report (2025)
Estimated victim savings of $225,871,319 in 2025, and more than $500 million in reduced losses since the operation launched in January 2024
Estimated savings from FBI Operation Level Up victim notifications
Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Internet Crime Report (2025)
$929,287,469 in losses across 23,159 Confidence/Romance complaints in 2025
FBI IC3 Confidence/Romance fraud losses (US)
Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Internet Crime Report (2025)
Victims aged 60 and over reported $2,763,921,910 in cryptocurrency investment fraud losses across 13,685 complaints in 2025 — the highest of any age group
Cryptocurrency investment fraud losses among adults 60+ (US, FBI IC3)
Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Internet Crime Report (2025)
$584,032,745 in losses across 10,188 Confidence/Romance complaints filed by victims aged 60 and over in 2025, up from $389,312,356 in 2024
Confidence/Romance fraud losses among adults 60+ (US, FBI IC3)
Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Internet Crime Report (2025)
Investment scams accounted for 51% of older adults' aggregate social-media-originated losses, followed by romance scams at 28%
Older adults' highest-loss scam types when contacted via social media (US)
Source: FTC Protecting Older Consumers 2024-2025 Report to Congress (2024)
Reports of losses over $100,000 by older adults grew 351% from 2020 to 2024 — from 1,136 reports to 5,125 reports
Growth in six-figure fraud-loss reports by older adults (US)
Source: FTC Protecting Older Consumers 2024-2025 Report to Congress (2024)
Older adults were 39% more likely than younger people to report losing money to a romance scam in 2024
Older adults' relative likelihood of reporting a romance-scam loss (US)
Source: FTC Protecting Older Consumers 2024-2025 Report to Congress (2024)
Key takeaways
- Pig-butchering crypto investment fraud cost US victims a reported $5.8 billion in 2024, making it the single largest loss category tracked by the FBI IC3.
- The FBI's Operation Level Up found that 77% of the pig-butchering victims it proactively contacted were still unaware they were being defrauded — illustrating how effective the grooming phase is.
- Organised crime syndicates in Southeast Asia, sometimes using trafficked workers, run pig-butchering operations at industrial scale across multiple countries simultaneously.
- Under-reporting is severe: because the initial contact is romantic and victims feel shame, most incidents never reach any official reporting system.
Frequently asked questions
What makes pig-butchering scams different from ordinary romance scams?
Traditional romance scams extract money through requests (emergency funds, travel costs). Pig-butchering scams go further: the criminal builds a fake relationship and then introduces a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform that shows fabricated profits. Victims willingly transfer increasingly large sums, believing they are building wealth, and the fraud is often only discovered when they try to withdraw and are told to pay further fees.