Anne* was looking for a genuine romantic connection when she stumbled across Lucio’s profile on the dating platform Tinder.
After days of exchanging hundreds of messages back and forth about their interests and hobbies, the first mention of cryptocurrency came into the picture.
A mistake the 26-year-old Melbourne woman says was of her own doing, but she didn’t know it at the time.
Within a week, Lucio convinced her to start trading cryptocurrency as he was aware it was an area she showed interest in.
One month later, she’d been scammed out of $46,100.
Now, Anne believes Lucio was a persona created by a criminal syndicate and his messages were straight out of a script expertly designed to manipulate.
This is the anatomy of a scam known as “pig butchering” that is being used to prey on vulnerable Australians.
What is a pig butchering scam?
It draws its name from the concept of fattening up an animal for slaughter.
It is also sometimes called romance baiting or “sha zhu pan”.
In practice, scammers befriend victims by earning their trust, then encourage them to invest in online trading platforms before stealing their money.
Here are the four steps pig butchering scammers tend to follow:
- Packaging: create a persona
- Raising: building trust
- Killing/investment scam: lure the victim into investing
- Cash out: steal their money
This is exactly what played out in Anne’s story.
A man who’s experienced many tragedies
The nightmare all started for Anne when she was matched on Tinder with the profile of someone claiming to be a 36-year-old man called Lucio from Torquay, Victoria.
Lucio told her about all his life’s tragedies — how his father died in a car accident while he was on the phone with him, his mother re-married, how he felt isolated, and about his dog AK who died.
“There were lots of sad events that happened in this person’s life and it just made me feel sorry for him,” Anne told the ABC.
Within a week, Lucio had asked to move their chat off Tinder to WhatsApp.
It didn’t raise any red flags at the time but, reflecting on it, she says it was “obviously a major one”.
These types of scammers tend to move their victims off dating apps quickly so the app has no proof of unusual or suspicious activity such as asking for money.
The pair’s relationship quickly blossomed as they connected over their shared passions for animals, food, books and their introverted natures.
They would also exchange photos of what they were cooking for dinner — which the Australian Federal Police says is a common warning sign.
Anne and Lucio did talk about meeting in person as they only lived an hour and a half away from one another. But planned to wait until she returned home from a trip to Bali.
A way to make money
Typically, a scammer will mention cryptocurrency first to their victim.
This wasn’t the case for Anne — she brought up the topic of investment.
“When we were talking about our hobbies, I mentioned that I had experience purchasing exchange-traded funds and that it was something I was interested in,” she says.
“At that moment, he probably thought, ‘Wow she’s a perfect target,’ which likely made him bring up cryptocurrency even more.
“When I look back on our conversations, every time we talked about other things, Lucio always brought it back to crypto.”
On August 8, 2024, Anne followed his instructions and set up an account with a legitimate cryptocurrency platform called CoinJar.
He then persuaded her to open an account with MEXC Global, a cryptocurrency trading platform.
MEXC is a legitimate cryptocurrency company.
However, Anne believes the website Lucio referred her to was a counterfeit site mimicking the real thing.
“Usually I would thoroughly research the platforms before investing in something but I just had so much trust for this person,” she says.
To create the illusion that they were trading together, Lucio would send her detailed, step-by-step instructions.
“He would send me photos with arrows and tell me at, say, 9:34pm, you’re going to press up, you’re going to select up, and you’ll use 300 USDT for this particular trade,” Anne says.
“At the time, I believed the information was genuine, which made me susceptible to his emotional and psychological manipulation.”
On August 9, Lucio helped Anne withdraw $123.22 in trading profits from her MEXC Global account to CoinJar and then to her ANZ account.
This was a tactic to show her she could profit from trading cryptocurrency.
That same day, he convinced her to deposit an additional $1,000 into CoinJar.
“To further deceive me, Lucio transferred funds from his MEXC account into mine to boost my trading capacity, making the scam appear legitimate,” Anne says.
Killing the pig
Anne was actually in Bali when things started to fall apart rapidly.
On August 12, Lucio requested Anne transfer $14,000 to CoinJar to increase her trading capacity.
ANZ flagged this transaction as suspicious, refunded the money back to her account and locked her customer registration number (CRN).
The next day, the ANZ Falcon team (fraud detection unit) contacted her to get some clarity around the transaction.
“Despite my efforts to provide accurate information, Lucio manipulated me into giving incorrect responses,” Anne says.
“Under his influence, I claimed that I had initiated the transactions myself and had known Lucio for several years, when in reality, I had only met him online a month ago.
“Although the ANZ adviser briefly questioned my understanding of cryptocurrency and the risks associated with these types of investments, no suggestion was made that this might be a scam.”
However, in an email seen by the ABC, ANZ claims to have explained the risks involved with cryptocurrency and provided scam education over the phone.
Anne doesn’t recall the bank providing any scam education. She has requested a copy of the recorded phone call between herself and the bank.
Following this conversation, ANZ processed the $14,000 transfer to her CoinJar account. Anne subsequently made additional deposits in the days and weeks to come.
But this wasn’t the end.
After depositing the first three transactions, totalling $31,100, Anne received a notification stating that her MEXC Global account had been blocked.
She was told by the fake customer service department that she needed to deposit more money to verify and validate her account.
But she had no money left. So on August 27, Lucio convinced Anne to take out a $15,000 personal loan.
“I was coerced,” she says.
“The loan was obtained under a false pretence.”
When completing the online application form, Anne said the purpose of the lending was funding for travel.
The loan was approved.
The realisation kicks in
When Anne was still unable to access her MEXC account, she decided to go online, search the company and talk to customer service again.
After providing all her details to a real MEXC customer service representative, the nightmare came to light.
“You don’t exist in our system, this is probably a scam.”
Anne says that was when she realised the truth about her interactions with Lucio.
“It all hit me, like holy f*** I’ve been scammed.”
Anne confronted the scammer, but he continued to deny the accusations even though she told him that he “destroyed her”.
Moments later, the WhatsApp phone number was deactivated.
Looking back on her ordeal, Anne says to this day she can’t believe she was drawn into it.
“I was genuinely looking for a romantic connection and once he got me involved in crypto it was like, ‘Oh wow this is so cool.’
“This scammer had an emotional and psychological hold over me.
“The manipulation goes far beyond simple deceit. The scammer makes you feel a deep emotional connection, making it incredibly difficult to see the truth, even when red flags start to appear.”
Trying to recover the money from ANZ
Anne raised an internal complaint with ANZ and the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) to try recoup the stolen funds.
After a month of raising several complaints, ANZ notified Anne they would not reimburse the $46,100 nor any portion of it.
She believes ANZ did not thoroughly question the legitimacy of the cryptocurrency investments, the purpose of the personal loan, or the nature of the large transactions.
“ANZ is saying they followed their correct protocols as they called me to investigate my initial transaction to CoinJar,” Anne says.
“But what I’m trying to tell them is that when I was being questioned, I wasn’t in my right mind to provide accurate information and I was in a psychologically vulnerable state.
“They need to understand these scammers are incredibly skilled at what they do. They prey on vulnerable people and that’s something the banks don’t seem to recognise.”
The ABC contacted ANZ for comment.
ANZ stated they cannot comment on individual customers, but said the bank has “a range of measures in place to help detect and protect our customers from fraud and scams”.
Anne has requested to obtain a copy of the phone calls with ANZ to confirm the exact wording used.
She acknowledges her role in what happened, but believes that banks should also be held accountable to protect customers from losing their life savings to scams.
Spotting the red flags
According to the Global Anti-Scam Organisation (GASO), here are some of the common tactics these scammers use to manipulate their victims:
- Greeting the target “good morning” and “good night” every day
- Is looking for a serious relationship
- Past trauma or romantic disappointment
- Calls you pet names
- Asking for and sharing pictures of food
- Casually talking about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars
- Bringing up an investment/trading website by the second or third week of talking everyday
- Having an uncle/aunt/brother or professor who taught them crypto trading
UK introduces law for banks to give money back
For vulnerable people like Anne, these red flags can be hard to spot.
The federal government has introduced legislation to crack down on scams, focusing heavily on preventing, detecting and disrupting scams.How Vida lost $32,000 to scammers
Vida and a man she’d met online messaged every day for weeks. Their chat history shows how scammers gained her trust — and stole $32,000 she borrowed from friends and family.
This includes fines of up to $50 million for banks and other companies that fail to meet new obligations.
But consumer advocates say there’s not enough being done in Australia.
In the United Kingdom, banks will be forced to compensate scam victims under a world-first scheme that kicks off next year.
They will be required to refund victims up to 85,000 pounds ($166,000) within five days.
According to a report in 2023, the Big Four banks in Australia reimbursed less than 5 per cent of scam victims.
