Meta cracks down on millions of accounts it tied to pig-butchering scams

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has taken down millions of accounts this year linked to overseas scam centers that enable a kind of cyber-related, fast-growing fraud known as “pig butchering,” the social media giant said Thursday.

The account takedowns are part of a multifaceted Meta strategy to combat scams that have cost U.S. victims billions of dollars of losses in recent years, and the result of two years’ worth of efforts from the company. 

“Pig butchering” is so named because it involves the metaphorical “fattening up” of victims by building up trust under false pretenses before they eventually, unwittingly hand over their money to the criminals perpetuating it. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced into running those scams in one region of the world alone, according to one estimate.

“Today, for the first time, we are sharing our approach to countering the cross-border criminal organizations behind forced-labor scam compounds under our Dangerous Organizations and Individuals (DOI) and safety policies,” Meta said in a blog post. “We hope that sharing our insights will help inform our industry’s defenses so we can collectively help protect people from criminal scammers.”

Scammers do their pig-butchering work over social media sites, dating websites, messaging apps and text messages. A February study placed global losses from pig butchering at $75 billion. The FBI said victims reported losses for “investment fraud,” a term that often overlaps with pig butchering, totaling $4.6 billion in 2023, up from $3.3 billion in 2022.

An influential British banker recently said social media companies aren’t doing enough to combat scams on their platforms, singling out Meta, and others have criticized those companies along the same lines, to Meta’s dismay.

The Meta pig-butchering account crackdown initially focused on scam centers in Cambodia, but has expanded to other parts of Asia — Myanmar, Laos, the Philippines — as well as the United Arab Emirates. 

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, scam compounds run by organized crime emerged in the Asia Pacific region as one of the major sources of ‘pig butchering’ and other scam activity,” Meta wrote. “And while they are mostly based in Asia, scam centers target people across the globe. These criminal scam hubs lure often unsuspecting job seekers with too-good-to-be-true job postings on local job boards, forums and recruitment platforms to then force them to work as online scammers, often under the threat of physical abuse.”

Meta has assembled teams specifically to go after pig-butchering scam hotspots, including by designating entities as dangerous organizations and monitoring those trying to get around Meta enforcement. It has developed products to warn users about suspicious activities. It has also worked with law enforcement and industry peers on prevention, according to the Meta post.

U.S. law enforcement has conducted operations meant to recover cryptocurrency stolen through pig-butchering scams.