2025-02-10
8 分钟The Economist. Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here,
co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.
This is Editor's Picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist read aloud.
Enjoy.
Edgar met Rita on LinkedIn.
He worked for a Canadian software company.
She was from Singapore and was with a large consultancy.
They were just friends but they chatted online all the time.
One day Rita offered to teach him how to trade crypto.
With her help he made good money so he raised his stake.
However after Edgar tried to cash out It became clear that the crypto trading site was a fake and that he had lost $78,000.
Rita, it turned out, was a trafficked Filipina held prisoner in a compound in Myanmar.
In their different ways, Edgar and Rita were both victims of pig butchering,
the most lucrative scam in a global industry that steals over $500 billion a year from victims all around the world.
In Scam Inc, our eight-part podcast,
The Economist investigates the crime, the criminals, and the untold suffering they cause.
Scam ink is about the most significant change in transnational organized crime in decades.
Pig butchering or shajupan is Chinese criminal slang.
First, the scammers build a stye with fake social media profiles.