To thwart one of the fastest-growing and most sophisticated online scam industries, Meta Platforms Inc. today said it’s removed around two million accounts related to investment scams known as “pig-butchering.”

The name refers to taking a pig – the human victim – to the slaughter after a period of online grooming when the scammer has befriended the victim on an online platform. Once trust has been built, the scammer invites the victim to invest in a get-rich-quick scheme, usually related to cryptocurrency, thence comes the slaughter. Meta says the scammers will also post “too-good-to-be-true jobs” which are attempts to turn job seekers into unwitting scammers.

Like romance scams, the grooming stage is often sophisticated with the friendship built slowly until trust is gained. The scammers will usually steer the mark away from apps such as Facebook, WhatsApp, or Instagram toward the less-moderated Telegram, where the investment trap will be waiting.  If you’ve noticed fewer of them lately, that might have a lot to do with Meta cracking down on them.

The company said the two million accounts it removed came from Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines. “At the outset, we actively engaged with expert NGOs and law enforcement partners in the U.S. and Southeast Asia to better understand the modus operandi of these criminal groups, including in places like Sihanoukville in Cambodia, which is reported to be a hotbed for Chinese organized crime-linked scams,” Meta explained in a blog post.

The FBI has said there has been a sharp rise in recent years of crypto scams, which are often of the pig-butchering variety. In September, the agency said Americans had lost $4 billion – a record amount.

Meta said it’s now able to flag potential scam messages when scammers try to contact people over Facebook Messenger or Instagram DMs. “We also continue to update behavioral and technical signals associated with these hubs to help us scale automated detection and block malicious infrastructure and recidivist attempts,” said the company.

Still, Meta warned that these scams are “one of the most egregious and sophisticated” it’s ever seen. A study published this year and reported by Bloomberg said these scam outfits have likely stolen over $75 billion from victims around the world since 2020. As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

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