Romance baiting, cryptorom and ‘pig butchering’: an evolutionary step in romance fraud

Cross, C. (2023) — Current Issues in Criminal Justice
DOI: 10.1080/10345329.2023.2248670
Synopsis

This article examines the recent convergence of romance fraud and investment fraud, resulting in what has been termed romance baiting, cryptorom, or pig butchering. These schemes use the façade of a romantic relationship to lure victims into fraudulent cryptocurrency investments. While romance fraud has long ranked among the top three categories of financial loss in Australia and internationally, the hybrid model has expanded its reach and heightened its effectiveness.

The article begins with a case study illustrating how scammers develop trust through online relationships before introducing victims to seemingly lucrative crypto investments. Unlike traditional romance scams, where financial requests are tied to emergencies, these schemes present investments as mutually beneficial opportunities for the couple’s future. Victims often believe they are engaging with legitimate trading platforms, only to later discover frozen accounts or vanished funds.

Cross identifies five key factors that make this hybrid strategy particularly effective. First, it harnesses the emotional power of intimate relationships, leveraging trust and persuasion techniques such as liking, social proof, and authority figures. Second, it expands the victim pool: while traditional romance scams disproportionately targeted older adults, romance baiting increasingly affects younger, educated individuals in their twenties and thirties, especially those attracted to cryptocurrency hype. Third, the investment framing raises fewer red flags than direct requests for money, bypassing prevention advice such as “never send money to someone you haven’t met.” Fourth, victims often struggle to recognize the fraud, attributing losses to bad investments rather than deception, especially given the volatility of crypto markets. Finally, the use of cryptocurrency makes investigation and recovery significantly harder for law enforcement due to its anonymity and cross-border nature.

The article highlights two broader challenges. First, statistical distortion: losses from romance baiting are typically recorded under investment fraud, obscuring the true extent of romance fraud in official reports. For example, in Australia, investment fraud losses doubled to AUD $1.5 billion in 2022, while reported romance fraud losses grew more modestly. In reality, much of the investment fraud spike reflects romance baiting cases. Second, circumvention of prevention messaging: by framing financial transfers as investments rather than emergency requests, offenders undermine established awareness campaigns against romance scams and investment scams alike.

In conclusion, Cross emphasizes that fraud constantly evolves, adapting to prevention efforts and exploiting social and technological changes. Romance baiting illustrates offenders’ ability to merge different fraud types to maximize gains and evade detection. Addressing this requires not only refining fraud categories in official statistics but also revising prevention messaging, potentially shifting toward broader financial literacy and healthy relationship education campaigns. Such strategies could reduce susceptibility without relying solely on narrowly framed warnings.
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