Industrialized heartbreak: how generative AI enables romance fraud at scale
Dominguez Castillo, Lorena (2026) — AI and Ethics
Type: Journal Article
Country: Global
Tags: Romance fraud, Generative AI, Deepfake, AI governance, Platform accountability, Technology-facilitated abuse, Sextortion, Cryptocurrency laundering, Online safety, Fraud detection, Deepfakes
Industrialized heartbreak describes a trend in which generative AI tools amplify romance fraud by enabling scalable creation of convincing digital personas and outreach. Proponents and critics alike discuss how text-base...
“Simple job, high salary”: unveiling the complexity of scam-forced criminality in Southeast Asia
Luong, Hai Thanh (2025) — Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Type: Journal Article
Country: Global
Tags: pig-butchering, scam-forced criminality, cyber-enabled crime, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, human trafficking, victim-offender overlap, transnational crime
This catalog-style entry surveys the phenomenon commonly framed as “simple job, high salary” and its role in scam-forced criminality in Southeast Asia. The framing gathers a spectrum of recruitment narratives, promises o...
An Anatomy of ‘Pig Butchering Scams’: Chinese Victims’ and Police Officers’ Perspectives
Han, Bing; Button, Mark (2025) — Deviant Behavior
Type: Journal Article
Country: United Kingdom
This article analyzes the hybrid romance–investment scam known as “pig butchering” (Sha Zhu Pan, 杀猪盘) from the perspectives of Chinese victims and police officers. Unlike traditional romance scams, pig butchering fuse...
Romanssihuijaus - rakkauden varjolla tehty kyberrikos
Kanervo, Riikka; Normann, Maria; Korhonen, Helmi (2025) — Kriminologia
Type: Journal Article
Country: Finland
Tags: AI misuse
The paper analyzes romance scams as a distinct and serious form of cybercrime, emphasizing that these schemes rely on emotional manipulation rather than purely financial deception. Offenders build fabricated romantic rel...
Shifting routines and the industrialisation of scams: the impact of Covid-19 on deception crimes in Hong Kong
Akartuna, Eray Arda; Yeung, Felix Sin Wai; Manning, Matthew; Bish, Alexandre (2025) — Trends in Organized Crime
Type: Journal Article
Country: Hong Kong
Tags: Deception, Fraud, Pig butchering, Romance scams, Covid-19, Hong Kong, Routine Activity Theory, Crime displacement, victim experience, risk factors, measurement, cross-cultural
This study analyzes how the Covid-19 crisis affected deception-related crime in Hong Kong by examining a period from February 2020 to June 2023. The researchers apply an Auto ARIMA time series approach to contrast crime...
“Why did I fall for it?” Exploring internet fraud susceptibility in the pig butchering scam
Xie, Ziyi; Duan, Zhizhuang (2024) — Security Journal
Type: Journal Article
Country: China
Tags: victim experience, platform policy, prevention
Pig butchering scam, known also as Sha Zhu Pan or 杀猪盘, represents a contemporary form of online fraud that initially targeted Asian victims. With the expansion of Southeast Asian fraud networks, the scheme has achieve...
A new type of victim? Profiling survivors of modern slavery in the online scam industry in Southeast Asia
Franceschini, Ivan; Li, Ling; Hu, Yige; Bo, Mark (2024) — Trends in Organized Crime
Type: Journal Article
This catalog entry examines the emergence within the online scam economy in Southeast Asia of a particular victim group—survivors of modern slavery who become entwined with organized illicit networks. It surveys how thes...
Analysis of "Pig-Butchering Scam" Type of Network Fraud from the Legal Perspective
Fu, Zhenglang (2024) — Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media
Type: Journal Article
Country: China
Tags: victim experience, AI misuse
This paper examines pig-butchering scams (Sha Zhu Pan) from a legal perspective, focusing on their causes, operation, challenges for China’s legal system, and possible countermeasures. Pig-butchering scams are distinguis...
Are fraud victims nothing more than animals? Critiquing the propagation of “pig butchering” (Sha Zhu Pan, 杀猪盘)
Whittaker, Jack M.; Lazarus, Suleman; Corcoran, Taidgh (2024) — Journal of Economic Criminology
Type: Journal Article
Country: United Kingdom
The article explores the growing phenomenon of romance scams as a particularly harmful form of cybercrime that exploits emotional vulnerability for financial gain. The authors position romance scams within the wider land...
Bi-Directional Exploitation of Human Trafficking Victims: Both Targets and Perpetrators in Cybercrime
Sarkar, Gargi; Shukla, Sandeep K. (2024) — Journal of Human Trafficking
Type: Journal Article
Country: Global
Tags: cybercrime, human trafficking, cyber-enabled trafficking, romance scams, pig butchering, transnational organized crime, policy and law enforcement, SEZs and cross-border crime
Bi-Directional Exploitation of Human Trafficking Victims: Both Targets and Perpetrators in Cybercrime is presented as a scholarly entry in the Journal of Human Trafficking that situates trafficking within cybercrime ecos...
