Pig Butchering

A long-running social-engineering fraud where the attacker builds a weeks-or-months romantic or friendship relationship with the victim before introducing a fake crypto-investment opportunity. The victim is shown small fabricated 'profits' to build trust, encouraged to deposit progressively larger amounts on a controlled platform, then locked out once the deposits stop. The FBI's IC3 reports billions of US dollars in annual losses from this single pattern, mostly run by organised teams operating from Southeast Asia. The crucial defensive cue is that no genuine investment opportunity arrives via unsolicited contact and an unsolicited platform.