U.S. Prosecutor Warns to Beware of Love Scams on Valentine's Day! San Jose Widow Loses Nearly $100,000

The Northern Ohio District Attorney’s Office warned on Thursday to be cautious of love scams during Valentine’s Day, as crypto fraud and organized crime networks target the peak sales season. Authorities urge the public to stay vigilant, as scammers exploit online relationships to steal money, often building trust over weeks or months before luring victims into crypto payments and fake investment schemes. San Jose widow Margaret Loke lost nearly $1 million in such a scam.

The Cruel Mechanics of Love Scams

Many of these cases are related to schemes described by researchers, which combine emotional manipulation with fake crypto investment platforms in long-term frauds. The term “Pig Butchering” comes from insider slang among scammers, comparing victims to pigs and the scam process to raising pigs: first feeding (building emotional trust), fattening (inducing more investment), and finally slaughtering (disappearing with the money). This metaphor’s brutality reveals the scammers’ extreme objectification and cold-bloodedness toward victims.

The Ohio prosecutor warns that warning signs include moving conversations from dating apps to WhatsApp or Telegram, early confessions of love, persistent refusal to meet in person, and requests for payments via cryptocurrency, gift cards, or wire transfers. Among these signals, “shifting to crypto apps” is the most critical. Dating platforms like Tinder or Bumble usually have reporting and monitoring mechanisms, and accounts suspected of scams can be banned. But WhatsApp and Telegram are end-to-end encrypted private messaging tools, making content monitoring impossible for platforms, thus providing scammers a safe space to operate.

Balazs Faluvegi, senior analyst at BrokerChooser, told Decrypt that these scams are so destructive because they are unpredictable. He said, “Unlike traditional scams that execute quickly, these scams exploit people’s emotional and financial vulnerabilities. Scammers spend weeks or even months gaining your trust, then introduce seemingly lucrative investment opportunities, casually mention their success, and offer to teach you. Remember, no stranger genuinely wants to help you make money.”

Six Stages of the Pig Butchering Scam

Stage 1 (Contact): Flirting on dating apps or social media, often using attractive photos

Stage 2 (Shift): Quickly requesting to move the chat to Telegram or WhatsApp for more privacy

Stage 3 (Fattening): Weeks to months of emotional engagement—good morning/good night messages, warm inquiries, even video calls (but always with reasons not to meet)

Stage 4 (Seduction): Casually mentioning crypto investments and showing fake profit screenshots

Stage 5 (Feeding): Providing links to investment platforms, helping open accounts, encouraging small deposits, and allowing withdrawals to build trust

Stage 6 (Slaughter): After large investments, using various reasons (taxes, system errors) to block withdrawals, then disappearing

The $1 Million Loss and the Trust Trap of Small Withdrawals

Last December, San Jose widow Margaret Loke lost nearly $1 million in a pig butchering crypto scam. Later, she verified the scam on ChatGPT and confirmed it was a fraud. Ironically, she only thought to verify with AI after suffering heavy losses—if she had done so before investing, she might have avoided the damage.

Faluvegi explains that scammers typically start with cold outreach, then over time build close personal relationships, guiding targets to fake platforms that display exaggerated returns and demand larger deposits. When victims try to withdraw, scammers fabricate fees or technical issues to block the process, then vanish.

He said, “A common trick is to let you withdraw a small initial ‘profit’ to encourage further investment. When you try to withdraw larger amounts, they suddenly create obstacles—taxes, fees, or system errors—to prevent you from getting your money out.” This “small first, big later” strategy is highly effective. When victims successfully withdraw $1,000 or $5,000, they get the illusion that the platform is real, leading them to invest $10,000 or even $100,000. In reality, scammers are willing to ‘lose’ a few thousand dollars because they know it will lead to bigger ‘harvests.’

$225 Million USDT Seized and Southeast Asian Crime Empire

Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice seized $225 million in Tether USDT stablecoins related to pig butchering scams—the largest crypto seizure linked to such frauds. Prior investigations traced the funds through centralized exchanges laundering money. The scale indicates that pig butchering scams have become organized crime industries, not just small-time frauds. Behind this flow of funds are complete criminal chains: front-end “keyboard operators” fishing on dating apps, mid-level “customer service” maintaining relationships and guiding investments, back-end tech teams creating fake platforms, and money laundering teams transferring and cleaning stolen funds.

In Myanmar and Cambodia, large-scale scam hubs operated by Chinese organized crime networks often employ trafficked labor, turning pig butchering into a billion-dollar global industry. These hubs operate with brutal efficiency: fake recruitment ads promising high-paying, easy jobs lure or kidnap victims to Myanmar or Cambodia, confiscate passports and phones, and force them to work over 12 hours daily on online scams. Non-cooperation or poor performance can lead to beatings, electric shocks, or worse.

Stolen crypto is quickly laundered through specialized channels into shell accounts and luxury assets in Southeast Asian financial centers, then the trail disappears. The U.S. DOJ has taken action to shut down domains linked to a major property in Myanmar, while Chinese authorities have sentenced multiple Myanmar nationals to death for involvement in scams exceeding $1.4 billion and causing at least 14 deaths.

“Before investing in any trading platform, be sure to do thorough research. Check licenses, regulatory status, and independent reviews—don’t rely solely on the platform or its ‘users’,” Faluvegi warns. This advice is simple but highly effective. Legitimate crypto exchanges have clear company registration info, regulatory licenses (like Coinbase’s New York BitLicense), and verifiable user reviews. Scam platforms are often newly registered domains, lack regulatory info, and only have fake positive reviews. Spending 10 minutes googling the platform name plus “scam” or “fraud” usually reveals warnings from victims.

For those approaching Valentine’s Day, this report serves as an important reminder: online romance requires extreme caution, especially when the other person starts discussing investments or money. Genuine feelings don’t need monetary proof; any request for transfers or investments from a “lover” should be met with suspicion. Better to miss out on a potential true love than to become the next victim of a pig butchering scam.