Pig butchering is a long-running investment fraud: a scammer builds trust over weeks or months, often through a friendship or romance started online, and then steers the victim to a fake trading platform where “profits” grow until withdrawals are blocked. The funds can usually be traced on-chain, because the victim sent them from a known exchange or wallet. Whether any of them can be frozen depends on where they ended up and how quickly you act.
How the scheme works
The name refers to “fattening” the victim before the final blow. The pattern is consistent across many cases.
- First contact through a wrong-number message, a dating app or social media.
- Weeks of friendly conversation, with no request for money.
- An introduction to an “investment” the contact claims to use successfully.
- Small initial deposits, sometimes with a small withdrawal allowed to build trust.
- Larger deposits, then “taxes” or “fees” demanded before any withdrawal.
What tracing can show
The platform's balance is fiction: the real funds went to the addresses the victim was told to use, often for USDT. From there they are typically pooled with funds from other victims, moved through chains of intermediate addresses and sent towards exchanges, brokers or payment services that convert them into cash.
Because these schemes reuse infrastructure, tracing can also link your case to other victims and strengthen the request to the authorities.
What can realistically be done
Payments made months ago may have left long ago, while the most recent ones may still be reachable. Realistic steps are freeze requests for USDT still sitting at identified addresses, requests to the exchanges that received the funds, reporting the addresses to industry blocklists, and a criminal complaint for fraud.
These networks usually operate across several countries. File the complaint where you live anyway: your authority can coordinate with others, and a tracing report that names the receiving exchanges gives it concrete places to send requests.
Evidence to collect
- The full chat history and the contact's profiles.
- The platform's website or app, with screenshots of balances and instructions.
- Every deposit address you were given and every transaction hash.
- Bank transfers to the exchange where you bought the crypto.
How Advisorn helps
Advisorn Forensics traces each payment, identifies the exchanges and addresses still reachable, and prepares freeze requests and the technical annex for your lawyer's complaint.
Examples: Swiss Criminal Code art. 146 (fraud), 305bis (money laundering); Italian Criminal Code art. 640 (fraud), 648-bis (money laundering).
Updated November 2026 · General information, not legal or tax advice on your specific case.