In the recent past, so-called pig-butchering scams are on the rise. This term is based on a translation of the Chinese term "Sha Zhu Pan", where scammers refer to victims as "pig" which are to be "fattened up before slaughter" so that scammer can siphon off as much monetary value as possible. In this type of scam, attackers perform social engineering tricks on victims over an extended period to build credibility or relationships. After a certain period, when victims transfer larger amounts of money to scammers, the fraudsters' platforms or profiles go permanently offline and the victims' money is lost. In this work, we provide the first comprehensive study of pig-butchering scams from multiple vantage points. Our study analyzes the direct victims' narratives shared on multiple social media platforms, public abuse report databases, and case studies from news outlets. Between March 2024 to October 2024, we collected data related to pig butchering scams from (i) four social media platforms comprised of more than 430,000 social media accounts and 770,000 posts; (ii) more than 3,200 public abuse reports narratives, and (iii) about 1,000 news articles. Through automated and qualitative evaluation, we provide an evaluation of victims of pig-butchering scams, finding 146 social media scammed users, 2,570 abuse reports narratives, and 50 case studies of 834 souls from news outlets. In total, we approximated losses of over \$521 million related to such scams. To complement this analysis, we performed a survey on crowdsourcing platforms with 584 users to broaden the insights on comparative analysis of pig-butchering scams with other types of scams. Our research highlights that these attacks are sophisticated and often require multiple entities, including policymakers and law enforcement, to work together alongside user education to create a proactive detection of such scams.

翻译：近年来，所谓的"杀猪盘"诈骗案件呈上升趋势。该术语源自中文"杀猪盘"的翻译，诈骗者将受害者称为待"养肥后宰杀"的"猪"，以尽可能榨取最大经济利益。在此类诈骗中，攻击者通过长期对受害者实施社会工程手段以建立信任或关系。经过一段时间后，当受害者向诈骗者转移大额资金时，诈骗平台或账户便永久下线，导致受害者资金损失。本研究首次从多维度对"杀猪盘"诈骗进行全面分析。我们通过自动化与质性评估方法，系统分析了多个社交媒体平台受害者自述、公共欺诈报告数据库及新闻案例。2024年3月至10月期间，我们收集了来自以下渠道的数据：(i) 覆盖43万余个社交媒体账户及77万条帖文的四大社交平台；(ii) 3200余份公共欺诈报告文本；(iii) 约1000篇新闻报道。通过分析，我们识别出146名社交媒体受骗用户、2570份欺诈报告记录以及涵盖834名受害者的50个新闻案例。据估算，相关诈骗损失总额超过5.21亿美元。为完善研究，我们通过众包平台对584名用户开展问卷调查，以对比分析"杀猪盘"与其他诈骗类型的特征差异。研究表明，此类攻击手法复杂，需要政策制定者、执法部门与用户教育等多方协同，才能建立主动防御机制。