Deconstructing a form of hybrid investment fraud: Examining ‘pig butchering’ in the United States

Abstract

Cyber-enabled fraud has transformed, becoming more complex and making it harder for targets and law enforcement to detect its occurrence. This study aims to recontextualize a major manifestation of this transformation, a crime called hybrid investment fraud, colloquially known as pig butchering. Hybrid investment fraud describes a cyber-enabled fraud whereby criminals gain the trust of victims by forming connections and relationships, and then exploit this trust by using a series of confidence building and coercive measures designed to encourage victims to continuously invest in securities or commodities until they become unable or unwilling to continue to make payments or the offenders become unreachable. This study further aims to address the existing knowledge gap by focusing on understudied elements of this fraud, such victim and offender characteristics and the ways hybrid investment fraud is perpetrated. To achieve this, we conducted an in-depth analysis of more than 1,300 news articles and court documents between January 1, 2018, and November 1, 2023, to identify 59 cases of hybrid investment fraud targeting victims in the United States. This article both situates hybrid investment fraud within the broader fraud literature and conducts a comprehensive of analysis of hybrid investment fraud cases to identify the types of hybrid investment fraud committed, their impact, victim and offender demographics, and offenders’ tactics, tools, and methods of operation. The findings from this study can inform criminal justice practices and future research of this fraud.