The Unpreventable Emotional Telecom Fraud —— "Pig-Butchering Scam"

Abstract

It is well-established that the position of fraud crime has gradually shifted from traditional offline fraud to online telecom fraud. Among them, “Pig-Butchering Scam”, as a new type of fraud, was listed as one of the ten most prevalent fraud crimes by the National Anti-Fraud Center of China in February 2021. This study focuses on the victims of “Pig- Butchering Scam” cases, aiming to find out what common susceptibility traits or potential victimization factors the victims have, and how to cut off their false representations from the “susceptibility” to the behavioral dimension through effective interventions, in order to refine the psychological induction mechanism of emotion-based telecom fraud through this study. The purpose of this study is to refine the psychological induction mechanism of emotional telecommunication fraud. We have conducted field surveys and semi-structured interviews on victims’ personalities and analyzed their common characteristics. The results were similar to our hypothesis: the vast majority of victims generally showed a tendency to have low self-identity in the dimension of self-esteem, especially interpersonal-social self-esteem. This result suggests that people with low self-esteem, especially those with low interpersonal social self-esteem, are more likely to be potential victims of the “Pig-Butchering Scam”.