In recent years, the cryptocurrency world has seen a dramatic and frightening rise in highly-sophisticated and fraudulent relationship and romance scams that seek to, and ultimately do, steal from cryptocurrency victims hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
The Chinese phrase for the scheme is sha zhu pan, which — roughly translated to English — means pig butchering. The scheme is given that unflattering name because it describes the process in which the offender builds a relationship with the victim over months — frequently romantic, in which the offender showers the victim with messages of love and affection to emotionally “fatten them up” — similar to fattening a pig, before enticing the victim to invest in a fake cryptocurrency venture and, metaphorically, slaughtering the victim by stealing all of his or her invested assets. Harrison has represented numerous victims of relationship scams, which have proven themselves to be some of most confounding schemes plaguing cryptocurrency.
