Pig Butchering: Inside the Billion-Dollar Scam Factories
“Imagine a campus with 35 buildings, but they are all for the purpose of scamming. It was a walled in, locked down facility where hundreds, thousands of people were in the business of scamming people all over the world.”
Pig Butchering scams have become some of the most lucrative online frauds around. These are highly organized, emotionally manipulative schemes where victims are tricked into handing over life savings, often after forming fake romantic relationships with their scammers. Since 2020, more than 75 billion dollars could have been stolen from victims worldwide.
This time, we hear from someone on the frontline investigating and shutting down these pig butchering scams. She’s seen the inside of scam factories to show us exactly how they carry out their lucrative crimes.
Our guest, Erin West, spent 26 years as a Deputy District Attorney and carried investigations into cryptocurrency-enabled crimes, SIM-swapping, and digital financial fraud. Now, Erin is on a mission to unite the global community—law enforcement, crypto platforms, NGOs—to expose, disrupt, and shut down these fraud networks for good.
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Founder, Operation Shamrock
Erin West is a globally recognized speaker and educator specializing in transnational organized crime, with a focus on cryptocurrency-related investigations and prosecutions. After 26 years as a Deputy District Attorney in Santa Clara County, California—eight with the REACT High-Tech Task Force—Erin became known for leading SIM-swap arrests and major crypto recoveries.
Erin founded the Crypto Coalition, a global network of nearly 2,000 law enforcement agents, and launched Operation Shamrock, a non-profit uniting law enforcement, industry, and international partners against crime networks based in Southeast Asia.
Erin’s leadership and passion for justice continue to drive global efforts to dismantle criminal enterprises and protect communities.
