Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced his office’s successful disrupting of an ongoing “pig butchering” operation on Thursday, April 4.
File photo by Paul Frangipane
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Virtual Currency Unit has successfully dismantled and disrupted an online “pig butchering” operation that defrauded people across the country of millions of dollars.
Pig butchering is a virtual scam practice of luring individuals online and gaining their trust through conversation before convincing them to invest through apps and website domains in fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. Victims of the crime are enticed by the subsequent huge financial returns in their investments, but when they try to withdraw the money are blocked from their accounts, losing out entirely.
The bust was announced on Thursday by District Attorney Eric Gonzalez.
“Pig butchering is a growing type of scam that defrauds residents of Brooklyn and the entire country out of billions of dollars every year,” he said. “My office’s strategy is to disrupt these schemes by seizing and shutting down their online infrastructure, and to educate the public about ways to avoid becoming a victim.”
The Virtual Currency Unit was established by the district attorney’s office in the fall of 2023 after hearing numerous complaints from Brooklynites who had fallen victim to the scams.
One such case involved a 51-year-old woman who reported to police in March of 2023 that she had been defrauded and lost $22,680 after downloading an app from the website coinformant.com.
She had been initially added to a chat group which discussed cryptocurrency and investments. Individuals in the chat convinced her to go to the website and download the app, on which she subsequently made eight deposits — seeing her profits rise to an astounding total of $387,495 in a brief period of time.
When she tried to withdraw the money, she was told she had to pay taxes. Upon…
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