Cyber Scams: Pig Butchery Is a Crime With Victims on Both Sides

I’ve taken both personal delight and dismay at the fall of Chen Zhi, the accused mastermind of a worldwide scammer network who is now an international fugitive. It was a dizzying ride up and now down for the 37-year old. My Bloomberg colleagues describe Chen’s alleged spoils in much detail in the wake of his US indictment: $15 billlion in Bitcoin seized by the US; $115 million in assets, including cars, expensive liquor and a yacht confiscated by Singapore authorities; an office building and other properties worth around $150 million in London; $300 million of stakes in Hong Kong-listed public companies and commercial property. Having relocated sometime around 2011 from China to Cambodia after authorities began looking into scam activities, he won influence with the Phnom Penh government and through it began to ingratiate himself with the great political powers of the world.

And here’s why I am happy he is now the target of almost every jurisdiction in the world: The alleged basis of his loot is a poisonous combination of human malice, one that pitted jungle plantations of slave labor against the aging, isolated and lonely in all parts of the world. As a single person clearly identifiable as such by my social media profile, I’ve been caught up partway in some attempts to part fools from their money. The initial approaches seem innocuous enough: An attempt to strike up a friendship via Instagram, for example, citing interests in common — restaurants, ethnicity, the pain of being strangers in strange lands. But a review of the IG profile of the would-be “friend” reveals a gallery of stock photos with banal captions, scores of posts published on a single day or two to give the impression of a real person. It’s like unmasking the Phantom of the Opera.