The family of an 82-year-old Virginia man who committed suicide after falling victim to a pig butchering crypto scam say they’re ‘heartbroken’ that he seemingly trusted the scammer more than his own children, CNN reports.

Dennis Jones took his own life in March after handing over ‘everything he had’ to a scammer posing as a woman called ‘Jessie’ on Facebook.

According to Jones’ social media records, the pair had been exchanging messages for months before he was convinced to invest a large amount of money into a fraudulent crypto project. Once he had, ‘Jessie’ reportedly convinced him to hand over more and more of his cash until ‘he had nothing left.’

During this time, according to his daughter Adrianne, the usually outgoing and optimistic Jones began to step back from his family, prompting them to arrange a meeting at which they would discuss the best way to help get him back on his feet.

However, before the meeting could take place, they were informed that he had taken his own life.

Following his death, Jones’ family discovered the ‘heartbreaking’ messages that he had exchanged with the scammer.

“I have been having dark thoughts about my life and it being over. Certainly it looks like my financial life is done,” he wrote in one exchange. “The ultimate pain here is that I have betrayed family trust. This is unbearable.”

“He was talking about having signs of a nervous breakdown. And so these were all shared with the profile,” Adrianne told CNN.

“Instead of sharing with us,” his son Matt added.

Read more: US seizes pig-butchering funds at Evolve Bank

Erin West, a prosecutor dedicated to fighting pig butchering scams, told CNN that scammers are pulling a ‘major psychological stunt’ on the world. “Scammers overseas have figured out a way that they can get victims to trust them over their own families,” she says.

According to CNN, FBI data shows $5 billion was stolen in cryptocurrency fraud in 2023 with $3.96 billion stemming from pig butchering scams. The US is trying to permanently seize USDT from a Binance account in connection with a $1 million pig butchering scam.

West also noted that these scams involve “victims victimizing victims,” and that “the only winners are Chinese gangsters.” Indeed, many of these scammers are victims of human trafficking across Southeast Asia. In March, roughly 1,800 slaves were freed from pig butchering compounds across Myanmar and the Philippines.

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A January complaint for forfeiture filing initially reviewed by Fintech Business Weekly details several million dollars seized at Evolve Bank and Trust related to a variety of fraudulent enterprises, including crypto-based pig-butchering and money laundering.

The complaint alleges that Paralel Design Limited, Gatcha Pictures Limited, and Bytechip LLC were engaged in an interconnected scheme to provide money laundering services, specifically receiving funds from cryptocurrency investment scams, pig-butchering scams, and other fraudulent activity.

The filing describes the group behind the operation as ’26 Chinese nationals who allegedly reside in California, New York, and various regions throughout China.’ It also claims that they “All appear to be conspiring together to orchestrate fraud scams.” A US Secret Service agent describes these allegations in the filing. 

Read more: Hundreds freed from ‘pig-butchering’ compound after victim escapes

Evolve Bank and Trust provides Banking as a Service (BaaS) products that enable other firms to open up ‘vAccounts’ at Evolve for its clients. Allegedly, these firms engaged in fraud would open vAccounts at one of more of the following platforms: Wise, Airwallex, Mercury, Relay, and Solidfi. These are all Money Service Businesses (MSBs) that maintain contractual agreements for BaaS with EB&T.

A lawsuit filed by ByteChip LLC against Solid on the same day as the complaint for forfeiture describes ByteChip as ‘a leading neobank’ that provides, among other things, ‘Banking-as-a-Service’ products. The lawsuit describes how ByteChip contracted with Solid and opened a virtual bank account with Solid, where funds were held with Evolve Bank and Trust. ByteChip claims to have used the account as a master account to process its clients’ funds.

Evolve eventually froze the funds associated with ByteChip, Gatcha, and another firm called Rinotech, citing ‘unsatisfactory banking practices.’

To clarify, Evolve provided services to Solid, Solid provided services to ByteChip, and ByteChip provided services to its clients — allegedly fraudsters. 

Read more: A year on from the US regional banking crisis, what’s changed?

An investigator for Evolve told the agent investigating the fraud that they estimated the total exposure was in excess of $15 million in Evolve’s virtual accounts. 

Evolve served as the card issuer for BlockFi’s credit card, provided some accounts to FTX customers, and was named in the FTX bankruptcy. At the time, Evolve stated that “Evolve does not lend against cryptocurrency; we do not offer crypto custodial services, and we do not trade crypto or hold any form of cryptocurrency on our balance sheet. Further, Evolve does not currently, nor have we at any point in the past, invest in or transact crypto.”

They continued, “Evolve was in the process of dissolving our relationship with FTX at the time of their bankruptcy filing. To be clear, Evolve did not lend to FTX or their affiliates; we do not have corporate or deposit accounts with FTX or their affiliates. Again, Evolve does not currently, nor have we ever, invest or transact crypto.”

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Academics at the University of Texas claim to have traced over $75 billion of crypto flows linked to social engineering scams known as ‘pig butchering.’

However, blockchain forensics expert Taylor Monahan suspects that this figure is inflated by “a few orders of magnitude.”

Metamask’s Monahan, a longstanding figure in the crypto community known for her recent painstaking on-chain tracing of the Lazarus Group, has specifically raised concerns over the study’s methodology.

Read more: North Korean group Lazarus behind $70M crypto exchange attacks, report

Monahan suspects that the authors have double-counted funds and misinterpreted some of the addresses involved, such as a decentralized exchange, OTC desks, and brokers who service the scammers.

One of Monahan’s key criticisms is that, despite the authors noting the possibility of double-counting recirculated funds, they summed all inflows to end-point addresses, an approach characterized as ‘charging on anyways.’

Compared to previous studies, the $75 billion total appears extremely high. Blockchain forensics and compliance firm Chainalysis, for example, puts the total at $1 billion, noting that “the true total is likely higher.” However, such a discrepancy between estimates seems unfeasible.

Totals aside, the pig butchering industry is a big, and horrifying, problem.

Read more: Single Chinese ‘pig-butchering’ operation made $100M in USDT, report

What is ‘pig butchering’? 

Pig butchering, from the Chinese 杀猪盘, is the name given to a class of online social engineering scams that lure in victims via dating apps or social media. Payments are then extracted from victims by leveraging a supposed romantic relationship, or through the promise of lucrative investment opportunities.

Those conducting the scams are often themselves victims of organized crime, enslaved in so-called ‘scam farm’ compounds across Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar.

Monahan urges more caution in studying the intersection between slavery and crypto, recommending a UN report from last year.

Read more: 1,200 slaves freed from Myanmar pig-butchering compound

Ineffective controls

Those in charge of moving the proceeds of pig butchering scams are unfazed by the controls that centralized exchanges and stablecoins are meant to have in place.

The paper states that “perpetrators interact freely with major crypto exchanges” such as Binance, Huobi, and OKX, evidently bypassing any effective know-your-customer (KYC) controls.

The scammers are also clearly unafraid of using USDT, the stablecoin which the report identifies as 84% of the volume studied, despite Tether’s ability to freeze any funds tied to illicit activity. 

As the paper’s abstract states: “Our findings highlight how the ‘reputable’ crypto industry provides the common gateways and exit points for massive amounts of criminal capital flows.”

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