Delaware Targets Pig Butchering Scammers and Freezes Their Crypto Wallets

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Pig butchering scams are notoriously difficult to prosecute — but over in Delaware, there's an encouraging development.

Prosecutors have issued summary orders to cease and desist against 23 entities and individuals involved in these scams.

Typically, victims are groomed to make increasingly larger investments into fake schemes over time — often their whole life savings — only to realize they've lost it all.

Attorney General Kathy Jennings says protecting investors from online scammers is "extremely important" to her department, adding:

"When victims lose money through cryptocurrency scams, including the pig butchering scam, it can be difficult to recover those funds. Today's order takes a first step toward protecting Delaware investors from the pig butchering scam by freezing funds at risk from further transfer by the wrongdoers."

Investigators had received complaints from locals who were contacted online by people they didn't know and encouraged to purchase cryptocurrency as an investment.

Some saw large results on their initial deposits, and felt emboldened to make bigger ones. But in the end, they were never able to withdraw their funds — and their crypto vanished.

Delaware's Department of Justice described it as an "international scam involving thousands of victims across the country with losses into the billions of dollars."

Detectives managed to trace the crypto that belongs to two of the complainants — linking it to wallets on various exchanges. An order now means that withdrawals from these accounts are frozen as an investigation continues.

The state's Investor Protection Unit is urging the public to be wary of strangers who get in touch online — and don't get drawn in if they claim to have made a lot of money by trading crypto. They finished by reminding us of an old saying: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.