Chapter 15
Love Hackers
By Flora Willingham
For my First Year Lyceum, I decided to complete a multidisciplinary research project about the romance scam industry and title my project “Love Hackers,” which is one of the things the scammers call themselves in their online forums.
Why I Chose This Subject
I first became aware of romance scammers, or “pig butcherers,” when my mother was victimized. She was smart, self-sufficient, and loved me and my sister. How and why did she believe the lies of a romance scammer? And who and where was the person who stole her away?
How Do Romance Scams Work?
For my literature research component, I am including a training manual for “pig butchering” that I found on a Chinese website.
Pig butchering is the term for a scam where a predator builds trust with a victim, often through a fake romantic relationship, and then they manipulate the victim into investing large sums of money in fake schemes, typically involving cryptocurrency—the term refers to “fattening up the pig” before “slaughtering” them by taking their money.
I ordered a translation of the Chinese manual, and learned that scammers are taught “packaging must be realistic.” Your name, says the manual, should not be “crude,” though you can have a “nickname naughty and cute.” A fake persona’s age should be between 28 and 35: “Cannot be too young (childish without experience) or too old (unattractive).” As you craft your fake identity’s geographical location, the manual advises, “understand the tastes, snacks, scenic spots, main streets, ethnic customs, celebrities, etc.”
As for your photo, choose an image that is “mature, handsome, muscles, use full-length photos as profile pics, make very clear, if possible with short videos. Can use customers of other co-workers. If using [other] customers’ photos, find the ones that meet the above conditions for packaging!”
Recommended family backgrounds include “born in military, government official, teacher, artist, with good education and family upbringing, values and understanding.”
Here are some more excerpts from the manual that I found disturbing:
Grasping the customer’s psychology
Arouse the customer’s inner dreams, goals, bring out a fighting state of mind (motivation)
Create dreams of perfection, allow customers to fantasize living better and living in their dream life (enjoyment)
How to Set the Hook
Send two pictures of luxury bags or jewelry to the guest and ask the guest to help choose one, hinting to the guest that one has recently made a considerable amount of extra income and wants to buy a gift for customer.
Send photos of high-end restaurants and comment on their expensive and palatable meals.
Better off to stabilize the side income first, or it’s too wasteful.
You can ask the guest what they usually do when they are bored.
After the guest answers, they will usually ask you what you have done and you will have a chance to get in.
You can say: travel, walking the streets/window shopping, listening to music, playing mahjong, making money with Bitcoin investments.
My mom never actually video-chatted with her so-called boyfriend. I freaked out a bit when I read this in the “Pig Butchering Manual”:
How to avoid meeting on video chats: (Do not disclose in the early days!
When the relationship is deep, capitalize on this to avoid video chats.) Tell the story of a very sad, strict upbringing, also autism/other psychological conditions.
When the customer uses feelings to pressure you to meet by video chat, disclose a fear that this side of you (childhood and/or autistic distress of cameras) might show up again.
The female customer’s natural maternal love will instinctively come out and they will no longer pressure you.
If you cannot avoid, consult a Video Editor for help.