Pig Butchering Scams: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

I didn’t know this scam was called pig butchering but I was fully prepared to watch a segment on the pork industry since that’s exactly something John Oliver would do

My sister committed suicide over this scam. She was a brilliant nurse, so funny and loving and I miss her every day. Thank you, Jon for bringing awareness to this criminal enterprise, so that other vulnerable people don't lose all.

gosh that father and daughter made me cry. they obviously love each other so much . Hope they make more money

This is in my top 5 of most important Last Week Tonight episodes. It touches on so many things - cybersecurity, economics, class, health care, trafficking, authoritarianism and human rights in general. This episode is deserving of some kind of award for the awareness it brings. Even if only having the "John Oliver Effect" of realizing that that sweet cyber romance you have happening may actually be Rakesh. 😅

I appreciate how he showed respect towards the victims, not portraying them as stupid. Showing that regular, often educated, people can get scammed is an important part in making people comfortable in coming forward with their stories.

I work a job that involves Western Union money transfers, and one day this old Hispanic woman came in trying to wire $100 to someone in California. She gave me her phone so I could take down the name of the receiver and I see its in a Facebook Messenger chat titled "Dwayne The Rock Johnson" and some random numbers. The way the rest of the text was written came off as odd as well, so I asked if she had ever met this person. She said no, it was someone she met online they'd been talking to for a few months who recently said they lost their job and needed money. They had initially asked her to send $1000 but she said she'd send what she could instead. I got management involved right away and we managed to talk her out of sending any money, at least with us.

I was told to search for this video tonight. I had a Chinese girl send me one of these "wrong numbers" and I was forgiving and nice. So suddenly she really wanted to have a conversation all day. Even though she was a CEO of a company. ;) Yeah. There were even more red flags. Halfway through this video I block and reported all contact I had. Thanks Team.

I’m close to someone who lost 120K in one of these scams. It is truly WILD, they will ‘date’ their targets for over a year before asking for money. TRULY UNREAL

Thursday is the new monday.

"70% - 80% fall for fake love" Worth noting how isolated and lonely people in our society feel.

I work with vulnerable adults and one of our employees came to work Monday and explained that he had almost fallen for one of these. It just so happened he had to go to the bank and withdraw money. He has banked there since 1980 so the staff and esp. the manager knew him well. (We actually all went to high school together). She just casually asked if he was taking a holiday and he told her about spending his money on crypto instead. She sat with him for about an hour explaining it all. It was scary because, in the end, if he said to her that he still wanted to invest, she would have to give him the money but luckily, he knew that she wouldn't be wrong about this so he just deleted everything from the scammer.

I played along with one Asian woman who said she wanted to be a friend, and the "knife" for the butchering operation was gold futures to be chosen by her uncle and arranged through a British agent. It was exactly as described at the FBI website. I pointed out that arranging deals through offshore unregistered financial entities was a good way to get fleeced. She said "but aren't we friends?"

That story with the girl and her dad was so sad, and it only made me sadder hearing how incredibly supportive her dad was, despite how much money they lost. Just the most incredibly wholesome people getting their lives ruined is so much harder to hear than just a video talking about a scam.

JO: "For this episode I'm spending money on a tiny disappointing rainbow tree" HBO: enormous sigh of relief

When I was younger, I was new to doing my own taxes, and got a call from fake police officers that convinced me I had committed tax fraud. Got scammed out of an embarrassing amount of money (on my birthday.) This is such a common scam where I live now that I'm amazed I ever fell for it, but all that they need is one of your weaknesses to get a huge chunk of your savings. Now, whenever I'm in financial straits, I think of that amount of money I lost and all the shame comes back. I still remember being in the bank and shaking, trying not to cry withdrawing all that money, but no one knew what was going on, and I was too afraid to tell anyone

Finally I found the upside of being so broke! I can't get scammed if I have no money to give the scammer😂

That dad hugging his daughter even after losing everything is the definition of love ❤

I’ve lost count of how many times I have tried to report scammers but am told “they were not removed because they did not violate community guidelines.” Social media needs to dramatically strengthen their community guidelines to make sure more reports result in fake accounts being removed.

I got one of the messages. I replied "Wrong number" and then replied once more when they apologized for disturbing me. When they replied to that and tried to keep the conversation going I blocked them. I didn't realize it was a scam but I see no reason why someone would want to continue conversing with a "wrong number" person.

I was on a dating app . This man asked me if i owned my own home . I told him that wasn't an appropriate question & he sounded like a scammer . He never texted me again 😅.