Pig butchering, a type of romance fraud wherein victims are groomed into sending cash to faux crypto funding schemes, has grown right into a multibillion-dollar business, in accordance with blockchain analytics agency Elliptic’s 2025 Typologies Report.
The examine factors to more and more organized strategies of laundering stolen funds utilizing practices that resemble skilled monetary operations.
Elliptic’s investigators discovered that scammers usually pool victims’ deposits into self-hosted wallets used solely to consolidate and transfer funds. From there, the cash flows via chains of transactions designed to obscure its origin, typically passing via cross-chain bridges or fee processing companies that provide a veneer of legitimacy.
A standard tactic includes utilizing mule accounts at regulated crypto platforms. These accounts incessantly share suspicious markers corresponding to an identical residential addresses, repeated IP logins, and patterns of transfers between accounts.
Images submitted for compliance checks typically present operators understanding of name facilities or warehouses in Southeast Asian nations the place pig-butchering operations are recognized to originate.
The report underscores that, not like cash-based crime, blockchain leaves behind seen transaction trails. This transparency provides regulators and platforms new instruments to identify suspicious exercise at the same time as scammers refine their strategies.
Elliptic additionally warns that pig butchering is just one piece of a broader image. The report additionally detailed how people going through official sanctions are more and more turning to stablecoins for cross-border transactions.
