Do ‘pig butchering’ cyber scams make as much as half Cambodia’s GDP?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
So-called “pig butchering” scams take billions of dollars from people around the globe. But do the cyber scams run from compounds in Cambodia really take an amount of money equivalent to half that country’s GDP? We investigate how the scale of these criminal operations has been calculated.
Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Tom Colls Production coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Andrew Garratt Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:36.0 | We are your weekly guide to the numbers in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:41.0 | This week... Tim Harford. |
| 0:44.6 | This week we're going to look at the vast sums of money that are being stolen from unsuspecting |
| 0:49.8 | victims around the world in a scam known as pig butchering. |
| 0:55.0 | Listener Lucas Kova Wolf got in touch to ask us to look into a number that appeared on an episode of |
| 1:00.8 | Late Night HBO Topical Satire Show last week tonight with John Oliver. |
| 1:06.7 | According to UN estimates, pink butchering in Cambodia brings in an amount equivalent to half |
| 1:11.0 | the country's GDP. |
| 1:13.0 | So what is this apparently massively lucrative criminal scam? |
| 1:18.0 | And can it really generate as much money as half a country's GDP. |
| 1:23.0 | Tom Kohl's has been looking into this one. |
| 1:26.0 | So what's going on here? |
| 1:27.0 | We better start with the basics. |
... |
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