Many believe we're living in the golden age of scams.

Romance scams, investment scams, fake job scams,

even the most skeptical among us are falling prey

to increasingly sophisticated frauds.

One particular scam, called pig butchering,

has cost victims around the world

and estimated $75 billion in just the last four years.

Ali Rogan has more on what it is and how to avoid it.

Pig-butchering investment scams have exploded over the last few years.

Named for the practice of farmers' fattening hogs before slaughter,

the scheme often starts with a simple high or a seemingly

innocent wrong number text on messaging platforms like WhatsApp. Before they catch on, victims can

lose hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars. In 2023 alone, Americans reported

losing $4.6 billion to investment schemes. And it's not just the targets that are being

harmed. The impostors on the other end of the line are often human trafficking victims forced to

run the scheme by large crime syndicates in Asia. Erin West is a former deputy district attorney

in Santa Clara County, California. Erin, thank you so much for being here. How do these schemes play out?

And what sort of psychological tactics do these scammers use to trick people?

The way victims are usually contacted is they receive what appears to be a wrong number text.

And those have gotten increasingly clever.

They're doing anything they can to just get your attention long enough

to respond so that they can drop in a picture of usually an attractive young Asian female

...