Inside the AI romance scam factories set up by Asian crime bosses to fleece lonely Australians of their life savings
An Australian woman has revealed how she lost her life savings after falling in love with a man she met online. In reality, it was an AI-generated image of a man.
Sarah, 45, had ended a 20-year relationship and decided to give online dating a try when she met Daniel on Tinder last year.
Although she was skeptical about starting a relationship through the app, the two quickly hit it off and chat several times a day.
Eventually, Daniel, a handsome world traveler created by scammers using advanced technology, explained that he financed his jet-setting lifestyle by investing in cryptocurrencies.
He advised Sarah to use a legit Bitcoin trading app, which would allow her to make profits and withdraw tangible funds.
Once he got her hooked on crypto, he told her to try another platform, which took all of her hard-earned savings and transferred the money to his own account.
She lost $100,000 in the scheme and has little hope of ever seeing the money again.
Sarah described how ashamed and “disgusted” she felt at having fallen for the scam, but said there were no signs to suggest Daniel wasn’t a real person.
Sarah (pictured) lost $100,000 after falling victim to a Tinder romance scam last year
Sarah met Daniel (pictured) who offered her the chance to invest in Bitcoin, but instead he took her money for himself
“There was nothing that was not believable. His pictures looked real, there was no reason for me not to believe that the person I was looking at was not who he was,” she said. 60 minutes on sunday.
Scam victims like Sarah often think they are being targeted by a malicious criminal. While in some cases that is true, a new trend has emerged that is making online transactions scarier than ever before.
Criminal gangs have begun setting up “pig slaughterhouses,” luring innocent people to Southeast Asia and forcing them through torture to commit fraud in a new wave of romance scams.
It is believed that more than 120,000 people are currently being held in facilities on the Myanmar side of the border with Thailand, where they are being brutally beaten and starved to death if they do not meet fraud quotas.
“They beat us very badly,” a former prisoner told the program.
‘Fifteen days no food, no water. Fifteen days locked in the room.’
In large-scale operations, managers compile a personalized portfolio of victims, listing their age, relationship status, salary, and any other information they can find on public social media.
These profiles are then given to the prisoners for them to examine.
Sarah was just one of many victims of this plan worldwide.
She shared her story in the hope that other Australians will not be infected with what she describes as an endemic disease.
Daniel (pictured texting Sarah) was a fake character created by a ‘pig slaughterhouse’ in Myanmar
The person behind Daniel (pictured) was held captive in a factory and forced to scam Tinder users around the world
“It happens to so many people and I don’t think they realise what’s going on,” Sarah said.
“You lose your trust in yourself and your trust in people. You just want to hibernate … and it’s a crime that’s being committed against you. And one of the hardest things is that I’m complicit in that myself.
“And they reach people through one of the most beautiful things in life: love and romance.”
Benedikt Hoffman of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Bangkok warned that the “pig slaughter” fraud factories were a world first and made the online world significantly more dangerous.
He warned that the practices “overshadow even the drug trade” and urged Australians to be extremely cautious when transferring money online, no matter how much you trust the recipient.
Australian Mechelle Moore lives in Thailand, where she works for Global Arms, a non-profit organization dedicated to combating human trafficking and helping prisoners escape.
“They were very, very abused,” she said.
Scammers created ‘Daniel’ using advanced Photoshop tools like AI
‘They were held down and then hammers and metal pipes were used to beat their bodies.
‘They have a lot of swelling and bruising all over their bodies.
‘Sometimes you get hit right away and it’s to scare you into joining in. Other times you get hit because you’re not hitting your scamming targets.’
Australians who believe they have been a victim of scams can report their experience to Scamwatch.
Using reports, the government agency tries to stop scams, spread warnings and provide support.
