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Cellphone users around the country have for months reported a growing barrage of puzzling text messages from people who appear to have the wrong number. “Hey, what are you doing Monday?” a text might read. Or: “I have something to tell you.” The message could be even simpler: “I’m bored” or “Hello.”

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authorities say, victims keep falling for this particular scheme — which combines aspects of romance and investment scams and is known as “pig butchering” because marks are fattened up before the kill.

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They describe how a 68-year-old Santa Clara man identified only as “RB,” who had recently divorced and was struggling through financial problems, received a text message in February from a number he didn’t recognize.

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When he responded, the stranger said her name was “Janey Lee,” that she was a Houston clothing designer, and that she had the wrong number. The trap had been set, and “Lee” kept the conversation going via text before moving it to more secure channels: WhatsApp and Telegram.

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“RB and Lee discussed personal information: their backgrounds, relationship statuses, businesses, and finances,” wrote government attorneys Galen Phillips and Chris Kaltsas in a civil forfeiture complaint, which seeks to recoup some of the lost funds. “Within weeks, this budding relationship became romantic in nature, with Lee repeatedly messaging RB about their future together.”

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Before long, Lee got to work. She (or perhaps he) shifted the conversation to her success in trading cryptocurrency. By March, she had convinced RB to invest, too, helping him to create an account on the well-known trading platform Crypto.com, where he bought digital currency and sent it to “XTRA,” which appeared to be another legitimate crypto exchange.
“Following the initial investment, RB was able to view his fictitious ‘earnings’ on the XTRA website, which reported a 20% to 30% gain against his initial investment,” prosecutors wrote.

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By April 22, RB had invested $260,000 through eight deposits. At that point, his account showed a value of $487,000 — an 87% bonanza in a matter of weeks. Three days later, the divorcee tried to withdraw $100,000.
“Instead of receiving his withdrawal,” the government lawyers wrote, “RB received a message from XTRA customer service saying that by May 2, 2023, in order to verify his account, RB needed to send his XTRA account an additional amount worth approximately 20% of his account balance.”

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Fearing he’d been taken, RB called the FBI, but there was only so much investigators could do at that point.

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Even at age 68, this man was still thinking with his dick, which makes pussy still undefeated.

And, I actually had something similar (text) like this a couple of weeks ago. A New York number "mistakenly" sent me a text message that was intended for her business partner to see what time we were going to play tennis tomorrow. Fast forward, her business partner somehow lived in Houston. I lost the first set, but ended up winning the match.

This post was edited on 11/16/23 at 9:11 am