Don’t fall victim to ‘pig butchering’: King County prosecutors warn of scams ahead of holidays

From phishing to romance fraud to extortion and even becoming a “money mule,” financial crimes continue to impact residents across King County – and it’s expected to rise once again with the coming holiday season.

According to a 2023 study from AARP, 80% of surveyed U.S. adults reported being targeted with holiday-related fraud, which includes fake charities and fraudulent online marketplaces.

In a concerted push to inoculate the public from these scams, King County prosecutors laid out a wide variety of them at a lunchtime press conference inside the King County Courthouse on Tuesday. They took a special focus on imposters – who’ve recently been impersonating law enforcement officials around Western Washington – and online scams.

“One of the emerging trends in financial crimes over the last few years is what’s called ‘pig butchering,’” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Hugo Torres with the Economic Crimes & Wage Theft Division said.

He described it as criminals “fattening up a pig before you kill it and eat it.”

It’s a tactic, he said, where criminals repeatedly convince their victims to send them money.

“Whereas a romance scam maybe 10 years ago would have been a request for money and then the suspect disappears, now they’ll engage in an ongoing relationship with their victims and keep asking for money … until our victim is just completely drained,” he said.

King County prosecutors warn of ‘money mule’ scams

Prosecutors are also warning the public about a trend where the victim becomes an unwitting so-called “money mule.” The group of lawyers cited a case of a man, Harold Murphy, who convinced women to deposit fraudulent checks into their BECU accounts, asking them to then withdraw the money for him before the checks ultimately bounced.

He “met and befriended young women,” Senior Deputy Prosecutor Danika Adams said.

“The three women he ran this scam on initially found themselves left holding the bag,” she added. “Their checks would bounce because they were all fake, and then BECU would come after them for the money.”

He was ultimately caught, convicted and sentenced to 170 months in prison – the severity of the penalty motivated by his criminal record, prosecutors said.

BECU found itself in the middle of another scam – this time, on the receiving end of an imposter pretending to be the credit union in attempts to siphon funds away from customers.

“When it comes to phones, criminals have gotten pretty sophisticated,” Torres said. “They’re able to alter called ID and spoof a legitimate entity. This is something they’re doing more and more.”

One of the same scammers even called a prosecuting attorney working on the same BECU case.

“While he was working on that case on his computer, he got a call on his personal phone and it said it’s from BECU,” he said. “He answered it, and it wasn’t from BECU – he’s seen these types of scams before.”

Torres took the example as a time to remind citizens “Whenever you are called by any entity, don’t give our personally identifying information if you did not initiate the call.”

Prosecutors offered more advice that consumers have likely heard before: don’t click suspicious links in emails, don’t readily trust someone calling pretending to be a family member in dire need and be aware that government officials and law enforcement will never request payment be in gift cards or cryptocurrencies.

But among the advice was a stark reality – victims’ money is often spent before the criminals are caught. And that’s even if they are caught.

Most victims feel too ashamed to report the crimes quickly to police, prosecutors said. Of the ones who do, substantial evidence on the suspects’ identities is often not there and hampers any investigation or prosecution of the case. It leads prosecutors to an unfortunate message of prevention.

“They are very good at spending the money they steal, and so a lot of it is gone by the time it gets to us,” Torres said. “The best way to keep from losing out is to not be scammed in the first place.”

Sam Campbell is a reporter, editor and anchor at KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of Sam’s stories here. Follow Sam on X, or email him here.

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