Shadowing Practice: Inside a Pig Butchering Scam - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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This is undercover filming in a pig butchering scam.
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The people in this office are pretending to be glamorous models in the hope
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that they can steal money from people all over the world.
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But thanks to an insider who's risking his life taking these pictures, we're able to see how their scam operates.
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And if you ever wondered why people are convinced with scams like this, take a look at this footage.
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Nice to see you.
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I will message you WhatsApp.
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Okay?
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Okay, thank you.
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Bye bye.
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You're back to us.
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Yes, they even employ models to FaceTime their victims.
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What you're about to see takes place in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
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The building has been chosen because it's out of the way of authorities.
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It's several miles outside the centre of Dubai.
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Until recently, these buildings housed hundreds of people who scammed on a truly global scale.
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There are eight of these eight -storey buildings, and at least half of them were occupied by people running a pig -butchering scam.
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And there are so many people involved using multiple mobile devices
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that they need a semi -permanent communications van sitting outside these apartments.
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But what is a pig butchering scam?
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I'll let the scammers show you.
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On these computers within the Rahaba residences, these scammers are typing messages to their prospective victims.
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On the computers are various dating apps and these will be used to initially reach out to those victims.
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Next the scammer fires up a VPN because the dating apps will block people who are outside the respective country.
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With his real location hidden, he then looks to see if he can find any marks.
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At the start of every day it's exactly the same.
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The scammer will pick out new potential victims.
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You can see here who he's pretending to be.
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It will always be somebody glamorous with a rich looking lifestyle.
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With the victim selected, it's time to start into his script.
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He of course has to remind himself who he's pretending to be, in this case someone called Irene.
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Here five new people have been added from various dating apps, and of those, four are engaged in what he calls passionate chat.
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Three of them are classed as potential clients they are falling for the scam, and as yet none have registered for the actual scam app.
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But more about that in just a moment.
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The first thing he says to everyone is to message him on WhatsApp or Telegram.
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He wants them off the dating app.
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Most online dating apps will have safeguards so that when people like this are highlighted as scammers, their accounts will be banned.
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But of course, if they're off the platform, there's not much the dating sites can do about this.
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But only as I watched these scammers did it become apparent that this scam was truly global.
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I personally witnessed this group trying to scam people in South America like Bolivia and Peru
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and right through to obscure countries like Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan.
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They didn't care about how poor the people were, they were commissioned on how many people they got to sign up.
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And their computers were chock full of people living very lavish lifestyles.
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These are the actual video files which were sitting on many of their computers
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and they would obviously send these to their prospective victims.
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but alongside the videos and photos of ferraris i could see evidence that people were being scammed
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Voter cards and passports from countries as varied as Bangladesh,
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Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua give a clue to the extent of just how far these scams went.
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But it isn't just confined to dating apps.
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Here's a message I receive personally, and this one is from a pig butchering scammer.
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Although I initially said, I think you have the wrong number, I knew that this person would want to continue the conversation.
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She initially pretended to be apologetic, but of course this is just a ruse to start a conversation with a stranger.
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Next, an excuse as to why she used the wrong numbers.
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She's not familiar with UK numbers and she's from Singapore.
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before she describes her job as being a business analyst.
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There's a bit of small talk about what she's having to eat and even some voice messages.
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It seems like you have been busy today so alright, goodnight, have sweet dreams.
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But it isn't long before she wants to share ways of making money.
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That's incredibly generous to a complete stranger.
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But we'll come on to the crypto and investment app in just a second.
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Thanks to the insider, I have some incredible footage inside the buildings, and he also shared some audio with me regarding the recruiting process.
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Again, more of that in a second.
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The person who's taking this video initially thought this job was a legitimate one, but after just a few days he realised that he was scamming people.
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He wanted to do the right thing
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and reached out to me in the hope
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that I would publish this video so that others can see exactly what goes on.
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Meet Anel or Annie, her profile was one of many used on the PCs.
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These photographs would be cut
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and pasted by the various men working on those PCs in order to try and fool their victims.
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And here is the view of one of those PCs as they're copying and pasting those messages.
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The biggest window on the screen is called Hello World Pro
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and it's able to manage a number of WhatsApp and Telegram sessions.
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It's also able to translate between the scammer's language, which is usually English, and the victim's language.
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Here it's Spanish.
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At the top right is Google Translate, just in case there's some phrases that the scammer doesn't understand.
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And at the bottom right there's a Telegram chat group, which is used by all the scammers to talk to their bosses and to their colleagues.
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But who are the bosses of these call centres?
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Like a lot of Dubai's population, the majority of people who work here are migrant workers.
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Typically they're from North Africa or South East Asia.
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This footage from another call centre in Dubai shows them arriving for their first day on this scam job.
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But you may have noticed something already on their computers and here in this employment contract.
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The language is in both English and Chinese.
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All of the computers had a Chinese locale and even the wireless networks had Chinese characters.
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And that's because these scams originate in China.
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Although most of the workers weren't from that country, the vast majority of the bosses were.
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They were making the serious money.
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It's not clear why they've moved this scam from the traditional countries of Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, but they're now in Dubai.
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In those countries, the workers are kept as modern day slaves.
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The conditions aren't as bad in Dubai, but still cramped nonetheless.
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But the bosses who ran the call centres would still hold on to people's passports and in effect keep them captive.
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But the scale of this operation was incredible.
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This is just one floor in one of those buildings and it houses more than 50 rooms.
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with four people per room it's nearly 200 people per floor with eight floors per building
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and four buildings that's well over a thousand people involved
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But how do they manage to get this number of people working in a scam?
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Well, we managed to record a recruiter.
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Send me your picture, I will send you the details, salary and the location.
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You can go there exact time, 2 :30, OK?
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Don't be late and bring your all friends.
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How many you have?
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Brother wait, okay, I need African, Indian and Filipino.
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And when the insider asked about the details of the job, this was the response.
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Bro, in the copy paste they provide you lots of numbers
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and you chat with the customer and you just need to ask the name and age.
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After that you need to transfer to another department that's it this is the copy paste job It's very easy.
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And indeed, copying and pasting was a major part of the job.
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Here's the script for just the first five days alone.
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It amounts to 15 pages.
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This is the extent of how far they'll go to try and gain trust with complete strangers.
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With no clients, you'd be directly dismissed.
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Scamming 20 people however would let you earn around $2 ,000 per month.
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But a new client was someone who had signed up to the second stage of the scam, where they'd invested money in a fake app.
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But to get to the second stage of the scam and potentially take someone's life savings, they obviously needed someone they could trust and that's where Nell comes in.
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if anyone was in doubt that this glamorous stranger was real or not
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the scammers would organise Enel to make a FaceTime call with them.
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Nice to see you.
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I will message you WhatsApp.
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Okay?
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Okay, thank you.
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Bye bye.
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You're at the desk.
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And how much was Enel being paid to be a key part of the scam?
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Well again, thanks to some undercover recording, we had the answer.
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Before it was like 10, 12, 15, it just changes.
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How much are they giving you here?
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Here, eight.
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He?
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- No. That's a surprise.
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I expected you for sitting all day here basically prison being taken at least 25.
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I'm not an escort, I have family so...
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Yeah, of course.
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I don't want my family to see me in a porn website.
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So to avoid that industry it seems that this is the only job she can get.
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But if she does manage to get the confidence of her victims, what is the next stage of the scam where they actually take money from people?
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They initially get victims to sign up to a legitimate crypto exchange like Binance as shown here.
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The agents are trained to make this process very easy by sending screenshots with little arrows on them to guide their victims.
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And once the sign up is complete, then the real scam happens because the victims will be asked to download an app which is entirely fake.
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For the scammers in the Rehaba residence, they used an app called Yomite.
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The app has lots of social media presence including some YouTube videos
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and the victims are pointed to have a look at these to explain how the app is supposed to work.
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Once this video goes live, I'm pretty sure the You Might videos on YouTube will be removed, so here's a snippet of what they looked like, including the badly translated Chinese.
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Hello everyone, I'm the manager Yoemite.
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Nice to meet you guys.
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Here I'm going to share how Yoemite works and how to make money, so that you can make your first bucket promptly to buy low and sell high with timely attack.
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So as to achieve stable returns.
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For example, if the price of ETH in Binance app,
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is 4000 USDT and the price of ETH in Coinbase app is 4010 USDT at the same time.
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Yomite will automatically collect data to help users buy on balance and sell on Coinbase.
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"The revenue generated will be split equally, that is, 50 % of the profit will become your income.
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This is the You Might Income principle, safe and stable without risk." Yes, they actually do say safe and stable without risk.
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Any investment is with risk, so stating this should be a red flag for anyone.
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And not only is it too good be true, but it also promotes a pyramid scheme.
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If you recommend 5 friends, each of your friends recommends 5 friends, then you will have 5A level subordinates, 25B level subordinates, and 125C level subordinates.
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Commissioned income is the key to your mind.
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Hems sharing your mind to more friends will bring you endless surprises.
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And it certainly will bring you surprises if you decide to invest in it
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because it will look as if you will be making money.
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And that's because the site administrators simply edit your balance to make it look as if money is going in.
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The real cryptocurrency has gone straight into the scammers wallets, but those investments will appear here using this simple editing.
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But don't get too hung up on the Yeomite application name.
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The sites and apps are deliberately devised in such a way that once they're uncovered as a scam,
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they can quickly rebrand and they will trot out another app and website as soon as it's discovered.
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The scammers are very careful to make fake reviews of all of their products well before it goes live.
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You'll only really find out that it was all a scam whenever you attempt to withdraw large amounts of money.
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But the scams all have one thing in common.
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A glamorous Asian lady has reached out to you via WhatsApp
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or on a dating app and eventually encouraged you to invest money in something you've probably never heard of.
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So how do you avoid becoming a victim of one of these sorts of scams?
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Well hopefully by seeing exactly how the scam works, you'll be prepared whenever you see something like this.
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You certainly won't be able to tell whether something's a scam or not just by looking how good the website is.
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This is a completely fake investment website, yet functionally it works perfectly.
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A better clue to it being a scam is what happens whenever you attempt to withdraw money.
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Normally it should go directly into your bank account, but if it says something like a finance team or a broker needs to look at your request,
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it could well be a scam.
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But the number one rule is, if it seems much too good to be true, then it almost definitely is.
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And finally, if you would like to help me fight scammers, there's a few ways you can do this.
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Firstly, if you're not already subscribed, do hit that subscribe and bell icon.
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Hitting the like button is your way of recommending these videos to other people on YouTube.
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YouTube will often not monetise these sorts of videos, so you can support me on Patreon.
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There's a link here, and it's in the description.
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Alternatively, coffee keeps me going, so there's a link to get me a coffee if you so wish.
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I'm on Twitter, TikTok and LinkedIn so you can follow me there too.
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Lastly, thanks for all your support and see you on the next one.
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you.
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About This Lesson
You're practicing English with "Inside a Pig Butchering Scam" using the Shadowing technique — a method originally developed for professional interpreter training.
Focus on sounding like the speaker — not just repeating words. With 15–30 minutes of daily practice, you'll build real-world speaking confidence.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.