Americans Are The Most-Scammed People In The World

Several criminal groups, predominantly originating from China, have set up cyber centers focused on online gambling and fraud operations in Southeast Asia, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

These centers are prolific for carrying out a form of fraud called “pig butchering”, which is a hybrid of a romantic and crypto scam, where the perpetrator plays on emotional vulnerabilities of the victim and uses a personalised form of attack through platforms such as dating apps or WhatsApp, over a prolonged period of time, gradually building up the victim’s trust as if a friend. The victim is encouraged to transfer money, in this way “fattening the pig”, until all of their money has been drained and the victim is metaphorically “slaughtered”.

In this role, the perpetrator usually pretends to be someone both wealthy and competent in crypto, telling the victim to transfer their money into the share market, cryptocurrency or foreign currency exchanges through a fake site.

Perpetrators of pig butchering are often victims too, with investigations having brought to light how thousands of people have been trafficked and forced to work on the scams by organized gangs, including in the border regions of Myanmar. According to one study, $75 billion was lost to pig butchering in the last four years alone. Preying on lonely or vulnerable people and using different forms of technology, pig butchering has become the preferred scam over Ponzi schemes, according to findings by Chain Analysis.

Statista’s Anna Fleck reports that The Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA) has found that scams are becoming increasingly common. A survey carried out by the organization of 58,329 people in 2024 found that almost half of the world experienced a scam once a week.

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In China, respondents were particularly likely to say that they would recognise a scam, at 84 percent agreeing with the statement. Phone calls and text/SMS messages remained the primary methods through which scammers operated in 2024, with a notable rise in WhatsApp scams across several regions.

The financial cost of scams is enormous, at an estimated $1.03 trillion worldwide in 2024 alone.

While the average estimated loss per victim was highest in richer countries such as the United States ($3,520 per victim) and Denmark ($3,067), economically developing nations face a heavier impact.

According to GASA, Pakistan lost 4.2 percent of its GDP to scams while Kenya and South Africa lost 3.6 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.

By comparison, in France and Germany, losses per country hovered around 0.2 percent of GDP.