The United States government has initiated a forfeiture complaint to seize nearly $200,000 worth of Tether (USDT) held on Binance. These funds are tied to a sophisticated "pig-butchering" cryptocurrency scam that defrauded an anonymous victim of over $1.1 million.

Detailed court documents filed in the District Court of Columbia outline the allegations. The funds in question are believed to be the proceeds of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering, and money laundering conspiracy. The victim, who remains unnamed, was ensnared by two separate but equally devastating scams between January 2021 and December 2022.

In the first scam, the victim was deceived by a scammer named Eva Markus, who posed as an engineering consultant from Boston temporarily working on a mining project in Turkey. Markus, who also maintained a LinkedIn page, lured the victim into a romantic relationship via Facebook. She fabricated a story about being a diamond mine owner whose mine had exploded, claiming she needed funds to hire an attorney to return to America. This deception led the victim to transfer over $400,000.

Subsequently, the same individual fell victim to a second scam involving another romantic relationship with a woman named Lisa Warren, also met on Facebook. Warren, posing as a cryptocurrency investor, persuaded the victim to invest $55,000 in Bitcoin (BTC). She eventually convinced the victim to sell their home and invest the proceeds, resulting in approximately $600,000 in cryptocurrency being transferred. After receiving only $15,000 in return and conducting further research, the victim realized the scam and reported it to the authorities.

The FBI's investigation traced some of the fraudulent cryptocurrency transactions to a Binance account held by Izuchukwu Henry Okolo, who had converted the BTC into 196,721 USDT. Binance froze the funds and notified the FBI, which subsequently seized them. The court document states, "The Defendant Property is currently in FBI custody and will be transferred to the United States Marshals Service in the District of Columbia."

In response to this incident, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued advice on how to handle situations where an online romantic interest offers investment advice. "No one thinks their online love interest is going to scam them, but scammers are good at what they do," the FTC cautioned.

Romance scams, often referred to as pig-butchering scams, involve fraudsters building trust with their victims under the pretense of a potential romantic relationship. These scammers eventually persuade their victims to invest large sums in supposedly lucrative schemes, only to disappear with the money.

Nithin Kamath, the founder of Zerodha, explains, "As the name implies, a pig butchering scam involves fattening the victim before butchering. Scammers gain the trust of users by using fake profiles. They use the pretense of love and friendship to gain the trust of users and then induce them to send money for jobs and high-return investments and steal the money. These scams are global, and their scope is staggering."

This case highlights the growing prevalence and sophistication of pig-butchering scams and underscores the importance of vigilance and skepticism in online interactions, especially those involving financial transactions.