Chinese ‘pig butchering’ scams targeting American suckers

BANGKOK – Human “pig butchering” scams have stolen billions of dollars from Americans rendering them financially devastated, heartbroken from fake love, and in worst cases suicidal, according to a new US Institute of Peace (USIP) report on Chinese-dominated transnational crime based in Southeast Asia.

In a terrible twist, many of the estimated 300,000 lying, sweet-talking scammers – overwhelmingly from developing countries – also suffer because they are allegedly imprisoned and brutalized by the Chinese-run gangs.

The armed gangs lure or kidnap them to Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos and “deploy torture to engage victims in forced criminality,” the USIP report said.

“At the moment, there is no record of any currently trapped Americans in these compounds but there have been a small number,” USIP visiting expert Jacob Sims said in an interview.

“A couple of years ago, an American was in a compound [in Cambodia] – and treated as a criminal once he got out, by the Cambodian government – and eventually found his way back to America.

“And there was another who was repatriated to Thailand and then back to America from a compound on the Thai-Myanmar border.

“That one was I think more recently, maybe three months ago, something like that,” Sims said.

“He was released during a mass release of many, like close to a thousand people, that were being held. Some of them ended up getting released and some of them ended up getting deported,” back home to China.

“He was quietly sort of brought back to Thailand and comes back to the US,” he said.

“It is actually highly probable that there are Americans or British people working willingly in these compounds, but the incentives don’t work out to hold Americans [against their will] because the US