I Fell for a Pig Butchering Scam, Then Turned to the Dark Web for Revenge
33:34 Share

It started with a dating app and a beautiful woman. A woman who, if I'm being completely honest, was out of my league. That was my first indication that it was too good to be true. But, like many other upper-middle-class Americans, I was blissfully unaware of how bad things could really get.

I had the false confidence that came from a six-figure salary, a nice apartment in a nice part of town, and a luxury car that was nearly paid off. But that was just the exterior. When I got on the dating app, I was still reeling from a failed marriage. After nearly two years of loneliness and desperation, I desperately wanted to connect with someone. And that someone turned out to be Ruby. I swiped right without even reading her profile.

The picture was all I needed to see. She had thick dark hair, olive skin, and full lips under dark eyes. Very much my type. Of course, I didn't really think we would match, and I continued mindlessly swiping. But the next day, I found that we had matched. I messaged her first, and she responded a few hours later. Everything seemed normal as we messaged a few times a day for a couple of weeks.

She was funny, quirky, and easy to talk to. She even sent me some pictures of herself. Nothing sexual. Just her cuddling with her cat, and one in a coffee shop on her lunch break. There were a couple of other women on the app that I chatted with, but Ruby was by far the most beautiful and charming. We had an easy back and forth that these other rather dull women couldn't compete with.

Finally, after two weeks of chatting over the app, we exchanged phone numbers at my request. Soon after, I called Ruby, wanting to hear her voice. She didn't pick up. Soon enough, she texted me back and said that she couldn't talk right then but wanted to talk later. We set up a time to talk over the phone. Looking back on that first unanswered call, I realize I should have known something was wrong then, but I didn't.

I was too enamored with the vision of Ruby I had in my head. When the time came for the call, her voice was just as smooth and sexy as I had imagined. We talked for over an hour, discussing everything from pets and movies to politics and music. During a lull in the conversation, I took my shot. "Let's meet for a drink," I said. "What do you think? How does this weekend sound?" Ruby stayed silent on the other end for several long beats.

Just as I was about to speak again, she said, "I don't know Miles, I'm not sure I'm ready for that. It seems like this is moving pretty fast for me." I immediately backtracked. "No, that's okay. No rush, no pressure. I just think we'll get along great, you know? I want to see you in person, that's all." "Yeah, but I wasn't kidding when I said I wanted to take things slow." "It was true." She had told me that a few times. "Yeah, that's fine," I said. "Really, whenever you're ready."

"I'm sorry, Miles. I'm just... I've been hurt, you know." "Yeah, I know how that feels." "But this has been very nice," she said. "I really enjoyed hearing your voice. Anyone ever told you that you have a sexy one?" I chuckled, embarrassed. "My voice? No, I can't say I've ever been told that." "Well, it is sexy," Ruby said. "In fact, I think I'll send you some pictures as soon as we're off, to return the favor."

Oh, really? I asked, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. Yes, really. Well, in that case, I'm hanging up, I said, chuckling. After the call, Ruby delivered on her promise. She sent me several pictures of her in lingerie, lounging on her bed. If I had been chasing the lure up until that point, those pictures were the equivalent of me biting down, the hook slicing through my cheek. I was hers, and she knew it.

The financial stuff started small. A mention here about how well her investments were doing, a hint there about how wealthy she was. It put me at ease, hearing that she was doing so well. As someone who busted my ass to get to where I was, making six figures a year, I surely would have had alarm bells going off in my head if Ruby started hinting that she was struggling financially.

The second time we talked on the phone, Ruby mentioned how she was so excited to be making around $600 a day in what she called a mining pool. When I asked what that was, she explained that it had to do with using combined computational resources to solve a problem on the blockchain, thereby opening a new block and earning a crypto reward in the process. I had heard about the blockchain and cryptocurrency, who hadn't?

but I had never invested in it. My knowledge didn't go any further than surface level. Ruby said she would send me some screenshots if I wanted to know more. I said I did. I mean, who doesn't want to make $600 a day on autopilot? But she also said that the mining pool wouldn't last long, so there was no guarantee she would keep making that amount each day. Ruby steered the conversation toward other things, but the possibility of making that kind of money on autopilot never left my mind.

The next day, she sent me some screenshots of her returns. Sure enough, she was making about $600 a day. I didn't realize until later that it wouldn't be too hard to manufacture those screenshots to make them say whatever she wanted. When I asked if there was a way I could get in on the mining pool, Ruby went silent for a long moment. "I don't know," she said finally. "I don't think it's a good idea to start mixing finances." "Yeah," I said. "Maybe you're right.

"I mean, not that I don't want you to make money," she said. "I do. It's just that this isn't guaranteed. Well, that's not strictly true. I've never lost more than a couple hundred dollars, and I've made that back a thousandfold, but still." "It's okay," I said. "I understand." "Sorry, Miles." "Totally okay," I said. Ruby steered the conversation in another direction. Looking back on it, she was good.

It was a stroke of brilliance, refusing me like that. So when she texted me a couple of days later, offering to invest a small sum of money on my behalf, I had no inkling that anything was off. I agreed right away and sent her $5,000 later that night. Within a few days, she started sending me screenshots of her dashboard, showing me how much money my five grand was generating. Pretty soon, I sent her another five grand.

Around this time, she agreed to meet me in person. A few days before we were scheduled to meet, she called me and said that there was an investment opportunity called "couple activity" in which we could invest a higher amount to get better returns from the pool. In order to qualify, we had to have $500,000 in the crypto wallet. Ruby said she would put in half if I was willing to put in the other half. "But no pressure at all," she said.

It's okay if you don't want to do it. It's a lot of money, but we can more than double our return with that kind of investment. We would be making around $2,000 a day for as long as the pool lasts." I didn't even hesitate. I knew I would have to dip into my savings, but I agreed. When it came time to transfer the coin to her wallet, I had a moment where I thought it could be a scam, but it was fleeting. I knew Ruby, and I knew what we had was real.

So I ignored that little voice in my head and sent her $250,000 worth of Bitcoin. "Pick up the fucking phone!" I screamed, pacing around my apartment with my phone pressed against my ear. It had been three days since I sent her the money. Three days of silence. Nothing from Ruby. Not one text. That little voice in my head was growing louder, telling me that I had been scammed, but I was still in denial.

I thought that Ruby had been in a car accident or something. I wanted so badly for there to be a logical reason for her silence. Deep down, I knew I'd been had. I'd given her almost all of my savings, which had taken me my whole adult life to save up. But the money wasn't the biggest issue. The heartbreak was. The betrayal. The fact that I had been played like a fucking fiddle. Her phone went to voicemail. So I hung up and moved back to my computer.

I hadn't heard about these crypto scams before, but apparently they had a name: pig butchering. I was the pig, and I'd been fattened up nicely before I was led to the slaughter. But I wasn't dead yet, goddammit. I searched ways to get your money back after a scam, and most of the things I read said that it was incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Most of these scammers were based in China, so the US government had no recourse.

But as I read more about these scams, I realized that the one I fell for was a little more sophisticated than the others. After all, I had talked to Ruby on the phone. She had sent me pictures of herself. Doing reverse image searches of the pictures she sent yielded nothing of value. I couldn't find anything beyond the social media accounts she had shared with me. And those could easily be faked. But I kept doing research, trying to find a way to get my money back.

Mostly, I wanted to look Ruby in the eye and do something. What? I didn't know. Scream at her? Beat her to a pulp? Spit in her face? All I knew was that I wanted to make her feel the pain I was experiencing. And pretty soon, while reading some article on an obscure website, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. The article said there were people on the dark web who specialized in finding scammers.

It was sure to mention that some of these people were scammers themselves, and finding reputable scam hunters was not an easy feat. I didn't care. It was no longer about the money, and I knew I would spend whatever I had left if it meant I could find Ruby. Soon, I found out how to get on the dark web and started my search for a scam hunter. I spent another $10,000 on the dark web, hiring a service to find Ruby.

After several days of radio silence from the Scam Hunter service, I thought I had been ripped off again. But on the morning of the fourth day, I received a message in my inbox instructing me to go back to the Dark Web website I'd found. When I got back to the website and put my case number into the chat, I received a message. "We found the woman you knew as Ruby. We have a package ready for you. We'll need another 10 grand if you want it."

Fury clenched my jaw, and my fingers flew across the keyboard. "That wasn't the fucking deal! Give me the information now!" "Or what? You'll go to the police? If you want the info, you need to pay." "How do I know it's even legit?" I asked, resisting the urge to smash my computer. A picture came through in the chat. It was of Ruby, taken from afar. She was coming out of the lobby of a building, dressed in a thick black coat but looking as beautiful as ever.

I searched for the address, but whoever had taken the picture made sure the street number wasn't showing. "She's local," the next message said. "And she's done this to many men like you. Now, do you want the package or not?" cursing. I bought 10 grand worth of Bitcoin and sent it over. My bank account was now empty, except for a few hundred dollars. A moment later, the files arrived in my email inbox.

Two hours after that, I was sitting outside Ruby's apartment building in a rented car. I watched the buildings through the rain-streaked window, waiting for her to come back. If the intel package was correct, she would be arriving home from the gym at any moment. It also said she didn't have a car and so took Ubers or taxis everywhere. For 30 minutes, my heart raced with every car that pulled up in front of the fancy apartment building.

Then my stomach clenched as the car left without depositing Ruby onto the sidewalk. But just as the rain let up, I watched a silver escalade pull up to the curb. My heart raced as the back door opened, and it thudded even harder as Ruby stepped out. Dressed in workout clothes and carrying a gym bag, I opened the door and got out of the car, putting one hand on the hunk of deadly metal in my jacket pocket as I hurried toward the building. I caught up to Ruby when she was still about 10 feet from the door.

As I grabbed her arm, a doorman stepped out from the lobby, opening the door for Ruby. He looked at me strangely as I smiled grimly and leaned toward Ruby. "We're going up to your apartment. If you don't play along, I'm going to shoot you right here." "Miles?" Ruby asked, her face twisting into a surprised and fearful sneer. "I was just going to call you today. I-" "Cut the bullshit and tell the doorman I'm with you, or I swear to Christ I'll shoot you."

"Okay," she said, turning toward me and leaning in for a hug. "It's so good to see you," she said loudly. I kept hold of her arm as we walked toward the mildly alarmed doorman. "It's okay, Roger," she said to the man. "This is my friend Miles. He just scared me by sneaking up on me like that." I smiled, not taking my hand off the gun in my pocket. "She's an easy scare."

Roger nodded and held the door for us. You sure you're okay, Miss Winslow? He asked as we moved into the lobby. I'm fine, she said over her shoulder. Really? Thank you. We stepped into the elevator and the door closed. Miss Winslow? That's your real name? I need to get my key out, she said. Why? Because the elevator won't take us up to the penthouse if I don't.

"The penthouse?" I asked with a sneer. "You're a rich bitch, aren't you? A fucking rich thief." She got her key out and inserted it into the slot next to the penthouse button. She left it in and pressed the button, and the elevator started to move. "What are you going to do to me?" she asked, voice tight. Something didn't seem completely genuine about her reaction. It struck me as false. Alarm bells jangled in my head, but as I was so good at doing, I ignored them once again.

"I'm going to get my fucking money back," I said. "And then teach you not to fuck with anyone ever again." The elevator ascended to the 22nd floor. The elevator doors opened, revealing three men with pistols pointed directly at me. My throat constricted with terror, muscles tensing. Ruby stepped away from me, getting out of the line of fire. I let her go. I should have pulled her in front of me to use as a shield, but I didn't think of it then. I was too shit scared.

The man in the middle, a muscular bald man with tribal tattoos on both his arms, smiled at me. "Take the gun out of your pocket nice and slow, finger and thumb only." I did what he said, and Ruby took the pistol from me. "Glad to see you found the place okay, you gullible idiot," the bald man said. "By the way, thanks for the 20 Gs. The additional 20 Gs, I should say." All three of the men laughed at that. So did Ruby.

Something snapped in my head at that moment, realizing how badly I'd been played. My brain filled with blinding white light as my ego crumbled. All the bullshit fell away, leaving only two primary emotions, raw and vicious. One was the need for survival, the other one was the need for revenge. "I could have just taken your 20 Gs and led you on a wild goose chase," Baldi said as he and the other two men escorted me away from the elevator.

But I've been meaning to get into the snuff film business. There's a huge demand for that stuff on the dark web. Did you know that, Miles?" I said nothing. One of the men, a guy with a crooked nose and long arms, kept his pistol pressed to the back of my head as we walked. The same man had patted me down, taking my phone, my keys, and the pocket knife I'd been carrying. They had also taken my belt and made me remove my shoes.

We stopped at a room and Baldi opened the door to reveal a bunch of computer servers. "That's what you were talking to most of the time," Baldi said. "Fucking AI has come a long way. The only time the girls come in is when you guys get whiny and need to talk on the phone. I found out the hard way that it's much easier to convince you suckers to bark with your money if you actually hear a voice on the other end of the phone."

And the AI isn't quite there yet to where it can carry on a conversation like that. But it'll be there soon, believe me. We moved down the hall and into a second living room, where three beautiful women lounged on the couch, watching television. Ruby, who'd been following us silently down the hall, went and joined them. Each one of them can bull in a couple of million a year, easily, Baldy told me.

He was clearly proud of his operation. And since he was going to kill me, it didn't matter what he told me about it. I only recently started doing the dark web scam hunting thing. But that's what it's all about, isn't it? What do they call it? Vertical integration? Pretty fucking brilliant if you ask me. The women glanced at me with disinterest and then went back to messing around on their phones or watching television.

Through the living room, we entered another hall and stopped at a closed door. Baldi used a key to open it, then crooked nose shoved me inside. "We've just got to get the studio set up real quick," Baldi said. "We'll be back for you after that. Then it'll be your time to shine. You'll be my first star, Miles. The first to die on camera at my hands. I can't wait." He shut the door and locked it from the outside.

I turned and studied the room, seeing that it was completely empty except for a light fixture in the ceiling. There were windows along one wall, but they all opened onto a sheer drop down the side of the building. There was a small ledge running underneath them, about three inches wide, but that was it. 22 stories down to the hard sidewalk. Splat. The floor was fancy hardwood, and the walls were covered in wood panels, making it impossible for me to break through the plaster underneath.

There was no closet, no bathroom, and no way out. Except for the windows. I moved back over to the middle of the three windows and pressed my head against the glass. Looking down, and then left and right, I couldn't see much, so I decided to open the window. There was only one problem: it wouldn't budge. It was sealed shut. I tried the other two windows, only to realize that they were all sealed shut. Baldi had thought this through.

Shit!

I said, rubbing my elbow and then inspecting the glass. There wasn't even a tiny crack. Gritting my teeth, I tried again, bashing my elbow into the glass, once again to no effect. That survival instinct reared its head, and the pain in my elbow fueled my anger, which increased my desperation. I turned to face the window and brought up my right leg, kicking at the glass with my shoeless foot.

The pain of the impact shot up my leg, and it had no effect on the thick glass. Automatically, in the background, that pain simply fed back into my anger, and I kicked the window again. Harder. Still nothing. I did it again, using the pain to propel my leg again, putting as much energy as I could into my heel. The glass cracked.

I kicked once more, and the glass broke. My foot went through, shards slicing into my heel and ankle as it traveled through the broken glass. I pulled my foot back in, ignoring the bleeding.

outside in the hallway, shouting erupted, along with pounding footsteps. Thankfully they hadn't taken off my jacket. I used my elbow to break out the shards, grabbing one that was about the size and shape of a kitchen knife and clasping it in my teeth before climbing out the window and onto the little ledge, my toes and the balls of my feet only able to fit. There was another identical ledge above the windows, which I reached up and grabbed with both hands.

I skirted along the outside of the building, the sky gray above me, the wind whipping at my clothes, and the sound of street traffic coming from 22 stories below. The shard of glass between my teeth cut into the corners of my mouth as I moved, palms and feet sweating despite the chilly day. As I came to a window belonging to the next room down, I used one hand to try to open it. It didn't take long to realize it was locked from the inside.

were sealed like the other ones. There were heavy curtains blocking my view of the room, so I couldn't see what was inside, and I knew I wouldn't be able to break through without risking falling off the building. My only choice was to keep going, to get around the corner, and hope there was a patio or some way to get down to the floor below. Since the penthouse took up the whole top floor, I wouldn't be out of the woods until I got elsewhere.

As I neared the corner, I heard a shot from back the way I'd come. I looked that way to see Crooked Nose leaning out of the smashed window, pointing a pistol at me. "Don't shoot him," Baldi called from inside. "If he falls, we can say he jumped, but not if he has a fucking bullet in him." "He's going toward the patio," Crooked said, tucking back into the room. "Stay here in case he comes back," Baldi said. So there was a patio, but there was no way I could get to it before they did.

As I eased my right hand and foot around the corner of the building, my blood-soaked right foot slipped. I panicked, trying to move my left foot closer to take more of my weight. But I did it too quickly, and both feet slipped off, leaving me dangling from the ledge. For a moment, I was sure I was going to fall, but I managed to hang on with my hands. Once I got my feet back on the lower ledge, I made it around the corner and saw the patio not far away.

Baldi appeared, leaning out from the patio, which was flush with the wall. I froze, looking at him, realizing I was fucked. "You got nowhere to go," he said. I looked down at the sheer drop, thinking about letting go. At least that way, the cops would probably come and search the penthouse, discovering what these assholes were up to. But my survival instinct refused to let me kill myself.

I eased back to the corner and started going back around it. "There's someone in the room. You might as well come this way." I ignored him, going around the corner so he couldn't see me. I looked over at the window, but no one was looking out. Surely Crooked was just sitting in there, waiting for me to come back. Slowly, I removed my left hand and brought it down to the piece of glass held between my teeth. Using the stone wall, I broke a small piece off and let the larger piece fall down to the street.

If I was lucky, someone would look up and see me. I tucked the smaller piece into my mouth, putting it between my teeth and my cheek. The jagged edges cut into the sensitive flesh there, but it wasn't too bad. Not wanting to risk going around the corner again with my bleeding foot, I eased myself back to the broken window. As I came to the window, Crooked grabbed me by the shirt and moved to yank me inside. I spit blood into his face, managing to keep the glass tucked in my cheek as I did.

He recoiled from me, but didn't let go, yanking me inside. I hit the floor on all fours, at which point, Crooked let go of me to wipe his face with his free hand, his other one still holding his pistol.

As I lunged up to my feet, I shifted the piece of glass out with my tongue and teeth. Knowing I had to have the use of both hands, I clamped the shard between my teeth, grabbed Crooked's head with both hands, and pulled his face toward mine while simultaneously whipping my head toward his. The shard of glass entered his eye, slicing through his closed eyelid and puncturing the fragile orb underneath.

I released it from my teeth as he started screaming. I quickly moved all my attention to the pistol in his right hand. He fired just as I gripped his wrist with both hands, and the sound sent a bolt of pain through my eardrum. Jamming my right shoulder into his chest, I pushed him back until he hit the wall. He was strong, and he wasn't letting go of the gun.

Suddenly, the third man came through the door to the room. Crooked was so preoccupied with his pain, he had no idea. I pointed the gun at the third man and pressed Crooked's finger down. The gun fired, the bullet destroying the man's nose and blasting out the base of his skull. Crooked took his left hand away from his eye and punched me in the head, making my vision swim. With a piece of glass still sticking out of his eye, I saw my chance to get the gun away from him once and for all.

Since my right shoulder was still in his chest, pressing him against the wall, I whipped my head to the right, slamming the side of my skull into the piece of glass, sinking it even farther into his eye. He let out a savage scream and finally released the pistol. I took it from him and was about to fire when Baldi appeared in the doorway and shot at me. I fired back, getting behind Crooked to use him as a shield. Several of Baldi's bullets hit Crooked, and one of them went all the way through, hitting me in the lower abdomen.

We both fell to the floor, Crooked's limp body on top of me. I continued firing from my place under the dead man until the gun clicked empty. At some point, Baldi had stopped firing as well. I could no longer see him in the doorway, and I had no idea if I had hit him. After waiting for a moment for any sign of movement, I shoved Crooked off me and inspected the wound in my abdomen. It was shallow, but it was bleeding profusely.

and I thought I could feel the hard hunk of metal that was the bullet not far under the surface. I got to my feet, still clutching the empty gun, and walked toward the door. As I peeked out, I saw Baldy sitting against the hallway wall. Half of his jaw had been blasted away by one of my shots, his upper teeth visible through the shredded cheek. The wound poured blood, and it wasn't the only one.

He had one hand pressed to the inside of his left thigh, but the bright red arterial blood frothed between his fingers, spreading rapidly out on the hardwood floor. He raised his gun and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The slide was locked open, indicating he was empty too. I tossed my empty gun down and moved gingerly over to the third man, grabbing the gun out of his limp hand. As I pointed the loaded weapon at Baldi's head, he tried to speak.

but his words came out through his wrecked jaw as a jumble of incoherent syllables. "Dietrich?" a woman's voice called from down the hall. "Is he dead? Did you get him?" It was Ruby. I looked back toward the living room, forgetting all about Baldi for the moment. I stalked down to the room, stepping out of the hallway and eliciting a soft shriek from Ruby. The other women were huddled behind the couch, staring at me. I limped over to a frozen Ruby. "Listen," she said.

I actually liked you. I... My hand on her throat cut off her words. I fired three shots, killing the other three women as Ruby struggled and fought against me. I pressed the barrel to her head and said, You're going to get me all my money back. And then I'm going to make a little snuff film. And guess what, baby? You're the star.