The Pig Butchering Invasion Has Begun

More than 200,000 people in Southeast Asia have been forced to run online scams in recent years .

Pig butchering operations that are offshoots of the Southeast Asian activity have emerged in the Middle East , Eastern Europe , Latin America , and West Africa .

Experts say people from more than 60 countries have been abducted and trafficked to Southeast Asian scamming compounds that typically operate with thousands of forced workers.

Nigerian law enforcement have been increasingly pursuing cases and even securing convictions related to pig butchering.

Pig butchering has cropped up in other regions of Africa as well, with ties to Chinese -speaking criminals.

Scam compounds have also been broken up in Peru and Sri Lanka .

The scams have emerged in Eastern Europe as well.

As long as the money keeps coming in, pig butchering will keep spreading around the world.

“Fraud is not being seen as a serious crime—not like drugs, not like terrorism,’s Chiang says. “Globally, we need to start shifting that idea, because it creates the same kind of damage, and maybe even more because the amount of money we're talking about is so huge.