Do you like to travel? I do.
Living in Florida, we know how vital the hotel industry is to our economy.
But, imagine if all the money Americans spent on hotels suddenly… DISAPPEARED. Not by shifting to another expense, but by slipping out of the US economy into the hands of global criminals.
In March, the FTC delivered a statement to Congress reporting the total amount lost to cyber fraud is as high as $196 billion a year, a ‘shadow economy’ so vast, it rivals the size of the entire U.S. hotel industry. Within that wave of theft, the fastest-growing, most devastating category is investment fraud—and, of the reported $7.9 billion lost last year, “pig butchering” schemes are primarily responsible.
There’s a gap between estimated and reported losses, explained by a study by The Institute for Crime and Research Policy. Victims, even those ‘tech-savvy’, frequently suffer profound shame, self-blame, and isolation. “Pig butchering” scams are designed to cultivate exactly this by building trust, then extracting all of a victim’s wealth.
Unlike other scams begging for help and money, “pig butchering” scammers offer “mentorship” in an “investment opportunity,” with scams lasting weeks, months, even years, in order to build the victim’s trust. Then, using platforms resembling legitimate brokerage websites or investment apps—and controlled by the scammers—predators convince victims their portfolios are growing, encouraging greater investments. Then, when the victim goes to withdraw their “gains,” predators reveal imaginary fees, taxes, or other “charges” in a ploy to take literally every dollar left.
The 72-Hour Pinch
There’s another harsh bite, too:
Victims have exactly 72 hours from initiation of transfer to report the scam for any chance at recovering their funds. Afterward, the transfer is complete and funds are virtually unrecoverable, since criminal organizations move monies consecutively to be untraceable. My family discovered this brutal truth after hoping the FBI might recover our losses, learning we’d discovered the scam months after the wire transfer.
Local police departments and banks taking reports will often empathize with victims and their families, but, after the 72-hour “kill chain” window, there’s little more they can do. The FBI, meanwhile, copes with the sheer volume, with over 1 million reports to IC3 in 2025 helping to map criminal infrastructure in an attempt to dismantle it.
Reporting a scam, while an undoubtedly uncomfortable experience, is therefore important and more than bureaucratic necessity; it is a vital act of defiance. Shifting the burden of shame from victim to perpetrator is the first, powerful step in dismantling this “shadow economy.”
Next in this series: A breakdown of the playbook used by “pig butchering” schemes, and steps you can take to prevent your family from being scammed.
Meredith McGuire McConn is a writer and poet dedicated to the exploration of lived experience. Through her venture, The Experiential Writing Studio, she helps others translate their internal perceptions into narrative, fostering a more meaningful connection to the world around them. She brings this same commitment to truth and clarity to her advocacy for survivors of digital fraud, mobilizing Brevard County to survive and outsmart modern criminal networks.
