The scam my dad fell for didn’t start with a request for money. It started with kindness: talk of family; encouragement to spoil my mom; a slow, patient friendship. By the time an “investment opportunity” came up, Dad had already given his trust — the point he kept stressing, afterward, as proof it couldn’t have been a con.
That’s not an accident. It’s a script.
“It’s like a playbook, right?” says Courtney Werning, an investor-rights attorney at Meyer Wilson Werning who has litigated pig-butchering cases for years. She hears the same story nationwide, chillingly the same pattern every time.
The first move is always an unsolicited message. “No matter how innocuous that first conversation seems,” Courtney says, “you are being targeted for some type of financial scam … period.”
What follows is weeks — usually three to four months — of relationship-building before money enters the conversation. The scammer becomes, in Courtney’s words, “the most important person in the victim’s life.”
Why They’re Called “Cons”
Here’s the part I need you to sit with: “pig butchering” is just a con — short for confidence game. A confidence game doesn’t succeed because the victim lacks instincts. It succeeds because, through months of manufactured intimacy, confidence in the con artist grows strong enough to override a victim’s instinct to protect himself.
My dad had doubts. He voiced them, many times, and was talked out of them gently, by the scammer, a person he grew to trust more than his own gut.
That’s not a character flaw. It’s the design.
Courtney’s own clients have included engineers, CEOs, and doctors. “Smart, sophisticated people get wrapped up in these scams,” she says, “because [the scammers] prey on human psychology.”
Today, that design has an accelerant: AI.
Courtney describes scammers using AI-generated photos and video chats that seem real: “it humanizes the person you’re speaking with.” What once took hours to fake now takes seconds, at a scale that used to be impossible. “Where you used to be able to send a couple hundred messages a day,” Courtney says, “now they can send thousands.”
The con isn’t just better-written. It’s mass-produced.
By the time an “opportunity” appears, victims have invested real emotion, and fake dashboards show “real” gains. Courtney calls it “sunk-cost thinking”: walking away at that point “would be like admitting failure.” The mental override continues, long past the last exit.
What Can You Actually Do?
Courtney’s advice is blunt: never engage with an unsolicited message; verify anyone claiming to be family through a separate channel; and keep every document and device if you suspect you’ve been targeted. She also urges families to set up a “trusted contact” on relatives’ brokerage accounts — a federally required option most firms bury in fine print. Courtney has seen it stop scams cold: “It works.”
If something feels rushed, secretive, or too good to explain to someone you love — pause. Your instinct isn’t the problem. It’s the thing they’re working hardest to beat.
Next: The difference between relationship scams and romance scams, and how to talk to a loved one who’s been targeted.
For information and resources about scams, visit Operation Shamrock’s website at https://www.operationshamrock.org/ or AARP’s Fraud Watch Network™ at https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/
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.
