Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
It starts with a seemingly harmless text message:
Sender: Hi Kira, I’m hoping to make an appointment to get my dog Marvin groomed. Please let me know when.
Responder: I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.
Nevertheless, the sender continues to chat, gaining the recipient’s trust until they hand over money.
This technique is called “pig butchering,” and it’s a form of scamming that is on the rise worldwide.
“These scammers are trying to fatten up their own payday by first starting a chat with their victims,” Cezary Podkul, a journalist with ProPublica told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday. “Once they win their trust, they psychologically manipulate them to deposit larger and larger amounts of their life savings into fake brokerages and websites that the scam syndicates have set up.”
Podkul tracked down victims worldwide who had fallen for lies of the “good-natured” people with whom they’d struck up apparently random friendships online.
“It starts with a fake job ad that these human trafficking victims come across promising them a comfortable salary and good working conditions in a place like Cambodia, Laos, or Myanmar,” Podkul explained. “Instead, they find themselves sitting in front of a computer, looking at training materials on how to scam people online and contact them and try to get into conversations with them, to weed them out of their life savings.”
The term ‘pig butchering’ evokes the compounds where victims of human trafficking end up and are forced to scam people, Podkul said. Similar to how farmers fatten pigs before slaughter, the scammers try to ‘fatten’ their paycheque by gaining and exploiting their victims’ trust.
Beyond text messages, the scams are also perpetrated on social media and dating platforms. Podkul says if you encounter a “friendly stranger” online, who is regaling you with stories of their profitable life, it could be a red flag.
The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking website describes the business of human trafficking as a “low risk/high reward activity” because the crime is difficult to track down.
“Human traffickers lure their victims by promising opportunities to make quick money. They often use catchy language in job advertisements,” Aziz Froutan, a spokesperson for the organization told CTVNews.ca. “They are quick to adapt their business model or tactics to suit their needs and increase their profits.”
Unlike the sale of materials like guns or drugs, human beings can be sold multiple times for the financial or material benefit of the traffickers, the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking website explains.
For his piece in ProPublica, Podkul spoke with 30 victims, in Canada and other countries, all of whom who had lost money to such scams.
“The global nature of this is really unprecedented,” he said. “I talked to multiple people in Canada who were scammed as well as the U.S., Singapore, France and other countries. So it's truly a global pandemic of scams.”
“The RCMP is aware of what is being referred to as 'Pig Butchering' scam which functions as a romance scam,” Camille Boily-Lavoie, an RCMP spokesperson told CTVNews.ca. “Like any serious and organized fraud, the RCMP continues to assess reported cases and work with its international and domestic counterparts to combat romance scams.”
The Government of Canada website explains human trafficking does not need to involve a person crossing borders, it can occur within the nation.
“Human trafficking involves recruiting, moving, or holding victims to exploit them for profit, usually for sexual reasons or forced labour,” the website explains.
Statistics Canada describes human trafficking as a “modern form of slavery.” Canadian data showcases the number of police-reported incidents has been increasing since 2009. Despite the secretive and illegal nature of human trafficking, Statistics Canada explains the vast majority (96%) of victims are women and girls and one in four are victims under the age of 18.
Anyone can be a victim of labour trafficking but those at most risk are newcomers to Canada, migrant workers and people with precarious immigration status.
“Industries generally connected with labouring trafficking include, but are not limited to, construction, agriculture, manufacturing, hospitality, food processing and restaurants."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.