US attorney wants to recover $2.3M crypto from ‘pig farming’ scheme
The United States Attorney's Office in Massachusetts has begun legal proceedings to recover cryptocurrency linked to a so-called “pig farming” scheme that victimized a Massachusetts resident and 36 others.
On March 13, the US Attorney's Office filed a civil lawsuit aimed at recovering $2.3 million in various cryptocurrencies, USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT), Ether (ETH), and Solana's SOL (SOL). Online scams and scams.
A civil lawsuit is a legal process through which law enforcement agencies seize property, such as property or money, that they believe has been involved in illegal activity. In these cases, the property is considered as a defendant in the legal process rather than anyone else.
The cryptocurrencies, which include about 300,000 USDC, 1.5 million USDT, 102,000 Tron (TRX), 3,000 SOL and 14,000 Cardano (ADA), were seized from two Binance accounts last spring in an investigation into a “pork farming” scam. A resident of Massachusetts.
Phishing is a technique where fraudsters create trust online and get the victim to invest in a crypto scheme before the victim realizes they have been scammed. Regulators in the US have warned investors about the scheme and brought charges against some bad actors.
Authorities began an investigation into the scheme in the spring of 2023 and said they seized laptops linked to 37 victims, including one from Massachusetts.
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According to the statement, the fraud victim tricked the fraudsters into paying $400,000 by transferring the money to other wallets, which investigators were tricked into linking to the funds of the other 36 victims.
The move by the US Attorney comes on the heels of last week's US Attorney's Office in Chicago seizure of $1.4 million in an unhosted virtual cryptocurrency wallet tied to a tech support scam targeting the elderly.
Tether has voluntarily cooperated in the asset recovery process, destroying funds linked to the accused fraudsters and transferring them to alternative wallets under government control for the return of victims.
In January, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a warning and accused digital asset platform Debix of fraud for allegedly using pork to extort $2.3 million from investors. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network warned investors late last year when it issued a pork alert.
