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♪ ♪

- Welcome, welcome, welcome to "Last Week Tonight."

I'm John Oliver. Thank you so much for joining us.

It's been a busy week,

from the US vetoing a ceasefire in Gaza, yet again,

to the revelation that Joe Biden's dog

bit Secret Service agents at least 24 different times.

But we're going to start in West Virginia,

which has spent the past several weeks

debating a bill to impose criminal penalties

for exposing children to obscene literature

in schools and libraries.

The debate has featured some spectacular testimony

from concerned citizens reading out

material that they objected to.

- "'Are you going to eat her pussy?'

'Yeah, I'm going to eat her pussy.'

'Hey, yeah. Do you even know how to eat pussy?

Papa Gaines never sat you down, said 'son, one day,

you're going to have to eat the pussy?'

'No, but he did teach me how to eat a butthole.'"

- Look.

I admit, I don't remember that scene from The Giving Tree,

but it's been a while.

And in retrospect, it does make sense

for the tree to sit the boy down

and explain how to rock the box.

It's an important lesson.

But while that hearing was clearly ridiculous,

the law itself is serious.

Violating it could carry a felony charge

with a penalty of $25,000

and a sentence of up to five years.

Many have called it a book ban,

although the bill's backers push back on that,

with one of the speakers who supported it saying,

"We are not banning or burning. We are protecting."

Although I'll tell you what

you're definitely not protecting.

That is my ears from hearing "eat the pussy" four times

out of this woman's mouth.

But while West Virginia may not be burning books,

obscenity bills and similar moral panics

are spreading around the country

in places like Missouri,

where a candidate for office released this video.

- This is what I will do to the grooming books

when I become secretary of state.

- ♪ Let's go. Welcome to the main event ♪

♪ Applying pressure, but I promise... ♪

- These books come from a Missouri Public Library.

When I'm in office, they will burn.

- OK. So there is a lot not to like there,

including that her flamethrower is apparently

fueled by liberal tears, which what?

I'm not saying the GOP's messaging is in disarray,

but are liberal tears the thing you love to drink

because your enemy's sadness tastes so sweet,

or is it the deadly fuel for

your very cool shark-themed flamethrower?

Because you've got to pick a fucking lane there.

But for now, let's turn to Alabama,

which has been reeling after a major decision

from its highest court.

- This morning, a first-of-its-kind decision

by the Alabama Supreme Court that could

put families' access to fertility treatments

in the post-Roe era at risk.

The court determining frozen embryos

qualify as people

under its state law,

ruling "unborn children are

"children without exception

based on developmental stage."

- Yeah, they ruled frozen embryos

are the same as people,

which is wrong for a bunch of reasons.

Mainly, if you freeze an embryo, it's fine.

If you freeze a person, you have some explaining to do.

Now, that ruling could have massive implications

for anyone who needs IVF to conceive,

and that is a lot of people.

Around 2% of babies born in the US are from IVF.

Already multiple fertility clinics

have paused treatment in the wake of this decision,

which, as anyone who's ever undergone IVF will tell you,

isn't something you can just do.

IVF cycles take weeks of careful monitoring

and expensive treatments.

You can't just hit pause and wait out a court case.

This is a seismic decision.

And the reason the court was hearing this case

to begin with was pretty wild.

- The case in question involved a patient

who managed to access the freezer

storing frozen embryos at an Alabama fertility clinic.

The patient picked up multiple embryos

and mistakenly dropped and destroyed them.

- Yet the court ruled that the clinic could be sued

for wrongful death.

And while that accident is genuinely horrible,

someone wandering into a lab

and dropping frozen embryos just isn't murder.

If anything, it sounds like the script

for a pretty tasteless Mr. Bean sequel, but that is it.

And look, the reason clinics are pausing treatment

right now is that nobody quite knows what it could mean

for an embryo to be legally equivalent to a person

going forward.

What happens if an embryo is stored improperly?

What if they're, as inevitably happens,

left over or destroyed in the implantation process?

What about genetic testing,

which can reduce the risk of miscarriage,

but does carry a slight risk of damaging embryos?

Would that now be considered a wrongful death?

It is chaos.

And experts say that courts in other states

could try and issue similar rulings.

But none of this should be that surprising.

This ruling is a natural outgrowth of the concept

of fetal personhood,

long pushed by hardline anti-abortion groups,

which Republicans have spent decades courting.

And some politicians suddenly seem alarmed

to have to deal with the consequences of a movement

that they have actively empowered.

Nikki Haley, for instance, spent the week

trying to reconcile her position that,

"when you're talking about an embryo,

you're talking about a life,"

with what that actually means in legal terms.

Meanwhile watch as Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville

seemed to realize the problems with his position in real time.

- Do you have a reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court ruling

on the fact that embryos are children?

- Yeah, I was all for it.

We need to have more kids.

We need to have an opportunity to do that.

And I thought this was the right thing to do.

- But IVF is used to have more children.

And right now, IVF services are paused

at some of the clinics in Alabama.

Aren't you concerned that this could impact people

who are trying to have kids?

- Well, that's for--that's for another conversation.

- Well...

that's a hard one. It really is. It's really hard.

Because again, you want people to have that opportunity.

And that's what I was telling her, we need more kids.

- Well, guess what, Tommy? I got great news.

Since your political philosophy seems to begin and end with,

we need more kids, you'll be thrilled to know that,

thanks to a judge in Alabama,

there's now whole freezers full of them.

Go play with all those frosty kids, senator.

Or maybe that's not what you had in mind

when you think of children,

which is exactly the fucking point here.

Republicans are in a tough spot right now,

trying to hold on to hardline anti-abortion forces

while not alienating the majority of Americans.

And maybe the best current example of this

is Donald Trump.

He issued a statement this week

that he strongly supports "the availability of IVF

for couples who are trying to have a precious baby,"

something he referred to as the "ultimate joy in life,"

all caps, exclamation mark.

And it's incredible how even objectively wholesome sentences

take on an air of creepiness when passed through

the chaotic Trump punctuation filter.

Meanwhile, he's also been privately floating

a federal ban on abortion at the 16-week mark,

reportedly saying, "know what I like about 16?

It's even. It's four months."

And I will say, starting any sentence with,

"you know what I like about 16,"

should be off limits for anyone who has this many photos

with Jeffrey Epstein.

But while Trump might think 16 weeks is the reasonable option,

which it isn't, anti-abortion forces

are hoping to use a second Trump term

to go much, much further.

One tool they're apparently eager to use

is the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that criminalizes

the shipping of any materials used in an abortion,

including abortion pills,

with one of Trump's lawyers saying,

"We don't need a federal ban

when we have Comstock on the books."

It was one of the key pretexts

in last year's mifepristone ruling.

And Lindsey Graham actually cited Comstock

when defending it.

- The idea of mailing the drug--

sending the drug through the mail

runs into a statute called the Comstock Act.

- It's a very old statute on the books.

Do you believe that the Supreme Court should use that

as a way to ban this abortion pill?

- Well, I think it's the law on the books.

- Look, I guess it's not that surprising that Graham's

endorsement of a law boils down to, "it's on the books,"

given that "it's old and it's there"

basically sums up Lindsey Graham at this point.

He seems determined to stay in the Senate

until he can complete his Animorph-style transformation

into Beaker, and he's getting close.

He's only a couple of steps away.

But he's right. The Comstock Act is

technically on the books, meaning a Trump administration

or the judges he appoints could try using it

to restrict abortion without going through Congress,

which is both alarming and something many pro-life figures

are anxious to keep quiet for now.

That Trump lawyer that I mentioned earlier

even said of him,

"I hope he doesn't know about the existence of Comstock

"because I just don't want him to shoot off his mouth.

"I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut

as much as possible until the election."

But whenever they don't want to talk about something,

it's probably worth you knowing about it.

So for the record, the Comstock Act

is named after Anthony Comstock,

a 19th century anti-sex crusader and postal inspector

who was, and I quote, a "chronic masturbator"

who believed it was physically harmful,

so launched a crusade to stamp out the transmission

and transportation of all obscene material."

And imagine jerking off so much,

you make it a matter of national security.

The Comstock Act forbade sending by mail

"every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent,

filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance,"

as well as "every article or thing

designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion."

That is the clause abortion opponents

have been using on Mifepristone.

And they hope to expand it to cover the shipping

of literally anything an abortion requires.

So the Comstock Act is a wild law

pushed for by a deeply weird, dangerously horny man

that may soon be determining all our reproductive freedoms.

And it's worth noting that Comstock was also a leader

in the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice,

whose seal, fun fact,

depicted someone burning books,

which, to be fair, conservatives don't do anymore.

As we all know, they use flamethrowers now.

And that is the thing that ties

everything I've just talked about here together.

There are politicians currently desperately trying

to distance themselves from extreme policies

that they have enabled.

You can say, we're not trying to ban or burn books,

but that's what's happening.

You can say, we just want more kids,

but you're making life incredibly hard

for people, including those who desperately want them.

Burning books and ending IVF are the natural endpoints

of the extreme policies they've held hands with.

And if they are not at least willing

to own those consequences,

then they can, in the words of what I believe to be

this country's greatest public speaker--

- Eat a butthole. - Well said.

Well said, indeed.

And now this.

- And now, more explicit readings

from concerned citizens at public meetings.

- "The boy just talked soft to her about how good she looked

"and things like that.

"And she grabbed his penis with her hands

and started moving it."

- "It felt so good, so fucking good.

"I don't know how people do anything but have sex

if they are adults and don't have school or parents."

- "Billy was on top of Valencia, making love to her.

"While Billy was making love to her,

"Billy made a noise like a small rusty hinge.

He had just emptied his seminal vesicles into Valencia."

- "Now, before this, I'd sucked my share of dicks

"and had gotten plenty of blowjobs, hand jobs,

"every kind of job.

"But the only butt sex I'd had was with this junior

who was in love with my cock, and he just hopped aboard."

- "And I pull and I suck until he grows hard

"and he makes sounds that means he likes it.

"And I keep going and going.

"And when he says, 'I'm going to cum,' I don't pull away.

"The jet of him is warm and salty

and tastes like thickened sweat."

- "You can eat a girl out and blow some air inside of her,

or you can fuck her too hard."

- "My only challenge is Brian,

who is my jerk off friend who likes to jerk me off."

- "Son, I don't have time for that.

"I got, like, 20 pussies over here that I need to eat.

Is that right? I'm on pussy deadline."

- "I didn't have a hard-on anymore.

"That might sound weird to say.

It's also fucking complicated and tragic, and life sucks."

I just want to mention, I've never said the F word

ever in my life before until just now, so.

♪ ♪

- Moving on.

Our main story tonight concerns the internet.

It can be a magical place

but also one where things aren't always what they seem,

as this woman learned the hard way.

- Queen Shaydonna Hainsworth thought she bought this,

the Instagram ad displaying a tree

that fits in a living room, not the palm of her hand.

- Yo!

[laughing] This is our rainbow Christmas tree.

Like, seriously?

Like, who-- [laughs]

who is responsible for this?

- Yeah, it must be pretty disappointing

to order a full size tree and get whatever that is.

She must have felt like HBO did

when they ordered a comedy show and got this instead.

Unfortunately, not every mistake is that benign.

It is not news that there are scammers on the internet.

But you may have noticed that one scam in particular

is currently everywhere.

A common way that it starts is with a weird text

from a number that you don't recognize, like,

"Cheryl, can we move lunch to 5," when you're not Cheryl

or, "Dave, what time is our flight,"

when you're not Dave and you don't have a flight booked.

Even as we worked on this piece,

multiple members of our staff and their friends

were getting these messages from,

"Hello, is this the manager Jesse from the flower shop?"

to this one reading, "Is this Dr. John?

I'm Emily. Is my horse recovering well?"

And I'm so glad that wasn't sent to me

'cause it would have worked.

You're calling me Dr. John? I'm instantly on board.

And you're assuming that I'm around a horse

for medical reasons?

That's exactly what I've been saying.

I'm allowed to touch it like that.

I'm a doctor.

And I know most people ignore messages like those.

But some write back, get sucked into a conversation,

and eventually, through a process that we'll get into,

can end up losing a lot of money.

It's a scam with a striking name

that newscasters can't seem to get over.

- It's called a "pig butchering scam."

And it might sound like a gruesome name,

but that's because the amount of money victims are losing

is painful.

- The scammers have a terrible term

for what Wendy went through.

They call it "pig butchering."

- The New Mexico Securities Division calls them

"pig butchering scams."

I know, but listen, don't worry.

There are no pigs or any other animals involved.

- Yes, don't worry.

There are no pigs harmed in this pig butchering scam,

although if the words do make you squeamish,

it's worth noting that there is a process

through which pigs are harmed every day.

It's actually how we get bacon, pork and other products.

It's called "pig butchering."

And it's exactly what it sounds like.

But the name makes a little more sense

once you understand how the scam actually works.

- In the world of cyber and counter-terrorism threats,

Special Agent Hassani has seen it all.

But in 2021, he began seeing a new scam, pig butchering.

- But it just refers to raising little piglets,

fattening them up, and butchering them.

They're fattening up their victim with

illusions of grandeur, of wealth, of love,

before bleeding them dry.

- That is rough.

Because imagine being a victim of this scam,

turning on the news, and suddenly learning that

the shorthand for people in your situation is the pigs.

Although I will say, it could have been worse.

Pigs are awesome.

They're one of the most intelligent animals

on the planet. They're smarter than dogs,

most three-year-olds, and Tom Sandoval.

To use a phrase that the police never seem to appreciate,

it's actually an honor to be compared to a pig.

And if you are thinking, well, this seems like

the kind of scam that's been around for decades,

that is partially true.

But the way this one works is fairly new.

And in the short time that it's been around,

it's been massively successful.

Just this month, it was at the center of

a huge local news story in Kansas,

where it brought down a financial institution.

- I was surprised.

I was shocked. I was disappointed.

- Kansas State Bank Commissioner David Herndon is

talking about the massive cryptocurrency scam

at the Heartland Tri-State Bank in Elkhart.

- In a cryptocurrency scheme

that the FBI has now referred to as "pig butchering."

- In this case, Herndon says the victim

was Sean Haynes, the bank's own CEO.

And he's now facing charges of embezzling nearly $50 million,

a loss that caused the bank to fail last August.

- That's true.

According to prosecutors, a bank CEO got pig butchered,

sent his scammer the bank's holdings,

and the bank went under,

which is alarming for several reasons.

Among them, is that how banks work?

Because it really feels like there should be at least

one step between CEO gets tricked,

and, whoops, the bank's empty.

It's estimated that, as of 2022,

this scam was taking people for more than $3 billion a year

in the US alone.

And that's almost certainly a massive undercount,

as it only includes people who reported their losses

to the FBI.

So given all of that, tonight,

let's talk about pig butchering,

why it's easier to fall for then you might think,

who's behind it, and what we can do

to protect ourselves and our liked ones

from getting scammed in the future.

And let's start with where this began.

And to do that, unfortunately,

we do need to go back to the place that no one wants to go,

the beginning of COVID.

You remember COVID.

It's the Stephen Miller of diseases,

in that we were all very worried about it

a few years ago and have since moved on

even though it's still extremely dangerous.

But that is when pig butchering took off.

Basically, at the start of COVID,

many of us were isolated and lonely,

desperately looking for human contact online,

which made us ripe targets.

At the same time, organized crime groups in China

running casinos in Southeast Asia were in crisis

as, thanks to the pandemic,

gamblers weren't showing up.

So they turned those casinos into bases

for online scam operations.

And from there, their workers identified people

and preyed on their vulnerabilities.

And let me walk you through the basic steps here.

The first is to make contact and lure your target in.

Listen to this woman explain how her scammer,

who called himself Jimmy, contacted her at a moment

when she was dealing with cancer, the pandemic,

and the end of her marriage.

- First message, it came as a very innocent message.

[soft pensive music]

♪ ♪

I said, "wrong number."

♪ ♪

He came back,

"You look Chinese. Are you Chinese?"

And I said, yes.

He had moved here just before COVID.

And then COVID hit and so he's not able to go home.

♪ ♪

He was a--

[sighs]

A lonely man in need of comfort.

Jimmy would message me every day.

I do remember receiving these emojis with hearts.

♪ ♪

[heartbeat thumping]

It's quite flattering for a middle-aged woman

to meet a young man who finds you attractive.

- Yeah, of course that's flattering.

Because scammers are telling their targets

what they want to hear most in that moment.

We might not all fall for a GIF of a heart-pumping emoji.

But if someone sent me nerd with glasses plus football

plus learning plus statistics equals fire emoji,

me personally, why, I would nut.

And look, one way of making contact

is through those wrong number texts.

But experts that we've talked to

estimate that they only make up about a quarter

of the initial contacts for this scam.

The rest can come through sites like LinkedIn,

dating apps, Instagram, or Facebook,

places specifically designed

for you to meet people that you don't know,

either for love, a hookup, or, in the case of LinkedIn,

to find out what kind of person is still on fucking LinkedIn.

And scammers often research their target

using social media,

where there is a lot of information about people.

So they can pretend to have something in common.

Take this woman who met someone on a dating app,

only to discover that they shared

an unexpected connection.

- He started asking questions about my family

and my past experiences.

- It was a connection that felt even stronger, she says,

when he told her he came from the same town in China

from where Hutchinson was adopted.

- We kind of bonded over that.

- Yeah, I bet they did. And I've got to say,

it says something about men on dating apps

that they connected so well simply because

he did things like ask her questions about herself

and listen to her responses.

I don't want to say the bar for men is low,

but that story started with him

asking her questions about her life

and ends with her giving him all of her money.

But regardless of how they start,

sooner or later, we move on to step two,

turning the conversation toward money.

But even then, there's a smart twist.

Because you won't be suddenly asked to wire money

to a Nigerian prince with an obviously fake email

like, RealPr1nce, spelled with a "1" instead of an "I,"

at scum dot farts.

With pig butchering, there's no direct ask for money at all.

Instead, an opportunity gets presented to you.

Just watch as this man explains the moment

when a guy that he met on a dating site

started to reel him in.

- He spent at least a month daily

talking to me and cultivating my friendship.

- Initially, the only talk about money

was how much his new online friend had made in crypto.

After all, Scott thought he knew

how to protect himself from scams.

- "You can invest with me, and I'll make you all this money."

And it's like, I'm not giving you money.

That's not happening.

So that's when he started, "no, you don't give it to me.

You establish your own account, and I'll guide you."

- Right. That's the clever hook here.

You're not sending the scammer money.

They're helping you set up and control your own account.

And everything seems more legitimate

when there's an app involved. You don't think so?

When is the last time you took an Uber?

Oh, get in a nondescript car with someone I've never met?

I would never do that.

But wait, what's this? I can do it from my phone?

Well, in that case, here's my address.

Now you know where I live and that I won't be home

for the evening. My name's John.

I don't know your last name, but that doesn't matter

because I'm also not committing your face to memory.

Everything's safe. There's an app involved.

And the fact the investment is often in crypto

can be persuasive for multiple reasons.

First, who really knows how crypto works?

I know your friend's weird husband claims that he does,

but he sucks to talk to.

So sadly, it must remain a mystery.

But people have made money on crypto.

So it's not unreasonable to think

you might meet one of them

and they could give you some tips, on top of which

you may not be super familiar

with how a trading platform operates

or even what one looks like.

And scammers have created

incredibly plausible-looking platforms.

We got this footage of one,

which seems to have all the detail

and functionality of a real one.

And I'll be honest, I could be fooled by that.

Also, some scammers use legitimate apps

that allow anyone to build a trading exchange.

The problem is there are tools that scammers can use

to simulate fake results on those apps

while taking your money.

Just watch this journalist explain how this gave

one victim false confidence.

- In MetaTrader, it looks just like

any kind of normal trading interface that one would use.

It's available in the Google Play Store.

It's available in the Apple App Store.

It's an app that has a lot of good ratings.

And that was one of the things that made Cy think that

this whole operation was legitimate.

He believed that his investment was making money.

If you're trading on a legitimate trading interface,

you see the profits and losses over time.

And this is exactly what he saw.

- Right. If your friend told you to download an app

and you saw it in the App Store with good reviews,

you might assume everything on it was legitimate,

even before you saw MetaTrader's logo,

which looks like three men in suits

jerking each other off under a table--

an appropriate metaphor for cryptocurrency

if I have ever seen one.

Some scammers even set up additional features

like two-factor authentication

or customer service lines.

This woman tried her best to do due diligence

on the site that she was sent

and came away convinced that it was real.

- There was a legal secretary involved in another state,

vouching association with a law firm

where it was sending money to.

She's real. I could verify her.

So it was very complex and well rehearsed.

- She spoke with a legal secretary and a law firm

before sending money.

And that is more vetting than I've done

for my kids' daycare.

Look, I love them and they're very precious to me,

but they're also loud, sticky, and one of them is just getting

stronger and stronger every day.

So if you have a building with walls

and a phone number that I can call, I trust you.

Take them for the afternoon.

And at this point in the process,

things might look pretty good for the people getting scammed.

You've sent a bit of money to a legitimate looking site

through an account that you control.

And your new friends' trading tips seem to be working,

so maybe you send a little bit more.

And pretty soon, you might have a fair amount of money

tied up on this trading platform.

But when you eventually go to withdraw it,

that is where we hit the final step of this process.

Remember that woman you saw earlier

whose online friend claimed that he was from the same town

where she was born?

Well, she'd convinced her dad to invest as well.

They'd seemingly made a bunch of money,

and then this happened.

- By December, their accounts showed a combined balance

of $1.2 million.

And Hutchinson decided it was time to cash out.

That's when the site told her,

before she could withdraw her money,

she'd have to pay a hefty tax bill of roughly $380,000.

- That's when I was like, something's not right.

- It wasn't.

The cryptocurrency investments weren't real.

All her and her father's funds

had gone into the scammers' pockets.

In all, $390,000 stolen.

- I messed up my life. I messed up my dad's life.

- She told me that it was all a scam.

- Hutchinson's father, Melvin.

- And all I could do was just hug her and tell her it's OK.

[sobbing] It's OK.

And it was hard.

It was hard because we lost everything.

- Yeah. Their money had already gone.

And that tax bill was just an attempt

to squeeze them one last time.

And theirs isn't the only brutal story here.

This woman lost $350,000.

This guy lost $300,000.

And that woman who fell for Jimmy sent him $2.5 million

as she was dealing with terminal cancer.

It is traumatic and it's humiliating.

And it took courage for those people to come forward.

And that is partly why experts think the $3 billion figure

that we have is way too low

because most people who've been scammed like this

simply don't report their losses out of embarrassment.

And at this point, you're probably furious

with the people on the other end

of all of these messages and want to see them taken down

or, at the very least, fucked with.

And that does happen a lot.

People post screengrabs messing with scammers all the time,

like in this exchange, where someone replies

to wrong number text with,

"My name is Inigo Montoya," and,

"you don't by any chance have six fingers

on your right hand, do you?"

Or this one where a scammer writes,

"I'm Sarah, nice to meet you," with a picture.

And gets the reply, "Weewee weewoo boner alert."

Look.

Look, I'll be honest.

That doesn't seem like the right sound to me.

That's not what--I probably would have gone with,

awooga, awooga, boner alert,

but reasonable people can disagree.

All bodies are different.

There's no one right sound for a boner alert.

But here's the thing:

as cathartic as that might be,

the person on the other end of that phone

might not be the one you should be mad at.

Because remember when I said that this would be done

in former casinos by organized crime syndicates?

It turns out, they're not great bosses.

- This compound is where an Indian man named Rakesh

says he was forced to work

for more than 11 months without pay

for a Chinese criminal gang.

Rakesh, who doesn't want to be identified,

says he first flew to Thailand

for what he thought was an IT job.

Instead he says he was tricked

into crossing the border to Myanmar,

where a Chinese gangster told him to work or else.

He threatened to kill you?

- And the job?

Spend 16 hours a day on social media

targeting Americans with a fake profile.

- That is awful.

No one should be forced to spend 16 hours a day

on social media.

You should do it either because you love it

or because you are 15 years old

and the algorithm has addicted you to it--

you know, completely normal reasons.

A lot of these organizations are using people

who've been human trafficked

after being lured to the compounds

under false pretenses.

They are actually the victims of a scam themselves.

Basically, they might see job ads for skilled positions

as translators or IT specialists

in another country.

They then go through a whole application process,

with some going through up to four seemingly legitimate

online interviews, and fly to their new job,

at which point they suddenly learn

their new bosses have their documents

and they now can't leave.

Back in 2022, ProPublica estimated that

tens of thousands of people

have been tricked in this way.

And a more recent UN report estimated that

hundreds of thousands of people

have been forcibly engaged in this scheme.

They also say most victims are confined to the scam compound,

and their screens are always monitored

by the members of the organized crime group.

And once they are in, they are provided fake profiles

to try and hook people in with.

Here is who Rakesh found himself being all day.

- Posing as a Salt Lake City-based investor

named Klara Semonov,

Rakesh flirted online with potential targets.

- Yeah, Rakesh was Klara Semonov

from Salt Lake City.

So before we go any further,

anyone who thinks that they are dating Klara,

I'm afraid you are not.

The relationship is over.

It's not you, but it's also not her.

It's Rakesh.

But also, it isn't him.

It's Rakesh's boss who won't let him leave.

The whole operation is highly organized

and set up to get around the usual ways

that you might detect a scam.

For instance, some organizations

generate their own photos for the profile

so that they can't be reverse image searched.

And employees are given manuals like these

that guide them through every step of the process.

They're told to target people who look wealthy

and successful.

One advises, on the first day, talk about things like

your name, age, occupation and hobbies.

Then the next day, talk about your emotional experience

with a message divided into two paragraphs.

And then on the third day,

talk about your entrepreneurial experience.

They're even given tips on how to break down

people's defenses.

- We reviewed several of these manuals,

and they carefully explain

how to build trust and exploit weaknesses

in their so-called client, such as--

- You know, the chilling thing is that's kind of true.

If you're funny enough,

you can make people forget a lot of things,

whether it's common sense internet safeguards,

lessons from previous relationships,

or that they've been accidentally learning about

financial fraud and human trafficking

for the last 20 minutes.

We're having fun, aren't we?

And if you're thinking, well, why don't authorities

just shut these compounds down?

Sometimes they're in on it.

Here is one man who was trafficked

to a scam center in Cambodia,

explaining what happened when he did the obvious thing.

- On his second day in captivity,

Liu emailed the Chinese Embassy.

He was advised to call the Sihanoukville police.

But the police never came.

- The property management came instead.

They knew that I'd called the police.

- Liu says the managers then sold him to

another scamming company.

- He said, because I called the police,

they had to take care of the police

with at least $4,000

and I had to pay for that, too.

- Yeah, the authorities weren't going to help him,

which actually makes sense when you learn

that according to UN estimates,

pig butchering in Cambodia brings in an amount

equivalent to half the country's GDP,

which is worrisome because, as everyone knows,

when something generates that much money,

you don't shut it down.

You spin it off and pray the magic works a second time.

Come on.

And conditions in these compounds can be brutal.

That man you saw earlier, Rakesh,

took photos of abuse like this one,

of a co-worker who'd been beaten.

And Liu, who managed to get out, now works to free others.

And the stories of what he's seen are--fair warning--

hard to watch.

- I saw a man get beaten up very badly.

He had injuries all over his body.

- Liu contends it was this man

who was reportedly found hanging just hours later.

- I'm certain it was him.

- His phone is full of messages

from Chinese citizens,

desperate to be freed from scam companies.

There's videos of abuse.

Liu says he receives them directly from victims

inside the scam industry

or finds them posted in social media group chats.

And he's got handcuffs.

They're shocking.

- That is horrifying. And when you know all of this,

it kind of starts to change who exactly you are mad at here

because, suddenly, the individuals on

the other end of the phone

don't seem quite so fun to send a message of

"weewoo weewoo boner alert" to.

Not that that isn't an excellent text.

Who doesn't love a boner alert?

But there's a time and a place, and this might not be it.

Also, from now on, whenever you get a sexy text

from a new stranger, good luck not thinking,

is this a man who was just beaten

in a work camp in Myanmar?

And that, if anything, is the John Oliver effect.

You are welcome.

And look, I can't say that every scammer

is someone who was kidnapped, tortured, and forced to do it.

But even if not everyone who's doing this

is trapped or coerced,

the very fact that many are

is still a huge problem.

So what can we do here?

Well, when it comes to those imprisoned in these compounds,

that's going to take collaboration between

international law enforcement.

So unless you are the head of Interpol,

which I'm guessing you are not,

there's not much you personally can do.

In this country, I'd argue that platforms like these

should be doing way more to prevent the creation

of fake accounts to target people

because it's happening on their watch.

But the truth is, perhaps the most effective way

to stop this from happening

is to make it less lucrative

by having fewer people fall for it.

And that is where awareness of this scam is key.

This is one of those rare cases where raising awareness

is in itself genuinely useful.

Because hopefully you've seen tonight,

this could happen to someone you know.

This hasn't just sucked in old people

or those who aren't tech savvy.

It managed to reel in a bank CEO.

Everyone has an image of the type of person

who is susceptible to getting scammed in their heads.

But unless that image is a mirror, you might be wrong.

So as a general rule, when a stranger on a dating app

says either "I love you" or "crypto"

within a month of talking to you, worry.

Honestly, even if they don't turn out to be scammers,

those are pretty good red flags

to be looking for, personality-wise.

And it's worth telling your friends and family

about pig butchering too.

It doesn't have to be a big lecture or anything.

You can just send them a link to this show.

And if they say, "I hate that guy,"

say, "yeah, me too. He's the worst.

Just skip past the jokes."

And if they say, "I'll watch it,

but he looks like a LEGO accountant,"

"wait, no, he looks like ChatGPTs answer to,

'show me a virgin,'"

"wait, no, he looks like Harry Potter if he just

stayed under the stairs," just leave them on read.

You don't have to completely sell me out.

Maybe drop a thumbs up emoji, but please, leave it at that.

And look, if you know someone who's been scammed like this,

try to be kind.

It is human to want companionship.

And it's actually a nice quality

to be trusting of people.

And it sucks that the internet,

which should be a way to alleviate loneliness,

can be turned into a tool to exploit it.

But maybe, if we all look out for one another,

we can ensure that the worst mistake anyone ever makes

on the internet is inadvertently buying

an excellent Christmas tree for gay mice.

Because honestly, it's really not that bad a purchase.

Believe me,

I know what I'm talking about.

Now this.

- And now, local news loses it

over Major League Baseball's new pants.

- Major League Baseball introduced

new uniforms this year, but there's a problem.

The pants are made of thinner fabric,

making them almost see through, Chris.

- Wait, what? - Mm-hm.

Now photos all over-- - You've got my attention.

I'm listening. - [chuckles]

Luckily, the tucked-in shirts keeping things covered.

Look at him and his hands. [gasps]

- They're definitely see-through, right?

You could see the little tags. - Well, we saw it.

That's for sure. - What's "it"?

Oh-- - The--

- [laughs] Steve! Wow.

- We--we saw-- - We can go to weather now.

- Does he look happy wearing them? No.

He looks happy wearing them.

- Do you see the problem, though?

- I don't think girls are saying

there's a problem there. - [laughs]

- The players, I think, probably have

an issue with it. - Oh.

- Now if I've got patterns on my boxer briefs,

everyone's going to see that? - I don't know.

I'm suddenly very interested in baseball.

- Bianca is on her elbows on the desk here.

- Can we zoom in to these photos

a little bit more? - Stop it!

- I can't tell 'cause I have bad eyes.

- You can see the shirt tucked in.

- [laughs] OK.

- Maybe these uniforms will get more women

that aren't watching baseball already to watch baseball.

- You've got Derica's interest. - That's what I said.

- She's googling over here. I'm like--

- [laughs] Right?

- It's a good recruiting device.

- Yes, it is.

- I see nothing wrong with the pants.

- I think they're fine.

- I was inspecting. Didn't see a problem.

- Uh-huh.

- All right, if snakes make you--

[laughter]

- Who put this order of these stories?

- Oh, boy.

♪ ♪

- That's our show. Thanks so much for watching.

We'll see you next week. Good night!

[cheers and applause]

[uplifting music]

♪ ♪

I would nut!

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