WhatsApp has taken down 6.8 million accounts that were linked to scam centres across the globe as tech companies attempt to crack down on criminal enterprises.

These accounts were allegedly  linked to scam centres committing pig butchering, a type of scam involving social engineering, where scammers build relationships with their soon-to-be victims in an effort to defraud them and convince them to transfer money. Victims are often convinced to do this over cryptocurrency, which can be more difficult to track or get back.

Scams may start as a text message or an exchange on a dating app, but ultimately end up on a payment or crypto platform.

“In the course of just one scam, they often try to cycle people through many different platforms to ensure that any one service has only a limited view into the entire scam, making it more challenging to detect,” Meta wrote.

Many of these crime syndicates operate from Southeast Asian countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia, where people are recruited under false circumstances and often forced into the criminal practice.

Recommended reading

• How Much are Fraudsters Making from Crypto Pump-and-Dumps?
• Pig Butchering Crypto Scams Advance to As-a-service Schemes
• Watch Out for Crypto Romance Scams Using AI

Scammers are even employing AI to make these campaigns more convincing – OpenAI found that some scammers used ChatGPT to generate text messages linking victims to WhatsApp, then Telegram, where victims were then told to like TikTok videos in exchange for money.

Then, scammers convince victims to deposit money into a crypto account in order to access the amount of money they think they’ve earned.

While Meta and OpenAI have previously collaborated to investigate and take down accounts that have been linked to scam centres, the recent purge of 6.8 billion accounts was “proactive” and in an effort to delete the accounts before they could be used by the scam centres.

Meta is now urging users to take pause when interacting with strangers online, and to question their intentions, and verify their identity before thinking about exchanging any money.