In a dimly lit room somewhere in a border town near the Thailand border a scam boss opens his laptop and logs into Huione Guarantee, a marketplace that has become the Amazon of fraud.
With a couple of clicks, he purchases a package that includes AI software to create deep-fake videos, stolen personal data of potential victims, professional web hosting services and even electrical battons that help him torture scam workers when they don’t produce.
The Rise of “Pig Butchering” Goes High-Tech
Cryptocurrency scams are raging. They raked in at least $9.9 billion in 2024, according to a new report from Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm. But perhaps most alarming is the 40% year-over-year growth in “pig butchering” scams that show no signs of slowing down.
The number of deposits however increased even more rapidly growing nearly 210% which indicates a significant expanding of the number of victims. The average deposit amount however decreased by 55%.
According to ChainAnalysis research, the combination of lower payment amounts and increased deposits could indicate a change in strategy for pig butchering scams. Scammers could be spending less time priming targets, and therefore, receiving smaller payments, in exchange for targeting more victims.
Huione Guarantee Is Helping Scam Compounds Increase Scale
At the heart of the rapid increase in Pig Butchering is Huione Guarantee, a seemingly “legitimate” Cambodian platform that reportedly has processed $70 billion in crypto transactions since 2021.
The platform has become a one-stop shop for scammers, but nothing is as popular as AI face-changing services which can run $200 to $1,900 per package.
Huione scam market revenue has increased exponentially, with AI service vendors’ revenue growing by 1900%, indicating an explosion in the use of AI technology to facilitate scams
One of the services that appears affiliated with the platform called Haotian AI provides realistic face changing software that is remakeably effective in fooling victims.
To prove the sophistication of their AI, they display a jaw-dropping video created with just a single photo of Anne Hathaway.
Scammers Are Re-Investing Scam Proceeds Into AI
To track the level of activity, ChainAnalysis tracked the crypto address of an AI software vendor that was advertising services.
According to the report, they were able to track payments that were made to the AI vendors crypto accounts immediately after a person had watched the advertisement for the deepfake services.
Even more shockingly they were able to track payments from victims to the AI buyers after the deepfake software was purchased.
What they found was that as purchases of the AI deepfake software increased, payments to the scammers would increase within 2-11 days. Within 20 days afterwards, the AI Software vendors would see even more payments from the scammers.
This has created a disturbing “flywheel effect” where AI purchases fuel better scams, so those scams fuel more use of AI.
Huione Guarantee Also Sells Quick Kill Target Hit List
Another set of services which are very popular are PII Hit list. ChainAnalysis says that bad actors sell information on people they refer to as “Quick Kill” targets who are particularly susceptible of being scammed.
These victims are often elderly people in the US, UK, Canada and Australia where the scam bosses can maximize their revenue.
The War Is Just Heating Up And AI Is At The Forefront
As scammers leverage increasingly sophisticated tools, law enforcement and cybersecurity firms are racing to catch up. With AI, the war is escalating quickly.
And the challenge is immense – while traditional pig butchering scams took months to execute, allowing time for detection, modern AI-powered operations can target more victims with smaller amounts, making them harder to spot.
Pay close attention to how this will develop this year.
