Meta confirmed that criminals use text messages, dating apps, social media and email every day to perpetrate other scams and frauds, most commonly the so-called pig slaughter scam, which lures victims into fraudulent investment schemes. But Meta is fighting back, shutting down more than 2 million Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts used by organized crime for this purpose in 2024 alone.
Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts shut down after being targeted by organized crime groups
The report released by Meta, “Organized crime behind the fraud centre” detailed how it works: An organized crime group plotting pig slaughter scams in Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines. “We are taking action against criminal organizations behind pig slaughter and other schemes that target people around the world under pretences through messaging, dating, social media, cryptocurrency and other apps,” Meta said in the report, which details for the first time the company’s approach to combating cross-border criminal activity, particularly those behind “fraudulent connections.” Meta has made it clear that it has a safety policy against dangerous organizations and individuals, and that there is no place on Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp for “groups or individuals that promote violence, organized crime, hatred and terrorism.”
Meta’s intelligence report reveals that criminals are using fraudulent connections run by criminals to coerce workers into everything from cryptocurrency and loan scams to the aforementioned types of pig slaughter. “We expect that much of the fraud centre activity is carefully planned by criminal organizations to expand their operations,” Meta said, “it includes some forced-labor scammers focusing on casting a wide net online to ‘spray and pray’ by reaching out to a large number of people via text message or online with a relatively generic appeal in hopes that some of them will respond.”
