Morphing in less than a decade from a world of misspelled emails and implausible Nigerian princes, the industry has become a vast, sophisticated system, raking in tens of billions from victims around the world

Racist.

In all seriousness, this is pretty terrifying:

its heart are “pig-butchering” scams – where a relationship is cultivated online before the scammer pushes their victim to part with their money, often via an “investment” in cryptocurrency. Scammers have harnessed increasingly sophisticated technology to fool targets: using generative AI to translate and drive conversations, deepfake technology to conduct video calls, and mirrored websites to mimic real investment exchanges