A Bitcoin investor lost his retirement savings to a “pig butchering” scam after ignoring repeated warnings from his advisory firm, according to an account shared by Bitcoin Wealth Advisor.
Terrence Michael, an advisor and author who works at The Bitcoin Adviser, said in a post on
Michael said the scammers also claimed to be in love with investors, a common tactic in pig slaughter schemes that rely on emotional manipulation rather than direct hacking.
Despite “numerous phone calls” and “a series of text messages,” Michael was unable to convince his client not to transfer Bitcoin to the scammer.
“My client was caught in a pig butchering scam,” Michael said on Sunday. “Then last night, while I was out to dinner, I received a shocking text message from him saying he had lost everything.”
sauce: terrence michael
Unlike traditional hacking, pig slaughter scams rely on manipulating the victim’s emotions, often through false promises of a romantic relationship, to make the attacker willing to remit the investment.
In addition to losing his hard-earned retirement stash of Bitcoin, this recently divorced investor also bought a plane ticket to a scammer in hopes of meeting a woman. After the funds were transferred, the attackers admitted that the photos used in the relationship were fake and had been generated using artificial intelligence tools, Michael said.
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Pig slaughter scam that stole $5.5 billion in cryptocurrencies in 2024 soars to national threat
Pig butchering scams have become a major problem for crypto holders, with 200,000 individual incidents costing the industry $5.5 billion in 2024.
According to blockchain security platform Cybers, the average grooming period for victims as part of a phishing scam is one to two weeks in 35% of cases, while 10% of scams include a grooming period of up to three months.
Statistics on pig slaughter victims, grooming time. Source: Cyberse
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In early November, Chainalysis warned that pig slaughter fraud was becoming a national security concern.
“Once something like this happens, you get put on a list (…) and you’re more likely to be victimized again,” Andrew Fierman, director of national security intelligence at Chainalysis, said in a November 2025 podcast episode.
In June, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had seized more than $225 million in cryptocurrencies related to the pig slaughter scam.
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