My recently widowed father (72) is planning a trip across the country to meet a woman who he claims called him by accident and with whom he has since built a romantic (remote) relationship. Here’s what he’s shared with me:
- He received a “wrong number” call from a woman that led to a number of other conversations online and on the phone that started to take on a romantic tone.
- He believes she is real because he has checked her out online, including validating that she is indeed the CEO of her company, is 40 years old, and is originally from Taiwan. Haven’t seen this myself.
- She says she runs this company with her brother in Canada and her father back in Taiwan. The details of the company were not clear to me.
- They have exchanged photos but not video because her webcam is not working.
- He is planning a trip to Los Angeles (from the East Coast of US) in a few months to meet her in person. She said her driver will pick him up at the airport.
- No money has been asked for or sent, according to him.
This is obviously a scam, right? But, without there being an ask for money I can’t figure out the angle and haven’t been able to convince him to disengage.
It is either going to be an ask for money to help her overseas family or a “can’t lose” investment in her company. I’m guessing she’ll back out of the travel plans last minute so they never meet OR he’s going go there and have his organs harvested.
Does anyone recognize this scam? What should we expect next? Has anyone else successfully talked their elderly loved ones out of one of these?
Hey OP, don’t know if you’ve seen this because it just came out today, but it’s another deep dive into the world of pig-butchering scams. As soon as I read it I thought of your post:
If your dad really is the target of a pig-butchering scam, it’s likely that any woman on the other end of this is not doing it by choice but living in horrific, brutal conditions, unable to leave, and of course will never see any of the money he sends. As others have said, the scammers will hire models, or even use other trafficking victims, to do any video or photo proofs required. There is no upside.
I don’t know if this kind of argument would reach him, but I’m giving you the link just in case you can ever use it: the lives of these women trafficked into this kind of scam work are beyond horrible, and the faster you can educate your dad on the reality of it, the better. Also, it might help if you could arrange for him to see this thread: there is a lot of power in seeing almost a hundred comments all saying the exact same thing. Best wishes to you both.
She’s probably going to say her car/something broke down and she needs money ASAP to meet him.
Also, lol @ CEO of a company that doesn’t have any device with a working camera…This alone is enough honestly.
Every cell phone for the last 10+ years has a front facing camera and internet connection.
Last time I saw that happen, it took all of 30 seconds to walk one office over and appropriate that laptop
Some variety of a so-called Pig Butchering Scam.
^^ This. here’s a bit of the show Last Week Tonight going over how the scam works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg
John Oliver deserves a Congressional Gold Medal in recognition for all of his work. He has made a point of not only reporting on, but actively antagonizing, bad people in positions of power and bad corporations. And he’s managed to be quite funny while doing it. The man is a national treasure.
Appreciate this. Seems right on the money.
Have him watch this!
Oddly enough, I got into a real relationship with a woman who texted me when she had the wrong number. She lived about 180 miles away in the city I grew up in. We were meeting up every week for quite a while.
What should we expect next?
Likely she will cancel the trip at the last second and claim to have a work or family emergency. Then she will need money.
Or shortly before the trip she will share an investment opportunity and offer him to join her in it. It will turn out to be fake.
Or both.
Hey now. There’s also the “lure someone to a remote location, kidnap him, and beat him up until he transfers you a bunch of money”.
That’s very unlikely. These romance/pig butchering scammers operate from outside the USA and have no interest in attracting the kind of attention such an attack would bring.
Planning the trip is almost certainly to build trust and make the relationship seem real. All with the goal that the target willingly gives the scammer the money. If he goes to Los Angeles after she cancels, there will be no driver to pick him up.
That’s very unlikely.
No, its extremely unlikely.
sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_butchering_scam it’s in early phase so far
One of my uncle is currently involved in scams like this one with multiple women at the same time. They all love him, they all want his money. Last time I checked, he lost most of his money and almost became homeless.
I hope you can do anything to your father because he will lose a lot.
One of my uncle is currently involved in scams like this one with multiple women at the same time. They all love him, they all want his money.
that’s awesome, that he’s stringing them along and wasting their time
Last time I checked, he lost most of his money and almost became homeless.
oh… :/
Man, if I had a nickel for every time I saw this:
Wrong number ✅
Beautiful Asian woman living in LA ✅
Owns her own business, jewelry/fashion design/finance ✅
Mysteriously keeps the conversation going even when told it’s a wrong number ✅Tries a romance angle to suck you in to a crypto “investment” in 3-2-1…
Typically run out of boiler room call centers in Myanmar using, essentially, slave labor:
He did mention specifically she was “oriental” as if it was some kind of check in the “not a scam” column.
Not sure the link there… Is it a known thing that old men have a weak spot for women of Asian heritage?
It helps explain why their English isn’t great. The guy behind the profile is likely in Southeast Asia, so it explains when he slips up with some phrase from that region.
I don’t know about “weak spot” but there is a certain fetishization of Asian women they may be leaning in to.
Yes it’s a scam. Likely there will be money requests forthcoming.
No organs will be harvested: he’s too old for that. But it doesn’t mean he won’t be butchered: he will be butchered like a pig
The meeting will be called off last minute and it will either be a shady investment or ill father in South Asia.
It is utterly important for you to stay with him and plan this through, as it seems like he already trusts the scammer more than you. You are losing him.
Among your other points, a wealthy 40 year old CEO looking for romance is going to pick a guy below her age, not one who’s 72.
Pretty sure the only organ they’ll harvest is his wallet but they can cut pretty deep financially, and break his heart.
Know any real women who might make a better match for him?
I think this is part of the problem. He doesn’t have a strong social circle and most of what it had been had been her friends, now mostly lost. He’s still pretty healthy but has other life situations keeping him trapped in place. Figuring out how to get him out of the house might be a good next step, once we can break him of this.
but has other life situations keeping him trapped in place.
I recommend to work on this certain problem.
Day trip, vacation, whatever… But he really needs it, as this story has clearly shown.
a wealthy 40 year old CEO looking for romance is going to pick a guy below her age
oh dude i have a surprise for you
people don’t just want to fuck folk younger than them
Okay I’ll include her own age and maaaaybe up to 10 years older. But anyone aiming 30+ years older than themselves probably has a financial motive.
Being the CEO of a company and not having a working webcam seems like a dead straight no-brainer giveaway that this is a scam. I mean, you know… a CEO who can’t do video Zoom meetings? Come on.
So he’s flying to LA to be taken who knows where alone in a car with her driver? Dude NO, absolutely NOT. Please talk your dad out of this, srsly.
Scamming old people has grown into a massive and well organized industry that brings in billions in profits per year. It is a huge problem that has continued to get worse. As others have said, this is 100% a scam. They will inevitably use any number of techniques to extract money from him. It is very possible they already have and he just hasn’t told you yet, it is not uncommon for the victims to be secretive about what the scammers are getting them to do.
Yeah, OP’s dad has probably already gotten instructions to hide anything problematic.
“You know I wouldn’t ask you to hide anything from your kids, but don’t tell them about this one thing. It’ll just upset them and they won’t understand how it is for us”
This is a scam. 1000%. Do what you gotta do to stop it.
No one has a broken webcam in 2026. Especially if ahes supposedly a company CEO, like that is a solved-today problem if it was ever true.
Also unless your dad is also loaded, there’s not a ton of incentive for a successful woman in her early forties to start a romance with someone nearly twice her age, I mean that may sound awful but I’m a woman and that’s just pragmatic. A long distance gamble on a set of old balls? If she’s just in to older men, I’m sure there are plenty in a 10 minute vicinity, she doesn’t need to fw men on the other side of the country.
My dad is on his third one of these. The first one eventually said she could help him buy Bitcoin at which point he realized it was probably a scam and stopped talking to her. I can’t remember what happened with the second, but the third invited him out to the west coast so he could drive her fancy super car. I’m guessing before it gets that far she’ll bring up money and he’ll realize it’s a scam again.
I’m not too worried about my dad yet because he doesn’t get too invested in the whole thing and isn’t one to send money to people, but I plan on bringing it up if he ever brings up sending money to, or visiting one.
Yep. My grandpa has lost everything after my grandma passed away. So many young women want him! And he could make so much money if he just buys some supplies! And this and that and scam scam scam.
I’d feel bad for him if he hadn’t disrespected the memory of my grandmother so damn quickly after being sucked into these scams.
Christ, I got solicited by my fucking cab driver to buy Bitcoin. These people are everywhere. They’re constantly dangling “I can hook you up” bait in front of anyone who will listen. It’s downright suffocating.
https://www.pitzlfinancial.com/blog/ode-shoeshine-boy
"In 1929, at the height of an economic boom in America, Joseph Kennedy Sr. (father of JFK) was working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. As the story goes, Joseph was walking around when he decided to sit down for a shoeshine. While polishing his shoes, the young worker gave Joseph some of his favorite stock picks. When Joseph heard the shoeshine boy giving out stock tips, he figured the party was about to end, and it was time to get out of the market. Joseph proceeded to exit his positions in the market and bought short positions that bet on the market going down.
Shortly after that, the stock market entered a free fall. On Monday, October 28, 1929, the market dropped about 13%. The next day it fell another 12%. These became better known as Black Monday and Black Tuesday, and ushered the United States into The Great Depression.
Now did Joseph profit from this type of bet? Absolutely. It’s estimated that he made somewhere north of $150 million during that period, which equates to roughly $3.5 billion in today’s dollars.
Did he make these bets based on the shoeshine boy? Probably not, but it makes for a good narrative."
Now did Joseph profit from this type of bet?
Joe Kennedy was famously a booze smuggler who profited most handsomely from black market liquor imports during Prohibition.
I’m sure he made some savvy stock trades in his day, but the seed of his fortune was the illicit sale of alcohol.
I think these (largely apocryphal) stories overlook how shoeshine boys have been giving stock tips during rain and shine for centuries. I wish it was the sign of a peak, but it’s more the continuation of an enduring trend.
Christ, I got solicited by my fucking cab driver to buy Bitcoin.
lol
If he knew some secret technique to making lots of money with Bitcoin, he wouldn’t be a fucking cab driver, now would he?
