The road to Kaimi’s ruin started in December, with an Instagram message about a Japanese monkey from a handsome stranger who called himself Mike. Over the coming months Mike and Kaimi would develop a friendship that quickly evolved into a romance.
Kaimi had no idea he had become ensnared in a romance scam known as “pig butchering,” from the Chinese phrase sha zhu pan — the name coming from the idea that scammers must “fatten up” victims first with flattery and fake bonding before stealing their money.
Experts told CNBC it’s easy to dismiss victims of these scams as ignorant or foolish, but doing so discounts how manipulative the scammers are.
Matt Friedman is the CEO of the Mekong Club, a Hong Kong-based organization that works with corporations to fight modern slavery. “Ten scams come by, and they’re very clearly a scam,” Friedman told CNBC. “But the 11th one, I even may even fall for it.”
The scam often starts with a simple text message – “Hi!” Many people disregard the messages that scammers send.
But if they respond, the scammers move quickly to establish a rapport. The mystery texter might say they’re a wealthy executive. They’ll share images of their lavish lifestyle. Eventually, they’ll try to make a meaningful romantic bond with the victim. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.
At the third stage, the scammers offer to “teach” the victim how to trade cryptocurrencies or foreign currencies. The scammer networks operate fake trading platforms that look “exactly the way they should look,” Friedman told CNBC. Victims are “taught” how to trade by their scammer, and the fake exchanges are engineered to show nonexistent profits of 15% to 20%.
When victims try to withdraw money or have run out of fresh funds, the fake exchanges shut down the accounts and demand payment. Panicked and encouraged by their so-called friend, the victims wire what little money they have left. The exchange and their “friend” block the victim shortly after.
It can take weeks before victims understand they’ve been scammed, and even longer to admit what has happened to them.
Experts told CNBC that the scammers on the phone aren’t the real beneficiaries of the scam, although they do sometimes get a cut of the proceeds. Most often, they’ve been trafficked to Cambodia, Laos, or Myanmar to work for organized scamming networks, according to extensive reporting from ProPublica and Vice.
Law enforcement and prosecutors acknowledge pig-butchering is a problem but tell victims they’re largely unable to help. Reported U.S. losses from investment scams totaled $3.31 billion last year, according to the FBI, but experts say that many victims are too embarrassed to report their losses.
The U.S. manages to recover relatively little. The Justice Department’s only public action seized just $112 million. Federal prosecutors in New York and Virginia have also been pursuing domain names and individuals linked to the scams.
Dennis, a small business owner in Maryland, told CNBC his scammer Sarah reached out to him on Facebook around the same time that Mike first reached out to Kaimi.
CNBC has altered their names to protect their identities, as both Dennis and Kaimi shared personally identifiable information and identity documents with their scammers, and as Kaimi has not disclosed his sexual orientation to everybody in his life.
Kaimi lost more than $120,000 to his scammer. Dennis lost around $500,000.
‘My love for you will last forever’
Mike first messaged Kaimi in late December, cracking a joke about a Japanese monkey that Kaimi had posted.
“When I was looking at who had messaged, I was like, ‘I don’t know if this person is real,'” Kaimi told CNBC. After a few days, Kaimi sent back a perfunctory message. Mike promptly responded and engaged enthusiastically with Kaimi, before suggesting they move to a messaging app called Line.
CNBC reviewed thousands of messages between Kaimi and Mike running through Apr. 2023.
They bonded over their shared love of travel, and Mike eventually invited Kaimi to visit him Seoul. They’d go shopping, Mike said.
Kaimi told Mike that his schedule as a teacher didn’t let him just jet around the world, and he’d have to save money for an international trip. When pressed, Kaimi told Mike about his financial difficulties, stemming from past credit-card debt.
Mike suggested teaching Kaimi how to trade in foreign currencies so he could travel to Seoul and pay off his debt.
Mike alternated between talking about making Kaimi rich and sending him what Kaimi described as “flowery” messages.
“My love for you will last forever,” Mike told him.
Kaimi acquiesced in January, and created an account on the forex platform Mike claimed he used, called DPEX.
DPEX wasn’t a real exchange, but a front controlled by the same scamming group that Mike belonged to.
Over the following weeks, Kaimi wired thousands of dollars from his bank to Crypto.com, a centralized exchange. He used it to buy ether and send it to DPEX’s wallets.
His transfers started small – the first was worth just $140. DPEX claimed it converted his ether transfers into Tether, a U.S. dollar stablecoin.
Mike and Kaimi’s first trade together was a bet against the Japanese yen falling in value. When Kaimi saw he’d made $20 on a $100 trade, he was sold.
Mike offered to help Kaimi structure a plan to use profits from DPEX pay off his $300,000 in student loans, mortgage, and credit cards. In February, Mike even “sent” $30,000 from his own DPEX account to Kaimi’s to help him move closer to his debt-free goal.
“I want to repay you as soon as possible, shrink down most of the debt, then plan a trip to Korea to see you,” Kaimi told Mike. Mike pressed Kaimi to add more to his account and join him in bigger bets. He grilled Kaimi about how else he could raise money, from friends or through loans.
In all, Kaimi sent DPEX more than $100,000 worth of ether. His paper profits grew handsomely: in one week in March, Kaimi’s balance went from $100,000 to $310,000.
“I thought I was someone who knew when they were being scammed, was able to discern things,” Kaimi told CNBC.
But when Kaimi told Mike he was planning to withdraw his funds, the penny dropped. DPEX froze Kaimi’s account, claiming that Mike’s generous $30,000 “gift” was a suspicious transaction.
Mike claimed his account was frozen too. “OMG,” Mike said. “we are the same.”
DPEX asked that Kaimi pay back that gift to unlock his full account balance. Kaimi had planned to do so anyway, but sent DPEX nearly $30,000 to settle the “debt.”
The scammers settled into a predictable pattern, pumping Kaimi for more and more fees and taxes. Kaimi paid $64,000 in apparent penalties, urged on by Mike. When the scamming operation asked him for another $65,000, Kaimi realized that there was no chance he was getting his money back.
When Mike pressed him to pay DPEX’s “fees,” Kaimi snapped. “I’ve filed a report to the FBI and the SEC,” he told Mike.
‘I thought of ending everything’
This is one of the images that Dennis’s scammer, “Sarah,” sent him. The face has been blurred to disguise the identity of the woman pictured, whose image may have been used without her knowledge.
Dennis didn’t have any reason to be suspicious when his first scammer, Sarah, messaged him on Facebook.
“I just said hi and bye,” Dennis told CNBC. “But she keeps approaching me,” he said. “We became friends.”
Sarah claimed she was a wealthy executive at a Chinese electric-vehicle manufacturer. She showed him photos of her “uncle” with Alibaba’s Jack Ma. She sent him photos and videos from luxurious stores and apartments.
But it was her show of affection and care more than her material wealth that drew Dennis close.
“They talk to you and manipulate you,” Dennis told CNBC. He was in the midst of separating from his wife. They shared a child together, and in his messages with Sarah, he shared his feelings of inadequacy as a father.
Sarah offered Dennis comfort. They talked for hours every day, and it was weeks before she first offered to teach him how to trade crypto.
Another picture “Sarah” sent Dennis.
Sarah said her powerful uncle ran a trading syndicate large enough to influence crypto prices and guarantee a profit. Experts say that scammers will often cite a well-connected relative as part of their fictitious success.
Sarah pointed him to an “exchange” called Bigone-Eth, and could only be accessed through a iOS app called Trust Wallet. Dennis sent thousands of dollars from Coinbase to Trust Wallet, and gave the fake exchange permission to control the crypto in his Trust Wallet.
Sarah guided him through trades that predictably returned 20% From late December through January, Dennis bought nearly $160,000 worth of bitcoin for his “Bigone-Eth” account, and invested $100,000 worth of his cousin’s Bitcoin with Bigone-Eth as well.
It wasn’t enough for Sarah, who told Dennis he needed to invest at least $500,000. Otherwise, she suggested, Dennis’ son would “suffer” because of Dennis’ laziness.
But like Kaimi, Dennis felt he’d made enough. The hammer fell when he went to withdraw his winnings: Bigone-Eth froze him out and demanded $180,000 to release his $1.2 million balance.
The demand made Dennis suspect that the broker was trying to scam him out of his money. It was only in March, months after he began talking with Sarah, he began to investigate romance scams and fake crypto brokerages.
Along the way, he conducted an internet search and found a company called Financial Fund Recovery, or FFR, which said it specialized in crypto asset recovery.
Bankrupt and ‘scammed out of my mind’
In late March, Dennis spoke with a person claiming to be an FFR employee, John Seth, who told Dennis that Sarah and the exchange were part of the same scam. Seth also promised he could recover Dennis’ assets, something Dennis now believes was a lie.
Just a few days after Dennis spoke with Seth, he got an unsolicited call from someone identifying himself as Benjamin Grey. He claimed he worked at Bigone-Eth, and told Dennis that he could recover his money for $100,000. Dennis never provided Bigone or Sarah with his phone number, and now suspects Grey was working with Seth to scam him out of more money.
But Dennis, more alone than ever, trusted Seth. Seth urged Dennis to pay the fee but keep it secret from Sarah and the Bigone-Eth scammers. He borrowed $100,000 from his parents and sent it to Grey through Coinbase.
Dennis didn’t notice that Grey’s wallet address was different from the original scammers, nor that Grey’s email address had a slight misspelling of Bigone-Eth’s name. Dennis thought he was on the verge of getting his money back, of repaying his parents and his cousin and moving on from his life.
Dennis was out another $242,000 by the time Seth told him to stop talking with Grey.
Seth suggested suing Grey and Bigone for the lost money. He sent Dennis an invoice detailing how FFR would put a “lien” on Dennis’ Bigone account — which, in fact, was a fictitious account at a fictitious exchange. Dennis would simply have to wire $42,000 to an Abu Dhabi bank account to get started.
This time, Dennis realized he was being “scammed out of his mind,” and blocked both Seth and Grey.
CNBC spoke with Seth, who strongly denied that FFR was running a scam. He implied that Dennis was lying to CNBC, and said that FFR did not have an employee named Benjamin Grey.
CNBC has reviewed financial documents, emails, blockchain transactions, and recordings of calls between Dennis, Grey, and Seth. Despite his claims to the contrary, the recordings show Seth encouraging Dennis to send money to Grey. Both Seth and Grey contacted Dennis using VoIP numbers from the same issuer. Both numbers were disconnected after CNBC reached out to them.
Other attempts to reach FFR were not successful. In a text conversation with the number Dennis offered for Grey, the person on the other end denied knowing anything about the interaction with Dennis. A customer service representative at FFR’s Abu Dhabi-based bank confirmed that company had an account there but declined to provide further information.
FFR used an address of a coworking space in the state of Georgia to register as a limited liability company in Georgia. Over the phone, a receptionist at that coworking space told CNBC that FFR was not a tenant there, and that the mailbox used on the registration form did not exist at that space.
But the receptionist said that a visitor had been looking for FFR’s office just a few weeks prior, and had told the receptionist that FFR had made off with a scam victim’s money.
‘Powerless’
In the U.S., law enforcement are still grappling with how to seize and restore victims’ funds. In California, Santa Clara county prosecutor Erin West is pushing regulators and law enforcement to better understand how these scams work.
West has had some success at a local level in seizing a few million dollars for a handful of victims. But she says without federal intervention and private sector support, putting a meaningful dent in scamming operations will be difficult, if not impossible.
“I wish I could save them all,” she told CNBC. Both Dennis and Kaimi reached out to West, who did what she could to connect them with the right people.
But Dennis and Kaimi’s losses form just a small fraction of the billions of dollars lost to scammers from thousands of victims. In 2022, the Department of Homeland Security estimated scam-related losses at over $3.3 billion. Kaimi has considered filing for bankruptcy. His local Hawaiian bank has closed his checking and savings accounts, according to a letter from the bank shared with CNBC. Kaimi said a bank employee told him his Crypto.com wire transfers were the reason for the closure but didn’t offer any more information to him.
He’s filed multiple complaints, with the FBI, Secret Service, and regulatory agencies, but hasn’t heard back from any of them.
Dennis said he’s been in regular contact with the FBI about the scam. CNBC traced Dennis’ bitcoin to a wallet that’s received more than 59,000 bitcoin, worth about $1.6 billion, since 2019. The trail ends after that wallet, which regularly transfers its contents to the crypto exchange Binance.
Crypto exchanges like Binance, Crypto.com and Coinbase are convenient waypoints for scammers because they have a trusted reputation and massive trading volume. All three exchanges have warned of the dangers of crypto scammers, but for some, that isn’t enough.
When he reached out to Crypto.com, the exchange told Kaimi they couldn’t help him get his money back.
“I’m not asking you to take responsibility of getting my money back,” he said. But he pointed out that his scammers had used the same wallet for months.
West says that while private partners in the banking and crypto industry often are conduits for these kinds of scamming operations, they are also ideally positioned to cut off the supply of fresh money to pig butchering networks.
“We are essentially fleecing our entire middle class of their generational wealth, and handing it to bad actors overseas, and nobody’s stopping this,” West told CNBC.
Shortly before publication, Cloudflare shut down Bigone-Eth’s domain name and flagged it as a suspected phishing site. Neither Cloudflare nor the FBI responded to a request for comment.
Within hours, Dennis’ scammer sent him the new domain name and begged him to respond to her. Dennis ignored her.
“Disappointing men with no sense of responsibility,” she wrote the next day.
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang looks on as US President Donald Trump speaks at the US-Saudi Investment Forum at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on November 19, 2025.
Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images
Nvidia on Tuesday said its tech remains a generation ahead of the industry, in response to Wall Street’s concerns that the company’s dominance of AI infrastructure could be threatened by Google’s AI chips.
“We’re delighted by Google’s success — they’ve made great advances in AI and we continue to supply to Google,” Nvidia said in a post on X. “NVIDIA is a generation ahead of the industry — it’s the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done.”
The post came after Nvidia saw its shares fall 3% on Tuesday after a report that Meta, one of its key customers, could strike a deal with Google to use its tensor processing units for its data centers.
In its post, Nvidia said its chips are more flexible and powerful compared with so-called ASIC chips — such as Google’s TPUs — which are designed for a single company or function. Nvidia’s latest generation of chips are known as Blackwell.
“NVIDIA offers greater performance, versatility, and fungibility than ASICs,” Nvidia said in its post.
Nvidia has more than 90% of the market for artificial intelligence chips with its graphics processors, analysts say, but Google’s in-house chips have gotten increased attention in recent weeks as a viable alternative to the Blackwell chips, which are expensive but powerful.
Unlike Nvidia, Google doesn’t sell its TPU chips to other companies, but it uses them for internal tasks and allows companies to rent them through Google Cloud.
Earlier this month, Google released Gemini 3, a well-reviewed state-of-the-art AI model that was trained on the company’s TPUs, not Nvidia GPUs.
“We are experiencing accelerating demand for both our custom TPUs and Nvidia GPUs,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We are committed to supporting both, as we have for years.”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang addressed rising TPU competition on an earnings call earlier this month, noting that Google was a customer for his company’s GPU chips and that Gemini can run on Nvidia’s technology.
He also mentioned that he was in touch with Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind.
Huang said that Hassabis texted him to say that the tech industry theory that using more chips and data will create more powerful AI models — often called “scaling laws” by AI developers — is “intact.” Nvidia says that scaling laws will lead to even more demand for the company’s chips and systems.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Tuesday’s key moments. 1. Stocks were mixed on Tuesday, with the S & P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average up and the Nasdaq Composite down slightly, with Big Tech names under pressure. Nvidia shares fell more than 6% after The Information reported that Meta may use Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) in its data centers starting in 2027. Broadcom , which helps Google design its TPUs, jumped 11% Monday on the news. Jim Cramer said the pullback in Nvidia is a buying opportunity. “If you don’t have any Nvidia, it’s time to buy,” he said. He added investors are also “getting an opportunity to buy Meta” on the possibility the company could save money on chips and see its stock bounce. 2. This “discouraging day” for tech investors shows the value of having a diversified portfolio, Jim said. That’s why the Club favors defensive names like Procter & Gamble . With a new CEO taking over in January, Jim expects changes ahead. “You can’t have a new CEO come in and not have some change from what’s going on,” he said, noting that underperforming units will likely be cut. Procter has been a disappointment lately, but our thesis is that money will move out of high-flying tech stocks and into more profitable, economically resistant companies. That’s why we added to our position on Tuesday. Elsewhere, home improvement retailer Home Depot is down nearly 12% year to date. We used that weakness to add to our position last week. When interest rates fall, the stock will rise. 3. Shares of Nike are up 3% after Dick’s Sporting Goods announced plans to close a slew of Foot Locker locations during its third-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Dick’s acquired Foot Locker in May. “Nike is a buy, off of Dick’s problems,” Jim said. Ed Stack, executive chairman of Dick’s Sporting Goods, told “Squawk on the Street” that the retailer’s relationship with Nike is improving. “They’re moving in the right direction,” he said, citing strong performance from Nike’s running line. “If you take a look at what they did with their running construct, what they did with Pegasus, what they did with Vomero, what they did with Structure, this running concept has done extremely well on the Dick’s side, and where it’s been put into Foot Locker stores, it’s done really well there too.” 4. Stocks covered in Tuesday’s rapid fire at the end of the video were: Best Buy , Agilent Tech , and Abercrombie . (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA, META, AVGO, PG, HD, NKE. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Elon Musk attends the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is expected to close a $15 billion round at a $230 billion pre-money valuation next month, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber.
The deadline for allocation is the end of day on Tuesday, with the round expected to close on Dec. 19, the sources said.
This confirms earlier CNBC reporting that the company was raising $15 billion. The Tesla CEO later called the report on the round “False” in a post on the social media platform X.
At the time, sources told CNBC that xAI would use a large portion of the money for funding graphics processing units responsible for powering large language models.
CNBC had previously reported in September that the startup was looking to raise $10 billion at a $200 billion valuation.
The funding round is yet another sign of the insatiable demand for AI tools. Companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have raised billions and reached sky-high valuations as investors pour more money into companies building foundational AI models.
Musk’s xAI is responsible for creating the Grok chatbot that has come under fire for disseminating hate speech, including antisemitic content. The company recently debuted Grokipedia, an AI-powered competitor to Wikipedia.
In March, Musk announced the merger of xAI with X in a deal valuing the social media platform at $33 billion.
