US citizen files lawsuit over pig butchering crypto scam

A US citizen has filed a lawsuit over losing $2.1 million in Bitcoin tokens due to what he believes to be a pig butchering scam orchestrated by a crime syndicate in Southeast Asia.

According to a release on Oct. 3, Hector Gustav Gutierrez has filed a lawsuit against Yan Shi Zhang, also known as “1” in the District Court of California over an alleged “pig butchering” scam which cost him 33 Bitcoin(BTC), approximately $2.1 million USD.

Attorney Kiley Grombacher, the lawyer representing Gutierrez, explained that his client was roped into a pig butchering scam involving fraudulent crypto investments operated from Southeast Asia.

The crime syndicate allegedly set up fake websites of real crypto exchange platforms. The scammers used these websites to lure in victims, simulate trading and steal their victim’s funds from the crypto exchanges.

“Thousands of people lost their life savings, including our client who has to wonder how to pay his basic life expenses after having worked tirelessly his entire life to build up a substantial nest egg,” said Grombacher in an email to crypto.news.

According to Grombacher, his client met Yan Shi Zhang’s niece through LinkedIn back in Sept., 2023. Zhang promised that he would teach Grombacher how to succeed in crypto trading.

Based on Gutierrez’s testimony, Zhang claimed to have ties with an investment firm that works with Binance and showed him examples of successful high returns from his own cryptocurrency trading ventures.

Grombacher claimed that Zhang convinced Gutierrez to sign up to U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, not knowing that the website was actually fake.

Gutierrez ended up using his life savings and entire retirement funds to buy Bitcoin which he later converted to Tether(USDT) on the fraudulent website. This resulted in a loss of 33 BTC or $2.1 million USD.

“It’s absolutely sickening that this kind of scam had such global reach,” said Grombacher.

According to an FBI report published on Sep. 9, in 2023 the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 69,000 reports of financial fraud involving cryptocurrencies. The bureau discovered that Americans lost $5.6 billion in crypto scams in 2023.