California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation

Ypsilanti man loses $500,000 to pig-butchering scam via LinkedIn and cryptocurrency platforms Canton man loses $680,000 to pig-butchering scam through romantic messaging apps and fake crypto platform Penzo

An Ypsilanti man, identified in court documents as D.C., lost nearly $500,000 after falling victim to a pig-butchering scam involving cryptocurrency. The scam began with a message on LinkedIn from a woman named Anna, who convinced him to invest in a cryptocurrency trading opportunity. He followed her instructions to open accounts with Coinbase and Crypto.com and later transferred funds to a fake platform. A separate case involved a Canton man, identified as P.N., who was contacted by a woman named Susan and lured into a similar scam through a romantic relationship built on messaging apps. P.N. invested over $680,000, believing he was earning profits on a cryptocurrency platform called Penzo, until he lost everything. The U.S. government seized a cryptocurrency account linked to the scam and is seeking to forfeit nearly $163 million in multiple cryptocurrencies, alleging it is part of a money laundering operation.