A retired man in Florence, Alabama, lost more than $222,000 in a crypto romance scam. Federal court documents filed this week say he was manipulated by someone posing as a young woman into transferring his savings into fraudulent cryptocurrency wallets.
The US government has filed a civil forfeiture complaint to permanently seize the funds. WAFF reported on June 26 that investigators traced the funds through several wallets and exchanges before seizing them under a federal warrant.
How the scam worked
Court papers described a classic “pig slaughter” scheme. In this scam, scammers gradually build victims’ trust over weeks or months and then direct them to fake investment platforms.
The federal complaint states that the victim was connected to a person calling himself “Bella” who claimed to be a 23-year-old woman who offered to help him invest in cryptocurrencies. The conversations moved to the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where they turned romantic.
Bella then provided step-by-step instructions on how to transfer funds from the victim’s bank account in Alabama to a Coinbase account. The funds were then transferred to cryptocurrency wallets controlled by the scammers. Federal prosecutors say more than $222,000 worth of the stablecoin USDT was laundered through a series of wallets and exchanges before it was seized by law enforcement, according to a WTVA report of court documents.
Now the government wants a federal judge to order the forfeiture of money seized as proceeds from online fraud.
Hog slaughter drained $5.5 billion in 2024
In February 2025, on-chain security firm Cyvers reported that cryptocurrency investors lost $5.5 billion to pig slaughter scams in 2024. This rose to 200,000 cases identified on the Ethereum network alone, according to a previous Cryptopolitan report. Coverage. Data from Chainalysis over the same period found that pig slaughter represented 33.2% of all cryptocurrency scam revenue by subcategory. Deposits in these schemes rose by about 210% year-on-year.
Michael Pearl, vice president of GMT strategy at Cyvers, called the pig slaughter “the biggest threat ever” to cryptocurrency investors. He ranked it higher than outright hacks, which stole $2.3 billion in assets across 165 incidents in 2024.
Cyphers found that from the data, 75% of pig slaughter victims lost more than half their net worth. The grooming period lasted 1 to 2 weeks in 35% of cases. But some scams extended over three months. Men between the ages of 30 and 49 were the most targeted group, according to company data.
Cyphers found that 75% of pig slaughter victims across the data lost more than half their net worth. The grooming period was 1-2 weeks in 35% of cases. But some scams take up to three months. The company’s data showed that men between the ages of 30 and 49 were the most targeted group.
“The rate at which bad actors are using elaborate pig-slaughter scams to defraud innocent people is despicable,” said Special Agent Stacy Moy of the FBI’s San Diego field office. He said In a statement linked to a separate 2024 forfeiture case in the District of Columbia.
Federal prosecutors have not identified any suspects in the Florence case. It is not known whether any of the recovered funds will be returned to the victim. The seizure is carried out against the cryptocurrency itself, which is a normal step in fraud cases when the perpetrators are located abroad.
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