Police Crack Down on Crypto ‘Pig Butchering’ Network After R$37 Million Loss
The operation is targeting the group's financial web by ordering preventive arrests, freezing more than 50 bank accounts and tracing large fiat‑to‑crypto flows to try to return money to victims.
Overview
- The Polícia Civil of Rio Grande do Sul launched Operação Criptoabate to investigate an organized fraud network that used a fake investment platform and trust‑building techniques known as 'pig butchering'.
- Investigators say a 70‑year‑old woman lost R$37 million after transferring her savings over six months into a platform that showed fictitious balances and then blocked withdrawals.
- Judicial authorities issued 10 preventive arrests, police executed roughly 90 court orders across multiple states, and three suspects have been detained with seven still at large.
- More than 50 bank accounts linked to the scheme were frozen as police identified about 140 possible victims and flagged unusually large transactions that included single‑day movements of hundreds of millions of reais.
- Authorities are focusing on how suspects converted victim funds into cryptocurrency and used intermediary institutions to hide proceeds, a tactic that investigators say must be traced to enable restitution and dismantle the network.