Untangling Prince Charming: The Role of Scambaiters in the Performance of Romance Fraud and Pig-Butchering Scams

Cara Smart

Romance fraud is a sophisticated crime of increasing concern, yet remains under-represented in research, official reporting, and prevention efforts. ‘Pig-butchering’ is a hybrid romance fraud variant involving investment scams, often perpetrated by corporation-style organisations who exploit captives of human trafficking rings. Existing studies are derived primarily from victim reports, with a distinct lack of scholarly research focusing on perpetrators and active intervention methods. Thus, this thesis examines romance fraud and ‘pig-butchering’ through interactions with ‘scambaiters’: those with awareness of the attempt and intentionally engage with fraudsters (Sorell, 2019). The research involves an analysis of 72 text-based conversations between fraudsters and scambaiters sourced from the r/scambait subreddit. The profiles and social engineering tactics present within these conversations are examined using mixed methods content analysis, involving both chi-square tests and qualitative discourse analysis. The findings are interpreted through the lens of role theory (Biddle, 1979; Goffman, 1959) to structure an analysis of the interactional performances of both fraudsters and scambaiters. This research conceptualises fraudsters as engaging with a form of performative role-play to manage impressions of credibility, leading the target down a pre-scripted path. The results indicate fraudsters choose pre-constructed, functional roles and social engineering tactics to manipulate conventional human expectations and social norms. Although these fraudsters appear sophisticated on the surface, the performances are rigid, scripted, and rely on target conformity to maintain directive control. These performances are disrupted by scambaiters adopting counter-roles and reverse engineering tactics, violating expectations and renegotiating the conversation for entertainment. This thesis ultimately argues fraudster scripts are susceptible to disruption, and they will disengage when they lose directive control over the conversation. As such, the results expand the existing understanding of social engineering, perpetrator behaviour, and reframes scambaiting tactics as a crime intervention tool.

Untangling Prince Charming: The Role of Scambaiters in the Performance of Romance Fraud and Pig-Butchering Scams

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