The Economist Magazine Cover For 02/08/2025 Beware Of Online Scams!

The Economist Read in browser February 8th 2025 How we chose this week’s image SUBSCRIBER ONLY Cover Story How we chose this week’s image The Economist Edward Carr Deputy editor We were keen to step back from the headlines this week. Since making landfall on January 20th, Storm Donald has battered the news cycle with hurricane-force bombast and a multi-vortex tornado of executive orders. We covered the tempest once again in this issue, reporting on the turmoil over tariffs and Gaza. But for our cover we chose to focus on people who are as bent on remaining anonymous as the Oval Office Aeolus is determined to be at the eye of it all. I am talking about scammers. Online fraud is a sophisticated industry that steals over $500bn a year from victims all around the world. It employs perhaps 1.5m people. In “Scam Inc”, our eight-part podcast series released this week, we describe the crime, the criminals and the untold suffering they cause. Scamming already rivals the global drugs trade, but it is growing much faster. It is the most significant change in transnational organised crime in decades. Our coverage draws on months of reporting by Sue-Lin Wong, our South-East Asia correspondent, and Sam Colbert, one of our producers. Our thought for the cover was to adapt the artwork for the podcast. Here are a couple of ideas that we used for the podcast. The first episode of “Scam Inc” tells the story of Shan Hanes, the chief executive of a bank in rural Kansas, who was manipulated into investing $47m in crypto, most of it other people’s money. He was in the thrall of a woman called Bella, whom he had met on LinkedIn. A part-time pastor, he also stole from his church. Even after the bank failed and his life had fallen apart, Mr Hanes could not believe that he had been duped. He flew to Australia in the hope that Bella would help get the money back. She never turned up. Unfortunately, neither of these designs capture the enormity of such a crime. Mr Hanes was the victim of what is known as “pig-butchering”. In the original Chinese that is known as 杀猪盘, or sha zhu pan, criminal slang for a technique in which scammers identify a mark, win their confidence over weeks or months, get them to invest and then mercilessly squeeze “every last drop of juice” from them, their family and friends. This design takes that idea literally—so much so that unless you are already familiar with it, you may be baffled. The Economist Here we have combined innovative tech, butchering and the crooks’ raid on people’s savings by depicting a piggy bank and a cyber-hammer. The Chinese criminal syndicates run a digital gig economy. Rather than being hierarchical mafias, they form an underground network that is scalable and hard to stop. One group may specialise in contacting marks, another in coaching them to invest in crypto and a third in laundering their stolen money. All of this takes place online. Once again, though, unless you know that the hammer is supposed to be digital, it is a bit confusing. This gets at the idea of an out-of-reach, upside-down world of lawless syndicates and broken lives. Pig-butchers work from compounds that host production lines of scammers, some of whom are trafficked and held there as forced labour. The compounds contain supermarkets, brothels and gambling dens—as well as torture chambers for workers who cause trouble. They are a cross between a prison camp and a company town. Some of the profits buy protection from politicians and officials. In the Philippines a Chinese national called Alice Guo became the mayor of a small, run-down town, where she built a scamming complex. In 2019-24 over $400m passed through her bank accounts. In Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar cybercrime is a mainstay of the economy. Scam states are likely to become even harder to deal with than narco states. As so often, simplicity won the day. The barbed hook is an allusion to the fact that everyone becomes a potential target of the scammers simply by going about their lives. The scammers manipulate their targets by preying on their emotions, not only by feigning romance, but by exploiting all human frailties: fear, loneliness, greed, grief and boredom. Among the victims we have identified are the relatives of the very FBI investigators whose job is to shut scams down. This is where that design took us. The drawing has more life than a photomontage. A subtitle advertised how much reporting had gone into our work. Unfortunately, just now everything seems to favour the scammers. Advanced malware helps them harvest sensitive data from victims’ devices. Online marketplaces supply them with tools and services, including web domains and AI software. By combining voice-changing and face-changing AI with translation services and torrents of stolen data sold on underground markets, the scammers will be able to target more victims in more places. The Trump tornado is far from blowing itself out. Doubtless, we will feature it on our cover before long. But another storm is raging in the shadows online, and many of us are barely aware of it. Finally, many thanks to all of you who entered a design for our cover competition. It is a festival of creativity. We will send out the shortlist of our seven favourite ideas in a special Cover Story newsletter next week. You will have a chance to vote on your pick; and then I will announce the winners. Cover image • View large image (“Scam Inc”) Backing stories → The vast and sophisticated global enterprise that is Scam Inc (Leader) → Online scams may already be as big a scourge as illegal drugs (Briefing) → Scam Inc: our eight-part podcast series investigating the sinister world of online fraud