MHC professors have recently become targets of so-called "pig butchering scams", named using an analogy that compares the initial elongated trust-building phase of the scam to the practice of fattening pigs up prior to slaughtering them.
Similar scams have been reported by professors on r/Professors, by authors in the literary world and by the FDIC to warn consumers. John Oliver provides a humorous explanation of this kind of scam in an episode of Last Week Tonight from 2024.
At MHC, we've experienced a variation on this kind of scam before, where professors are targeted by scammers pretending to be looking for a tutor for their children.
How this new version of the scam works against professors
The scam starts when someone unexpectedly reaches out to a professor and shows particular interest in their research. The scammer may appear to be familiar with the professor's research area or publications and want to learn from the professor's expertise in the field. They may ask a question about the professor's research area to encourage the professor to respond.
The goal is to flatter the professor and prey upon the professor's desire for recognition in order to build a false sense of rapport and trust.
The scammer may spend a long period of time building a foundation of trust before shifting the conversation.
After gaining the professor's confidence, the scammer may introduce opportunities to elevate the professor's profile via a fake conference, invited talk, journal submission, or other professional opportunity. These would be fake opportunities, but require the professor to pay a fee for conference registration or something similar.
Ultimately, like many other scams, the scammers are seeking to leverage that trust to steal money from their targets and disappear.
Sometimes there can be a second phase of the scam after the targeted professor has lost money where the scammers return pretending to be a lawyer or someone else who can help the professor get their money back, for a fee of course. And the scam continues.
Examples of emails initiating the scam
Example 1:
Hello [professor]
My name is Amy, I am originally from Monaco and currently based in Newport Beach California, I work in private collection curation, over the years I have come to realize that many behaviors within organizations naturally emerge and become stable patterns, while art is more about empathy, yet very few people are able to truly connect with the creator, and in my work, I create a specific environment where all artworks can be placed and express what the creator originally intended
I saw that your work explores anthropology and how knowledge is formed within historical and scientific frameworks, and it made me realize that our understanding of the world may not come directly from reality itself, but from the structures and methods through which it is studied
In my work, I have also started to notice that how a piece is understood depends greatly on the context in which it is placed
I want to ask you a question
In your research, is knowledge in anthropology closer to a discovery of reality, or is it continuously constructed through specific historical and methodological frameworks?
If you have time, I would really value hearing your perspective
Amy
Example 2:
Dear [Professor],
My name is Lillian G. Briger. I work with private families on long-term educational strategy, where many decisions depend not only on the information available, but on the context in which it is interpreted.
In reading about your work on steroid hormone regulation in development, I was particularly struck by the idea that the same hormonal signal can lead to very different outcomes depending on timing, tissue, and developmental stage.
In my own work, I often see a parallel in a very different setting, where the same piece of guidance or information can lead to entirely different decisions, depending on when it is encountered and how the surrounding context has been shaped.
I find myself wondering, in the systems you study, what most determines this shift in response, is it primarily the internal state of the system at a given moment, or the sequence of prior signals that have already shaped its sensitivity?
Warm regards,
Lillian G. Briger
How to protect yourself
If you receive a message like the one above, do not respond.
Report the message as phishing in your MHC inbox to have our anti-phishing software take a closer look at it.
