Dr. Maureen Wilson startled awake as her pager demanded she report for on call duty. “psych consult, emergency department, suicide attempt. She groaned. Those were always confrontational, because they generally required a 72hr psych evaluation hold, which patients inevitably fought. She’d just worked a double shift. I really don’t need this, she said to herself as she ran a brush through her hair quickly, then sprinted out the door to the emergency room.

“He’s in bed 4,” nurse Hillary Blankenship said as Maureen approached the desk. “He left a suicide note.”

Maureen reached out and took it.

“Seems he forgot he had a carbon monoxide alarm.”

Maureen took the note and sat down near Nurse Hillary’s desk to read it.

“Since you’re reading this, I guess I’m dead. There are 2 things I wanted to tell you. The first is I’m so sorry. This is not the legacy I wanted to leave you. The second thing is that I love you so much, and I always will.

I just learned this morning I’ve lost everything. I had $250000 stolen–my entire life’s savings–and I found out the woman I’d fallen in love with online for the past 4 months had done it. All I have to live on now is my social security. It’s not enough. I’d have to sell my home. I have no idea where I’d go. I’m sure after all this you’d feel I’m no longer capable of living on my own. Maybe you’re right. I just can’t do this any more. I lost your mother 2 years ago, now I’ve lost the second love of my life and everything I’d saved besides. I just can’t continue. Like I said, I love you, and I’m so sorry.”

Maureen rose shakily from the desk, trembling and fighting back tears, as she started toward the patient’s cubicle.

“Dr. Wilson?”

“Yes?”

“Are you all right?”

Maureen couldn’t hide the tears any longer.

“Nurse Hillary, that patient is my father.”

“Let me get someone else to take this call, Dr. Wilson.”

Maureen shook her head.

“We will do that in the morning, of course. To do otherwise would be unethical. Right now, I just need to go in and talk with him. It appears he got involved in a scam of some sort. He was in love with someone. They ended up taking everything he had and breaking his heart besides.””.

O, Dr. Wilson, I am so very sorry! It’s called a “pig butchering” scam–you know, because of the time it takes to fatten up a pig before it becomes bacon. Not a very nice name, but there you have it. It’s a pretty easy scam to fall for, especially if you’re lonely.”

“How do you know all this?”

“My mom was a victim too. Only afterwords did I find out what happened. She responded to someone on a dating app. The relationship progressed very quickly. He asked her to meet on a private app where their conversations could be encrypted. Then he offered to teach her how to invest in crypto. She said she had a dashboard, where she could watch her investments grow. Then she said she needed some money. They told her she’d have to wait a day. When she went back to her dashboard, it had simply vanished, as did the guy she was romancing.”

“I’m so sorry, Hillary.”

“I did some research on this whole pig butchering scam thing. The perpetrator asking to go to an app where they can keep their conversations private is very common, since if they’re caught having them on a legitimate dating app, they’d be banned. The relationship also tends to progress quite rapidly. Another hallmark of this scam is that the person is usually in some remote place where meetings can’t take place at all, or, at best, perhaps only very brief ones. The pictures they send are always of very nice looking people. But when you put those images into Google’s “search image” field, it usually reports another name for that person or that this is an image that’s associated with a scam. Truthfully, a lot of the criminals doing this are actually the same sex as the victim, but practice has made them very good at playing the role of a person of the opposite sex. There are actually centers throughout the world that are devoted to exclusively this kind of scam. Many of the scammers working in these centers have been lured there on false pretenses, kidnapped, or trafficked, so many of them are crime victims also. The folks who run these centers make millions. It truly is organized crime in every sense of the word.”

“Seems like some of the tactics these folks use, like hurrying the relationship and asking the victims to leave a safe app in order to isolate them are very similar to those used by cults and those who commit domestic violence.”

Hillery’s brows wrinkled. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, Dr. Wilson–leave it to you–but yes, now that you mention it, they are rather similar, aren’t they?”

Maureen nodded. “I gotta go.”

“You go in there and talk with your dad. He needs you. And I’m here if you need me.”