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arXiv · 2510.23927

Victim as a Service: Designing a System for Engaging with Interactive Scammers

Daniel Spokoyny·Nikolai Vogler·Xin Gao·Tianyi Zheng·Yufei Weng·Jonghyun Park·Jiajun Jiao·Geoffrey M. Voelker·Stefan Savage·Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick
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Abstract

Pig butchering, and similar interactive online scams, lower their victims' defenses by building trust over extended periods of conversation - sometimes weeks or months. They have become increasingly public losses (at least $75B by one recent study). However, because of their long-term conversational nature, they are extremely challenging to investigate at scale. In this paper, we describe the motivation, design, implementation, and experience with CHATTERBOX, an LLM-based system that automates long-term engagement with online scammers, making large-scale investigations of their tactics possible. We describe the techniques we have developed to attract scam attempts, the system and LLM-engineering required to convincingly engage with scammers, and the necessary capabilities required to satisfy or evade "milestones" in scammers' workflow.

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Daniel Spokoyny, Nikolai Vogler, Xin Gao, Tianyi Zheng, Yufei Weng, Jonghyun Park, Jiajun Jiao, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage, Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick. 2025-10-27. Victim as a Service: Designing a System for Engaging with Interactive Scammers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.23927

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