Reforms to prevent a growing type of electronic financial fraud profiled by NBC Connecticut Investigates has received an audience at the state legislature.
Elected leaders on both sides of the aisle have been trying to tackle this growing problem.
In February, NBC Connecticut Investigates profiled a pair of cases where people became victims of a newer type of crime, called “pig butchering," where online fraudsters target older investors, or people looking for love, who give the suspects more and more money often in the form of cryptocurrency, and then it all disappears.
Several bills proposed focus on allowing police to seize electronic wallets that are associated with this kind of fraud.
Get top local stories in Connecticut delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC Connecticut's News Headlines newsletter.
Representative Jaime Foster introduced one of them. She told the legislature’s banking committee, “You can identify through blockchain analytics and analytics on the account, that there is likely other victims’ money held in that account. Because what’s happening in these crimes is they’re not just going after one victim, they’re going after multiple victims at a time.”
The bill would also allow police to notify other potential victims if their funds were found in an e-wallet that’s seized, and the state would set up a fund to help make other pig butchering victims whole.
The banking committee has not voted yet on advancing the bill.
