How This Calculator Works
This calculator adds up the time you gave to a crypto investment scam, often called a pig butchering scam, and shows what that time was worth. It uses your own estimates of how much time you spent each week, multiplies them by how long the scam lasted, and then applies the hourly value you choose. It also shows how the fake balance, the withdrawal fees, and the promised returns worked together to keep you hooked. Every result is an estimate, meant to show the true scale of what the criminals took from you, and rough guesses work fine.
How Long the Scam Lasted
The calculator starts with how long the scam lasted, in years and months, from your first conversation with the person who brought you in until today or until you stopped. It turns that into weeks using the average month, which is about 4.35 weeks. For example, a scam that lasted 8 months covers about 35 weeks.
The Five Kinds of Time
The calculator asks about five kinds of time: talking with the person who brought you in, checking the platform, learning crypto and setting up accounts, moving money, and thinking, planning, and worrying. For talking, checking the platform, and thinking, you estimate a typical weekday and a typical weekend day. The calculator counts the weekday five times and the weekend day twice to build a typical week. For learning crypto and moving money, such as bank trips, wire transfers, and crypto ATM visits, you estimate a typical week directly, because those tasks rarely happen every day.
For example, 2 hours of chatting on a typical weekday and 3 hours on a typical weekend day add up to 16 hours a week. Over 35 weeks, that comes to about 557 hours of chatting alone.
How Real It Felt
After all the time questions, the calculator asks one final question: overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, how real did the investment and the platform feel to you? This rating does not change the hours or the dollar value. The results show it beside your hours, because these platforms are built to look exactly like real trading sites, with live charts, account numbers, customer service, and a balance that grows.
Putting the Hours in Perspective
The results turn your total hours into measures that are easier to picture. The calculator divides your total by 40 to show how many full-time work weeks it equals, and by 24 to show how many full days, around the clock, it equals. It also compares your weekly hours with a full-time job.
The Balance That Never Existed
You enter the total you deposited and the highest balance the platform ever showed you, and both answers are optional. The calculator subtracts your deposits from that balance to show the “profits” that never existed. For example, if you deposited $85,000 and the platform showed a balance of $410,000, the screen showed you $325,000 in profits that were only numbers the criminals typed in. Your deposits were real money, and the criminals took it the moment you sent it.
The Withdrawal Trap
When victims try to withdraw, these platforms often demand a payment first, called a tax, an unlock fee, a security deposit, or something similar. You list each payment in the order you made it, and the calculator adds them up and shows them in order, so you see how each payment led to another. For example, payments of $20,500, $9,000, and $15,000 total $44,500. Real exchanges and brokers never ask you to pay a fee before you withdraw, because they take any fees out of the balance itself.
The calculator then adds your deposits and your withdrawal payments together to show the total money sent to the criminals. In the example above, that comes to $129,500. The results also warn you about recovery scams, because criminals often contact crypto scam victims with offers to get the money back for an up-front fee.
The Return That Was Never Possible
If the platform promised or showed you a steady return, you enter the percent and whether it was per day, week, month, or year. The calculator compounds that rate over one year, the way the platform claimed your money would grow, and compares it with the stock market’s long-term average of about 10% a year since 1957, as reported by Fidelity Investments. For example, a promised 1% a day grows $1,000 to about $37,783 in one year, while the market’s long-term average grows it to about $1,100. No real investment pays the steady, guaranteed gains these platforms show.
The Value of Your Time
Fraud is not only about stolen money. The law defines fraud as using lies to take anything of value from another person, and your time has value. The calculator multiplies your total hours by the hourly value you choose, which starts at $15 and changes to any amount you enter. For example, 2,000 hours at $15 an hour comes to $30,000. This figure does not measure a mistake you made, because it measures what the criminals took from you.
Your Answers and Our Research
The calculator never asks for your name, email, or anything that identifies you. When you see your results, your answers are saved anonymously for SCARS Institute research, so we can better understand how these crimes affect victims. If you change your answers and see your results again, the calculator updates the same anonymous record instead of adding a new one.
What These Numbers Don’t Include
These figures are conservative because many real costs are not counted. They leave out the hours you spend recovering after the scam ends, such as reporting the crime to police and banks, attending counseling, and lying awake at night. They also leave out the taxes, penalties, and interest on the money you lost, which the SCARS Institute True Scam Cost Calculator covers, and the time family members and friends spend supporting you.
Your time was part of your life, and no calculator can fully measure what those hours meant to you. These numbers only begin to show how much the criminals truly took.
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