MANILA (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Department of the Treasury has imposed sanctions on a Philippines-based company that facilitated a major cyber scam, and its administrator.
The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Funnull Technology Inc., which provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams, commonly known as 'pig butchering,' along with its administrator, Liu Lizhi.
Americans lose billions of dollars annually to these cyber scams, with revenues generated from these crimes rising to record levels in 2024. Funnull has directly facilitated several of these schemes, resulting in more than $200 million in U.S. victim-reported losses, the Tresury said in a press release.
These figures likely underestimate the total losses, as many victims of scams do not report the crime.
This action was taken in close coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. To assist the private sector in identifying and taking down websites associated with Funnull, the FBI is also publishing a cybersecurity advisory with more information on its operations, including technical details about the IP addresses and computer infrastructure that it uses.
The Treasury Department urged the public to report online scams and other illegal online activity to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Funnull Technology Inc. enables virtual currency investment scams by purchasing IP addresses in bulk from major cloud services companies worldwide and selling them to cybercriminals to host scam platforms and other malicious web content. Funnull is linked to the majority of virtual currency investment scam websites reported to the FBI, according to the Treasury.
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