OFAC Sanctions Filipino Company for Profiting Off Virtual Currency Scams
The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned Philippines-based Funnull Technology Inc. and its administrator, Liu Lizhi, for providing computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams. OFAC said Americans lose billions of dollars annually in these scams, which are known as "pig butchering."
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The agency said Funnull has "directly facilitated several of these schemes, resulting in over $200 million in U.S. victim-reported losses," by buying IP addresses in bulk from major cloud services companies and selling them to cybercriminals to host scam platforms. "These services not only make it easier for cybercriminals to impersonate trusted brands when creating scam websites, but also allow them to quickly change to different domain names and IP addresses when legitimate providers attempt to take the websites down."