The US Treasury has approved Funnull Technology Inc., a high-tech company based in the Philippines. It provides computer infrastructure to “hundreds of thousands of websites” involved in pig slaughter fraud, according to a Thursday press release from the Ministry of Finance’s Office of Foreign Asset Management (OFAC).
OFAC has also approved Liu Lizhi, a Chinese national who works as administrator for Funnull Technology. According to a press release, Funnull Technology directly promotes more than $200 million losses from those victims of US fraud victims, with an average loss per individual of more than $150,000.
“Today’s actions focus on disrupting criminal enterprises like Funnull that enable these cyber fraud and allow Americans to steal their hard-earned savings,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Foulkender in a press release. “The US is strongly committed to ensuring the continued growth of its legal, safe and secure digital asset ecosystem, including the use of cryptocurrencies and similar technologies.”
The pig slaughter scheme is a kind of crypto investment scam in which victims are groomed for a long period of time, where pigs are fattened before the massacre and are forced to give a large amount of money to fraudulent crypto investments. Scams are often not always romantic in nature, but often start with unsolicited texts. Most of the fraud is organized by criminal organizations in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia uses slave victims (who are kept in a terrible state in nature) to carry out fraud.
Last year OFAC approved Ly Yong Phat, a wealthy Cambodian businessman, along with some of his businesses and hotels.
Read more: US Treasury Sanctions Cambodia’s Big Boy and Pig Slaughter Fraud
According to OFAC, Funnull Technology is used to provide cybercriminals with IP addresses purchased in bulk from cloud service providers around the world and to host fraudulent platforms and other malicious web content. These websites and domain names are created to mimic trustworthy websites and tramples on victims to believe their investment is justified.
Liu “is allegedly owned a spreadsheet and other documents containing information about Funnull employees, their performance and task progress,” the Ofac press release states. “These tasks included assigning domain names to cybercriminals, including crypto investment scams, phishing scams and domains related to online gambling sites.”
By placing Funnull Technology and Liu in a specially designated Nationals List (SDN), OFAC prohibits all American people, including citizens abroad and residents of the United States, from doing business with them in any way.
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