US Sanctions Funnull Technology for Facilitating ‘Pig Butchering’ Scams

• Philippines-based Funnull Technology facilitated virtual currency investment scams.
• It stands at the center of a sophisticated infrastructure supporting thousands of cryptocurrency scam websites.
• U.S. authorities sanctioned the company along with its administrator, Liu Lizhi.

Funnull Technology Inc., a Philippines-based cloud service provider, was sanctioned for its key role in enabling large-scale virtual currency investment scams, commonly referred to as “pig butchering.” 

According to official statements, Funnull and its Chinese administrator, Liu Lizhi, have been designated under Executive Order 13694 for materially supporting cyber-enabled activities that threaten U.S. national and economic security.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) reports that Funnull’s services have directly facilitated scams resulting in over $200 million in losses to US victims, with average individual losses surpassing $150,000. 

Notably, these figures may underestimate the actual impact since cybercrime remains chronically underreported.

Funnull’s operations are notable for their technical agility. The company acquires bulk IP addresses from leading cloud providers and employs domain generation algorithms (DGAs) to quickly spin up new scam domains. 

According to security research cited by KrebsOnSecurity, Funnull has utilized U.S.-based servers and cloud assets to route malicious traffic, enabling scam operations to appear locally hosted, thereby evading many traditional geo-based security controls.

Furthermore, Funnull’s infrastructure laundering techniques have been connected with other illicit activities such as phishing attacks and online gambling operations linked to international criminal syndicates. Industry observers point out challenges faced by major cloud providers like AWS in fully expunging such malicious actors from their networks.

The OFAC sanctions freeze any U.S.-based assets associated with Funnull or Liu Lizhi and effectively bar U.S. individuals and entities from conducting business with them.