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U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams


The U.S. government today imposed economic sanctions on Funnull Technology Inc., a Philippines-based company that provides computer infrastructure for hundreds of thousands of websites involved in virtual currency investment scams, commonly known as “pig butchering." In January 2025, KrebsOnSecurity detailed…

“Americans lose billions of dollars annually to these cyber scams, with revenues generated from these crimes rising to record levels in 2024,” reads a statement from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which sanctioned Funnull and its 40-year-old Chinese administrator Liu Lizhi. What’s more, funneling their bad traffic so that it appears to be coming out of U.S. cloud Internet providers allows cybercriminals to connect to websites from web addresses that are geographically close(r) to their targets and victims (to sidestep location-based security controls by your bank, for example). My reporting showed how deeply Stark had penetrated U.S. ISPs, and that Ivan Neculiti for many years sold “bulletproof” hosting services that told Russian cybercrime forum customers they would proudly ignore any abuse complaints or police inquiries.

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