US Treasury Cracks Down on Company Linked to Crypto Scams

So, here's something wild. The U.S. Treasury is cracking down on a company over in the Philippines called Funnull Technology Inc. Why? Because they're saying this company is helping out with a bunch of those nasty 'pig butchering' scams. You know, the ones where people get tricked into putting their money into fake crypto stuff. It's a huge problem, like a billion-dollar mess, run by organized crime and even involving human trafficking. Crazy, right?

The Treasury folks put out a statement saying they're taking action because Funnull was apparently buying up tons of internet addresses and then selling them to cybercriminals. They even sanctioned a guy named Liu Lizhi, who they say is an administrator for Funnull. Idk, I tried to find contact info for him, but no luck. Reuters tried reaching out to Funnull too, but didn't hear back. They couldn't even find the company in the Philippines' corporate registry. Sketchy.

These scams are getting pretty sophisticated. They use fake websites to rip people off. Earlier this year, some cybersecurity researchers from Silent Push found that Funnull was tied to a whole bunch of these scam websites, plus thousands of others that looked like they were for gambling or money laundering. Pig butchering scams started in China, but now they're hitting people all over the world. Chainalysis, a company that looks at what's happening with crypto, said that the money these scams are making is at an all-time high. They think it's partly because scammers are using AI to write better messages and talk to more people at once. It's getting harder to spot, tbh. So, gotta be extra careful out there, ok?