US Treasury Cracks Down on 'Pig Butchering' Scam Enablers

So, the U.S. Treasury just dropped the hammer on this company in the Philippines called Funnull Technology. Apparently, these guys were hooked up with all those nasty 'pig butchering' scams, you know, the fake crypto investment stuff.

The Treasury folks put out a statement saying Funnull was basically a middleman. They were buying tons of internet addresses in bulk and then selling them off to cybercriminals. Pretty sketchy, right? They also sanctioned this guy named Liu Lizhi, who they say is like, running things at Funnull. He's from China, and they figure he's about 40 and has ties to places in Shanghai and Ganzhou.

We tried to get in touch with Liu and Funnull, but no luck so far. We even looked for Funnull in the Philippines' company records, but couldn't find them. It's weird, isn't it?

These crypto investment scams, the ones that trick people into putting money into fake schemes, have turned into a massive, billion-dollar problem. It's not just a few bad apples; it's organized crime, and get this, it's even connected to human trafficking. These scams often use fake websites to rip people off. Earlier this year, some cybersecurity researchers found that Funnull was linked to a whole bunch of those fake sites, plus thousands of others that looked like they were for gambling or laundering money.

Pig butchering scams actually started in China, but now they're targeting people everywhere. One company that tracks this stuff said these scams made a crazy amount of money recently, maybe even a new record. They think AI might be helping the scammers too, making their pitches sound better and letting them talk to way more people at once. It's getting harder and harder to spot them, idk. Have you ever gotten a weird message about crypto?