The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned Funnull Technology, a Philippines-based company accused of facilitating massive online scams that have defrauded Americans of over $200 million.
The company is linked to cybercriminal operations using romance baiting and pig butchering scams.
According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Funnull supported criminals by bulk-purchasing IP addresses from cloud providers and reselling them to scammers who used them to host malicious websites. These sites were central to fake investment schemes that targeted victims through dating apps, social media, and messaging platforms, tricking them into transferring money to fraudulent accounts.
Funnull allegedly helped these operations avoid detection by using domain generation algorithms (DGAs) and providing web templates that mimicked trusted brands. It also enabled rapid IP and domain switching to evade takedown attempts. OFAC noted that Funnull is behind the majority of virtual currency scam websites reported to the FBI, with some victims losing over $150,000 each.
In addition to the company, OFAC sanctioned Liu Lizhi, a Chinese national and the alleged administrator of Funnull, who managed staff and oversaw day-to-day scam operations. All U.S.-based assets tied to Funnull and Lizhi have been frozen, and American citizens or entities are now barred from conducting any transactions with them.
The FBI also released a flash alert detailing Funnull’s infrastructure, revealing that over 332,000 domains were linked to 548 unique CNAME records, with coordinated IP migrations designed to sustain scam campaigns over time.
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The crackdown comes as the FBI reports record cybercrime losses, with $16.6 billion stolen in 2024 alone, including over $6.5 billion lost to investment scams, marking a 33% surge from the previous year.
