May 29 (UPI) — The U.S. Treasury Department Thursday sanctioned a Philippines-based computer infrastructure company and its administrator for allegedly providing services for sites involved in cryptocurrency scams.

Treasury said Funnull Technology and administrator Liu Lizhi provides infrastructure for hundreds of thousands websites allegedly involved in the scams known as “pig butchering.”

“Today’s action underscores our focus on disrupting the criminal enterprises, like Funnull, that enable these cyber scams and deprive Americans of their hard-earned savings,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender said in a statement.

The sanctions were imposed in close cooperation with the FBI.

The Treasury described the “pig butchering” scams as Southeast Asian organized crime using victims of labor trafficking to scam millions of unsuspecting people worldwide.

“The scammers leverage fictitious identities, the guise of potential relationships, and elaborate storylines to deceive victims into believing they are in trusted relationships. The scammers then steal victims’ assets by convincing them to invest in virtual currency through a fake website designed to look like a legitimate investment platform that reflects significant, but fabricated, returns on the investment,” the Treasury said.

When victims stop paying more into the scam, the Treasury said the scammer “will abruptly cease communication, taking the victim’s entire investment with them.”

Funnull’s role, according to the Treasury, is to buy IP addresses in bulk from major cloud services companies and then sell them to cybercriminals to host the scam web platforms.

Treasury said Funnell is linked to the majority of virtual currency investment scam websites reported to the FBI.

U.S. victims, Treasury said, have lost over $200 million with an average loss per person of $150,000.

The Treasury alleged that in 2024 Funnell bought a repository of code used by web developers and “maliciously altered the code to redirect visitors of legitimate websites to scam websites and online gambling sites, some of which are linked to Chinese criminal money laundering operations.”

According to Treasury the Lizhi, a Chinese national, is an administrator of Funnell involved in tasks allegedly including “assigning domain names to cybercriminals, including domains associated with virtual currency investment fraud, phishing scams, and online gambling sites.”