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The US Treasury has sanctioned Funnull Technology, the Philippines-based computer firm behind hundreds of thousands of crypto scamming websites responsible for over $200 million in US victim losses.  The sanctions, made possible with help from the FBI, also target the company’s administrator Liu Lizhi and two crypto addresses, one ether (ETH) and one tron (TRX), associated with Funnull Technology. The US claims Funnull Technology facilitates thousands of crypto-related scams, such as pig butchering, by buying IP addresses in bulk from cloud hosting businesses and selling them on to cybercriminals.  These domain names are intentionally similar to each other and “make it easier for cybercriminals to impersonate trusted brands when creating scam websites.”  Interpol target ‘Madam Ngo’ arrested over $300M crypto scam Read more: Thailand cuts power to Myanmar crypto scam center regions The US Treasury claims that cybercriminals can then “quickly change t...

The TORN price surged over 418% in the last 24 hours after a federal court ruled yesterday that US sanctions against Tornado Cash must be abandoned.  TORN managed to break above $40 after the ruling, but has since pared gains to trade at $15.56 as of 2:39 a.m. EST, still up 337% from a day earlier. Along with the surge in price, the altcoin’s trading volumes also underwent a parabolic increase of 15,683%. Tornado Cash Contracts Can’t Be Considered Property, Says Federal Court Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the ‘property’ of a foreign national or entity,” according to the Nov. 26 ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.  The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) therefore “overstepped its congressionally defined authority” when it blocked access to the smart contracts under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, t...

Judge Robert Pitman of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas has denied the requests for summary judgment from six individuals, including two Coinbase employees, alleging that the Treasury exceeded its authority in attempting to prevent financial transactions that benefit foreign terrorists. advertisement The plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit, supported by Coinbase, claimed that the actions of the department affected innocent Americans who were using the private service for legal purposes. However, the judge chose to agree with the US Treasury’s decisions. Tornado Cash Vs US Treasury One year ago, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) accused crypto mixer Tornado Cash of being involved in laundering over $7 billion worth of cryptocurrencies since its establishment in 2019. In response, the agency imposed sanctions on cryptocurrency wallets connected to Tornado Cash, as well as on related codes referred to as s...