Tech giant Google has reportedly filed a lawsuit against crypto scammers for defrauding over a hundred thousand people through fake crypto apps on the Play Store.
The company said that this is the first time it is taking action against crypto scammers, which was necessitated to set a legal precedent to establish protections for users.
In the lawsuit, Google noted that the defendants made numerous false statements to the company, to upload their deceitful apps on the Play Store, including misrepresentations about their identity, location, and the characteristics of the application.
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Google is therefore bringing civil claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law as well as breach of contract claims against the group of scammers, who the company said created and published at least 87 fraudulent apps to dupe users.
Speaking on the case, general counsel at Google Halimah DeLaine Prado said,
“This is a unique opportunity for us to use our resources to actually combat bad actors who were running an extensive crypto scheme to defraud some of our users. In 2023 alone we saw over a billion dollars within the U.S. of cryptocurrency fraud and scams and this lawsuit allows us to not only use our resources to protect users but to also serve as sort of a precedent to future bad actors that we don’t tolerate this behavior”.
In an effort to convince users that the apps were trustworthy, the defendants would allow users to initially withdraw small amounts of money, according to the suit. Others were allegedly told they needed to pay a fee or have a minimum balance to withdraw their money, ploys that Google said “bilked some victims out of even more money.”
“We have teams that work around the clock to detect fraud and spam and abuse and when we find a unique instance in which we can actually go a step further, we’ll engage in affirmative litigation filing a lawsuit to actually create legal protections for our users in a more constructive way”, DeLaine Prado said.
Google claims it suffered damages of over $75,000 by incurring expenses to investigate the breach and on safety and integrity resources.
It is worth noting that in recent times, Crypto scam apps have been able to bypass iOS and Android security. Upon further investigation, researchers found fake cryptocurrency investment apps in the official Google Play and Apple App stores. These apps have seemingly benign descriptions in the app stores.
To get past the Apple App Store review process, the app developers submit the app for approval using legitimate, run-of-the-mill web content. Then, once the app has been approved and published, they modify the server hosting the app with code for the fraudulent interface.
Crypto traders have been advised to do their due diligence before downloading any app, by researching to see any whitepaper they can read, as well look out for genuine reviews and testimonials.
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