Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has taken legal action against two individuals in China for utilizing the company’s platform to promote fraudulent cryptocurrency apps that accumulated over 100,000 downloads.
Alphabet asserts that scammers exploited Google Play and YouTube to upload and advertise deceptive crypto apps.
The internet giant alleges that the defendants engaged in a series of illegal activities, including wire fraud, constituting a pattern of racketeering. The lawsuit was filed on April 4 in a federal court in New York, as reported by Bloomberg on the same day.
These scam apps were designed to mimic legitimate digital asset investments, deceiving users into depositing funds that they could never withdraw.
Despite Google’s continuous efforts to remove fraudulent apps, many of them have managed to evade the company’s fraud detection systems. The two scammers began uploading these racketeering apps in 2019.
Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, emphasized the significance of this lawsuit as a means of protecting the platform’s users.
In related news, phishing scams in the crypto industry experienced a significant surge in March. According to Scam Sniffer’s post on April 2, approximately $71 million was lost to phishing scammers across various chains, with 77,529 victims falling prey to these scams. This marks a 50% increase compared to the previous month.
The first quarter of 2024 saw a total loss of $173 million in digital assets due to phishing scams, with 90% of the stolen assets consisting of ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum network.
Phishing scams involve social engineering tactics, where attackers manipulate victims into sharing sensitive information or installing malicious software.
The crypto industry has been grappling with an increasing number of hacks and exploits, particularly within decentralized finance applications. In 2023 alone, a staggering $1.8 billion was lost to crypto hacks and scammers. The report by Immunefi on December 28 revealed that 17% of these losses were attributed to the North Korean Lazarus Group.
Despite the growing regulatory scrutiny, Crypto.com continues to expand its presence in South Korea.