Google Files Lawsuit Against Crypto Scammers for Launching Fraudulent Apps on Google Play
Google has filed a lawsuit against a group accused of defrauding more than 100,000 individuals worldwide by uploading fraudulent investment and crypto exchange apps to Google Play.
The lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, claims that the defendants engaged in multiple misrepresentations to deceive Google and upload their fraudulent apps to Google Play, according to a report from CNBC .
These misrepresentations include falsifying information about their identity, location, and the nature of the applications being uploaded.
Google’s lawsuit includes civil claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, as well as breach of contract claims.
The company asserts that the scammers created and published at least 87 fraudulent apps to deceive users.
“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,” Halimah DeLaine Prado, general counsel at Google, said.
“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.”
The alleged scammers, identified as Yunfeng Sun (also known as Alphonse Sun) and Hongnam Cheung (also known as Zhang Hongnim or Stanford Fischer), are said to have conducted their scheme since at least 2019.
They employed various methods to entice victims into downloading their apps, including text message campaigns, online promotional videos, and affiliate marketing campaigns.
The team at Sophos has discovered a string of apps which all load
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