Allegedly, several con artists posted fake applications to Google Play, and now Google is suing them. The claims of high profits, which the victims were encouraged to download the applications for, were characterized in the case as "illusory."
When asked about the lawsuit, a Google representative said it was a "unique opportunity" to demonstrate how the company handles wrongdoers.
A group of people accused of being crypto scammers have been sued by Google, who claims the individuals uploaded fake investing apps to the Google Play store.
The Southern District of New York filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung of hundreds of wire fraud crimes, "causing harm to Google and at least approximately 100,000 Google users."
The accused perpetrated "multiple misrepresentations to Google in order to upload their fraudulent apps to Google Play, including but not limited to, misrepresentations about their identity, location, and the type and nature of the application being uploaded," as per the complaint.
The claims of great profits from investing in cryptocurrency and other products were portrayed in the lawsuit as "illusory," and they were the main attraction for victims to download the applications
Recovering investments and supposed earnings would require victims to pay a variety of fees, as stated in the complaint, whenever they tried to take their funds.
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," said Halimah DeLaine Prado, general counsel at Google, in an interview with CNBC. "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."
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