Google files lawsuit against two developers over alleged crypto scam apps

Google has filed a lawsuit against two developers in China who allegedly targeted 100,000 users over four years with various apps promoting crypto scams.

First shared by Ars Technica, Google has filed a lawsuit against two app developers over an alleged scheme commonly known as “pig-butchering schemes.”

The alleged scheme involved “at least” 87 fraudulent cryptocurrency and other investment-style apps uploaded to the Google Play Store.

Google’s lawsuit alleges that the scammers lured victims in with “promises of high returns” from the seemingly legitimate apps that showed fake returns on investments.

Despite seeing the high returns on investments, victims of the apps discovered that they could not withdraw their funds.

Ars Technica detailed some of the ways the alleged scams worked, which included people sending text messages to unsuspecting numbers, sparking up a conversation that would end up with them downloading the investment apps.

“Where they would “offer to guide the victim through the investment process, often reassuring the victim of any doubts they had about the apps,” they said.

According to the lawsuit, about 100,000 users were victimized, with about 8,700 of those users being from the United States.

Back in March, a Canadian man said he lost $12,000 after a deepfake AI post of Justin Trudeau got him to invest in a similar crypto investment app.