Google sued purported cryptocurrency scammers, alleging that they had submitted phoney investing apps to Google Play.
According to the lawsuit, which was submitted on Thursday to the Southern District of New York, Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung perpetrated hundreds of wire fraud crimes, “causing harm to Google and at least approximately 100,000 Google users.”
The accused made “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,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit characterised the victims’ expectations of big returns from investing in cryptocurrency and other products as “illusory,” which served as a lure for them to download the apps. As per the lawsuit, victims who tried to withdraw their balances would have to pay several fees in order to get their investments and alleged gains back.
Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado told CNBC that “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.” “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 behaviour.”