Internet giant Google has reportedly been hit with a lawsuit surrounding $5M in crypto theft, said to have been lost via a supposedly ‘malicious’ wallet app obtained from their Play Store. The claimant, Maria Vaca, asserts that after downloading the app, presumed to be legitimate, the app became ‘malicious’ and disappeared with her $5 million worth of cryptocurrency. The specific digital assets involved and the identity of the wallet app have not been disclosed at this point.
Vaca has elected to seek legal recourse through a California state court, challenging Google for the inclusion of detrimental apps on its Play Store. Andrew Dressel, a policy observer and litigation specialist in the cryptocurrency field, stated that the lawsuit’s outcome hinges on whether Google was conscious of the deceptive wallet app’s presence in its store.
Vaca’s legal counsel, Chris Vernon of Vernon Litigation Group, indicated that the incident forms part of a more considerable trend of crypto theft. Crypto scams have been identified in numerous apps throughout the Google Play Store. As recently as April 2024, Google took legal action against several ‘fraudulent’ crypto apps and exchanges, claiming they had duped over 100k people worldwide.
In April, Google stated that numerous fraudulent claims had enabled these apps to be uploaded to the Play Store, spanning from falsified information about their identities and location to the misrepresentation of their app’s nature. This demonstrates that Vaca’s experience is not unique; Google has been contending with such issues for some time. Yet, whether or not Google will accept liability and compensate the victim is still unknown.