Google is facing a $5 million lawsuit from a Floridian woman, Maria Vaca, over an alleged fraudulent crypto wallet app. 

The plaintiff, Vaca, alleges that she suffered significant losses of her cryptocurrency holdings after downloading the malicious crypto wallet app from the Google Play Store, which she had trusted to be legitimate.

Maria Vaca has filed a lawsuit against Google in a California state court, accusing the tech giant of failing to properly vet the app and prevent its availability on its Play Store, resulting in her cryptocurrency losses.

Google Faces Lawsuit For Negligence

According to the victim, she invested approximately $4.6 million in cryptocurrency through the Yobit Pro app between February and July last year. When the crypto app reflected a balance of roughly $7 million, Vaca attempted to withdraw her funds but was instructed to pay an additional $500,000 for ‘taxes’.

After making the additional payment, Vaca claimed the app asked for another $2 million deposit for ‘verification’ purposes causing her to suspect that something was amiss and so she refused to make the payment. 

Following her refusal, the plaintiff reported that she got messages on WhatsApp with the criminals threatening to kill her if she did not make the payment.

Vaca then submitted a complaint to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which promptly forwarded her complaint to Google. She added that Google’s delay in taking action for three months led to an additional 12,759 users installing the app, with at least five others falling prey to a similar fraudulent scheme.

Cracks Down on Scammers and Fraudulent Apps

Maria Vaca’s case is not the first of its kind. In 2023, ScamSniffer, a web3 anti-scam service provider, disclosed how victims lost about $4 million worth of cryptocurrencies through Google Ads.

The Google Ads directed the unsuspecting victims to users to a web3 webpage that required them to log in to their wallets and authorize signature requests.

In response to the numerous fraud cases, Google recently sued two of its developers, Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung, for approving about 87 fraudulent apps on the Google Play store, which caused 100,000 people and at least 8,700 U.S. residents to fall victim.