Google has filed a lawsuit against two scammers who they allege have submitted at least 87 fraudulent cryptocurrency and investment platform apps to the Google Play Store.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK GOOGLE LLC, Plaintiff, v. YUNFENG SUN, a/k/a “ALPHONSE SUN,” and HONGNAM CHEUNG, a/k/a “ZHANG HONGNIM,” a/k/a “STANFORD FISCHER,” Defendants. Civil Action No. COMPLAINT INTRODUCTION 1. At all times relevant to this Complaint, Defendants Yunfeng Sun, a/k/a “Alphonse Sun,” and Hongnam Cheung, a/k/a “Zhang Hongnim” and “Stanford Fischer,” were online application (“app”) developers who were engaged in an international online consumer investment fraud scheme (the “Fraud Scheme”). Through that Fraud Scheme, Defendants and other co-conspirators, known and unknown, perpetrated a form of online fraud through which they socially engineered and targeted victims to download from, among other sources, Google Play mobile apps that purportedly offered investments in cryptocurrencies and other products.1 Members of the Fraud Scheme lured victims in with promises of high returns, and the seemingly legitimate apps were designed to display purported returns on investments in individual victim accounts. Yet the gains conveyed by the apps were illusory. And the scheme did not end there. Instead, when individual victims attempted to withdraw

According to Google, at least 100,000 people have downloaded the apps, and some have suffered financial losses as a result.

Google alleges the scammers used romance scam techniques, among others, to try to persuade victims to download the apps.

a. Defendants Send Wayward Text Messages to Lure Victims into Investing Through the TionRT App 29. According to business records maintained by Google, the TionRT LTD (“TionRT”) app was uploaded to Google Play in July 2022 by a developer account associated with Yunfeng Sun. TionRT purported to be a cryptocurrency exchange. 30. Members of the Fraud Scheme lured victims into investing using the TionRT app through wayward messages, either through text or social media platforms. The texts would purport to be from wrong numbers, but then the texters would strike up conversations with the victims, developing “friendships” and “romantic attachments.” After gaining the victims’ trust, the fraudsters would convince the victims to download and invest using the TionRT app in order to earn extra money. The “friend” or “romantic partner” would frequently guide the victim through the process, offering reassuring explanations of the financial and technical aspects of investing. 31. After building a relationship with the victims, members of the Fraud Scheme would suggest that the victims invest a small amount and then encourage them to withdraw some of the money once they started seeing returns. After this initial withdrawal succeeded, the reassured users would invest more money.
The case is Google LLC v. Sun.
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