When Maria Vaca downloaded a cryptocurrency trading app from the Google Play store, she thought she was beating the markets.
Between February and July of 2023, she invested nearly $5 million.
But according to a new lawsuit filed against Google, when Vaca tried to pull money out of her account it wasn’t there.
“And it’s gone, never to be seen in the United States again,” said Chris Vernon, a Naples-based lawyer who filed the lawsuit. “That’s a big picture problem that needs to be addressed.”
According to the lawsuit, Vernon’s client lost her money to a crypto scam.
“I think 10 years from now we’re going to say ‘oh my goodness, look how much money flowed out of this country,’” said Vernon.
It’s a staggering amount.
According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report, last year Americans lost nearly $4 billion in cryptocurrency investment fraud.
Vernon filed the suit against Google claiming the company should have prevented scam apps from being available to download in the play store.
“I think they have to, in my opinion, have some sort of duty to these folks that they’re making a lot of money off of,” said Vernon.
Google didn’t respond to Fox 4.
The company also hasn’t yet responded in court to the lawsuit.
But the tech giant has admitted these kinds of scams take place.
In April, Google sued two developers the company said managed to get 87 fraudulent crypto apps approved on the Google Play store - affecting nearly 100,000 people.
The lawsuit says victims couldn’t withdraw their funds.
“By using Google Play to conduct their Fraud Scheme, Defendants have threatened the integrity of Google Play and the user experience,” Google’s lawsuit states.
“They are, in some ways, saying the same thing we’re saying,” Vernon said.
“There’s no centralized people or organizations to manage the whole thing,” said Dr. Chengyi Qu, a professor of Computing and Data Science at Florida Gulf Coast University.
Qu says the concept of crypto, which is a digital currency that doesn’t rely on banks or governments to uphold or maintain it, is safe to use.
However, bad actors exist.
“If hackers can get this information, then he will be the person representing you in transactions. This could be very dangerous,” said Qu.
A danger Vernon’s lawsuit believes needs more protections.
“There needs to be something in place that pushes companies to have more protections in place,” Vernon said.
