Google has filed a complaint against an alleged Chinese group called Outsider Enterprise, accusing it of running an AI‑powered phishing operation that flooded Android users with fraudulent text messages and hosted a flood of counterfeit websites. The lawsuit says the network used artificial‑intelligence tools, including Google’s own Gemini, to create fake pages that impersonated banks, telecoms and retailers, luring victims into handing over passwords, multi‑factor codes and credit‑card details.
According to the filing, the criminals deployed roughly 9,000 fake sites, registered a million deceptive domains and dispatched 2.5 million scam texts over a two‑week span, prompting 55,000 spam complaints from Android users. Google estimates the scheme has cost victims millions of dollars and stolen at least 36,000 payment cards across 95 countries. The Outsider platform, sold for about $88 a week, offers more than 290 ready‑made templates and AI‑generated code, enabling even low‑skill actors to launch phishing campaigns. The FBI, together with AT&T, T‑Mobile and Verizon, has seized several domains and Shopify accounts linked to the operation.
Google is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction to halt the network’s activities. The company says its own AI‑driven defenses now block over 10 billion scam messages each month, and it will continue coordinating with law‑enforcement and carriers to dismantle the infrastructure behind the fraud.
