By Blake Brittain
Publication Date: 2025-11-12 13:46:00
Nov 12 (Reuters) – Google (GOOGL.O) filed a lawsuit in New York federal court on Wednesday seeking to shut down a ring of alleged Chinese scammers it accused of stealing reams of personal financial information through an international text-message-based phishing scheme.
The lawsuit said the group created phishing software called “Lighthouse” to steal sensitive information from millions of people by posing as representatives from Google, the U.S. Postal Service, toll-collection system E-ZPass and others.
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The scammers created nearly 200,000 fake websites over a 20-day period that attracted more than 1,000,000 potential victims, the complaint alleged. The 25 anonymous defendants could not be reached for comment.
Google requested an unspecified amount of monetary damages and court orders to dismantle the phishing campaign in the United States. It accused the alleged phishing ring of trademark infringement, false advertising and…
