Google has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit under the RICO Act against a massive phishing operation known as Lighthouse, which has compromised millions of credit cards in the U.S.
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The lawsuit targets unknown operators, listed as John Does 1 through 25, who allegedly built a ‘phishing-as-a-service’ platform to execute mass text attacks.
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Google claims these scams have tricked recipients into revealing personal and sensitive information.
Halimah Delaine Prado, Google’s General Counsel, stated that the lawsuit is intended to deter future criminal enterprises and dismantle the infrastructure supporting these scams.
Google discovered more than 100 fake sites using its logo to deceive people into providing passwords or credit card numbers.
According to its complaint, the Lighthouse group has stolen sensitive information linked to tens of millions of credit cards in the U.S.
Alongside the lawsuit, Google is supporting three bipartisan bills aimed at reducing scams and fraud.
Prado emphasized the need for more support for law enforcement agencies to combat such crimes globally.
Kevin Gosschalk, CEO of a cybersecurity firm, noted that while recovering lost money is challenging, legal actions like Google’s can impact the ecosystem by sending a message to major players in the phishing industry.
Google’s move may be as much about precedent as punishment —using a racketeering law from the 1970s to target a 21st-century digital crime.
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