Google filed a lawsuit in June 2026 against an alleged Chinese cybercrime network called Outsider Enterprise, accusing the group of using artificial intelligence to send millions of scam text messages impersonating Google and other brands in order to steal passwords and credit card numbers.
According to Google, Outsider Enterprise deployed 9,000 fake websites, 1 million fraudulent web domains, and sent 2.5 million texts to Android users over a two-week period. The group has financially scammed “hundreds of thousands of victims,” with losses “estimated in the millions.” In that same two-week window in May, Android users flagged 55,000 spam texts — more than two complaints per minute.
Google said it is seeking to dismantle the infrastructure behind the operation. The company stated it uses “AI-powered tools to fight AI-powered scams,” which it says enable detection of suspicious calls and messages and have led to the interception of more than 10 billion scam messages per month.
Google said it has been working with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon to block the scam messages, and is coordinating with the FBI, which is taking unspecified law enforcement actions. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The scale of the operation — millions of fraudulent domains and texts sent within days — suggests the group was capable of rapidly deploying scam infrastructure at significant volume. The lawsuit and carrier coordination may signal a broader industry effort to use legal and technical channels together to combat AI-assisted fraud campaigns targeting mobile users.
Source: TechCrunch