The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in June 2026 against a company called Genesis Tech, alleging it defrauded consumers through a network of shell companies designed to conceal its identity, hide assets, and evade app store enforcement.
According to the FTC, Genesis Tech operated through a series of subsidiaries incorporated in Cyprus and based in Ukraine. Those entities marketed apps to U.S. consumers under recognizable brand names, including fitness apps MadMuscles, Harna, and Unimeal; document tools PDF Guru and PDF Master; fashion app Lumi; horoscope app Nebula; and productivity apps under the Wisey brand. From early 2023 to mid-2025, those five subsidiary companies generated nearly $250 million in global revenue. In the 12 months ending September 2025, transactions across all connected PayPal accounts totaled nearly $700 million.
The FTC alleges Genesis Tech promoted its products as free or low-cost, but users were enrolled in auto-renewing subscriptions. The company also allegedly charged customers for additional products without consent, double-charged some users, and made cancellation difficult by omitting cancellation options from its apps and websites — then continued charging customers without authorization.
To avoid detection, Genesis Tech allegedly registered new corporate entities and created multiple merchant accounts on an ongoing basis, allowing it to sidestep fraud monitoring programs for years.
The complaint alleges violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA). Named co-defendants include Stamatis Skianis, Oksana Kucher, Iryna Oleksyn, Olga Garbuzenko, Rostyslav Ivanitsa, and Viktoriia Savchuk. The case will be tried in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Genesis Tech did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case highlights a challenge that may be growing for Apple and Google, as subscription scams evolve from individual bad actors into coordinated networks of corporate entities that are harder to track and remove from their platforms.
Source: TechCrunch