Overview
- Google filed a civil suit seeking injunctive relief on Friday, June 12, 2026, asking a New York federal court to shut down a China-linked operation it calls Outsider Enterprise.
- The complaint alleges the group ran phishing-as-a-service through Telegram, produced about 9,000 fake sites and more than 1 million fraudulent URLs, and sent roughly 2.5 million scam texts during a two-week surge.
- Google says members used its Gemini generative AI to generate code and templates for convincing fake websites, making the toolkit easy for nontechnical criminals to deploy.
- The company is coordinating with the FBI and with AT&T, T‑Mobile and Verizon to block malicious texts and support law-enforcement disruption while relying on on-device AI protections that already intercept billions of scam messages monthly.
- Google is urging Congress to pass bipartisan bills to create permanent defenses against AI-driven scams, a push that could reshape platform liability, carrier filtering and cross-border enforcement of organized cybercrime.