Scammers target Google Ads to mimic crypto recovering service

Bad actors are exploiting Google Ads to mimic the Revoke Cash crypto recovery service, tricking users into giving away their funds.

Scammers are using Google Ads to mimic the Revoke Cash crypto recovery service, redirecting users to a fraudulent site designed to steal funds.

In an X post on Sept. 13, analysts at blockchain forensic firm ScamSniffer warned that the fraudulent ads, which appear in Google search results, initially display the legitimate address “revoke.cash,” but redirect users to a deceptive website “revokc-cash[dot]com,” designed to siphon off crypto funds from unsuspecting users.

Launched in 2019, Revoke Cash is a recovery service designed to help users reclaim lost or stolen crypto by revoking unauthorized access to their funds and securing their accounts.

The latest incident echoes a troubling trend of malicious actors using Google’s advertising platform to promote counterfeit crypto websites. In April, a similar scheme saw Google Ads endorsing a fake version of the Whales Market, an over-the-counter crypto trading platform. Users who interacted with the ad were redirected to a fraudulent site, “www.whaels.market,” where their digital wallets were compromised by malicious scripts.

The ongoing exploitation of Google Ads for such scams underscores persistent vulnerabilities in online advertising systems. In its turn, Google Google seems to be fighting back against scammers. In early April, the company sued two people from China, Yunfeng Sun and Hongnam Cheung, for using the Google Play store to trick people into fake crypto investments.

While the lawsuit did not specify the names of the implicated applications, Google disclosed that it had deactivated nearly 90 fraudulent apps attributed to Sun and Cheung over the past four years, which had collectively garnered nearly 100,000 downloads worldwide.