Google sues China-based group over AI-generated text scams

Google filed a lawsuit on June 12, 2026, seeking to dismantle a China-based cybercrime network it calls Outsider Enterprise. The company alleges the group used AI tools, including Google’s Gemini, to generate scam text messages and fraudulent web pages targeting U.S. users.

The complaint says the operation sent about 2.5 million messages and created roughly 9,000 counterfeit websites. Investigators linked the network to more than one million fraudulent URLs and reported that hundreds of thousands of victims lost a combined total in the millions of dollars.

Google’s filing states the network coordinated on Telegram and sold phishing kits that allowed criminals to send large-scale spoofed text campaigns impersonating Google and other brands. Android users flagged about 55,000 spam texts in May 2026, while the defendants were responsible for sending roughly 2.5 million messages over the same period.

The company is pursuing the case with the FBI, which is preparing its own enforcement actions. Google also says it is working with U.S. carriers AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to block malicious messages at the network level.

The lawsuit targets core software developers accused of building and distributing the tools used to produce scalable, AI-driven scams. According to Google, the phishing kits automated the creation of convincing messages and fake landing pages, reducing the technical effort required for fraud.

Google reported that its messaging systems intercept more than 10 billion malicious messages each month. The company added that Android’s scam detection flags suspicious calls and contacts in real time.

Google paired the litigation with policy advocacy, backing seven bipartisan bills, including the National Strategy for Combating Scams Act and the Stop SCAMS Against Seniors Act, aimed at increasing legal tools and consumer protections against fraud.

Brett Leatherman of the FBI’s Cyber Division described the case as an example of industry and law enforcement working together and warned that criminals increasingly use AI to make fraud more convincing and harder to detect.

The complaint follows months of investigation and internal signals about attackers using automated text generation and template-based phishing pages to scale social-engineering campaigns that previously required more manual work.