Google has just sued the Chinese hacker group that stole 1 billion dollars from millions of its users

Google has sued “Lighthouse Enterprise,” a major global fraudulent operation from China that facilitated the theft of millions of credit cards and hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a federal lawsuit recently filed in the Southern District of New York, Google revealed its plans to sue a group of foreign criminals for carrying out a massive phishing operation as a service (PhaaS).

According to the lawsuit, the group created and sold a phishing kit called Lighthouse, which even allowed novice criminals to create fake websites that imitated trusted institutions. The kit, advertised through Telegram and YouTube, offered hundreds of templates and pre-made tools to launch large-scale smishing and e-commerce scams, and allowed users to create fake websites that impersonated government agencies, financial corporations, and, among others, Google.

💻 Google sued a Chinese hacker group that runs a phishing service called Lighthouse.

It tricked over 1 million people in 120 countries and made more than $1 billion using fake Google and USPS pages.

They sold the phishing kits — $88 a week to $1,588 a year.

Read more →… pic.twitter.com/AeuJMkSIoP

— The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) November 12, 2025

Google has sued them for using the company’s logo and its identity

Google claims that, in a period of 20 days, the Lighthouse platform was used to create 200,000 fake websites, which targeted more than a million victims in 121 countries.

Citing researchers, Google estimates that between 12.7 and 115 million credit cards in the United States may have been compromised through Lighthouse-driven attacks.

The exact number of people involved in the operation is unknown. In the lawsuit, the individuals are labeled as “Doe” 1-25, although Google acknowledged that the actual number of people is likely much higher.

In some cases, criminals created fake text messages about the delivery of USPS packages or alerted victims about pending toll payments. Sometimes, they created fake online stores that stole users’ payment data and often used the stolen information to charge victims’ credit cards in digital wallets and make unauthorized payments.

Google is suing 25 people it alleges are behind a “relentless” scam text operation that uses a phishing-as-a-service platform called Lighthouse. https://t.co/xbHjwijp2L

— WIRED (@WIRED) November 12, 2025

Google claims that Lighthouse operators misused Google logos and trademarks, published ads through Google Ads, and even uploaded tutorials to YouTube showing how to carry out the scams.

Hackers damaged Google’s reputation, violated its terms of service, and forced it to spend hundreds of hours investigating and shutting down fraudulent accounts, the company concluded.

By the way, this is not the first time Google has sued Chinese citizens for cyber crimes, but most of the time the lawsuits lead to nothing, as China rarely extradites its citizens to the United States, especially when it comes to cyber crimes.