Anyone who owns an android device has no doubt come across the ads on the Playstore which sound all too good to be true. What’s that you say? All I need to do is watch 5 videos and the app will deposit $50 directly to my Paypal account. Or in the form of the direct quote. “No withdraw needed. How much you earn we pay directly to your Paypal.” The accompanying videos typically include oriental individuals throwing lots of money in the air or driving in an exotic vehicle and are invariably horribly dubbed into English (hearkening back to the masters of the terrible dub…kung fu and/or Godzilla movies). It seems like each new app that comes out is designed to out “do” the last in terms of outrageous claims and literal (as in they say “I promise) promises. There is absolutely zero concern for whether or not anything that is said has even a single ounce of truth in the advertisement. “$100 new user bonus” “Earn $1000 a day.” The majority of them have taken to putting little tiny disclaimers at the bottom that “Results are not guaranteed. Payment subject to rules of app.” (but there are also those that don’t even bother with that). The rules of the app are invariably 1) You will be paid nothing and 2) you will be exposed to advertisements from which both Google and the apps “developers” earn a percentage and “ironically” (which is in quotations because it is certainly by design) almost exclusively consisting of more adds for more fake money earning apps. They have even taking to calling every other money making app “fake money making apps,” promising that theirs are the real deal. I have downloaded a number of these apps and found that they fall into three major categories: 1) there are those apps which require an unattainable minimum amount in order to apply for a disbursement. Most often the apps will appear as if the minimum amount can be met with ease because the the closer you are to zero, the bigger the reward for each video, or spin, or whatever will be. However, the closer you come to the amount required to withdraw funds, the smaller and smaller the amount provided for each action is granted so that whereas the first “wins,” shall we call them will yeild dollars toward the amount, as you approach the minimum amount to request payout the same “wins” are yielding a fraction of a cent. In this manner, the app, by absolute design, prevents their promises from ever being fulfilled. 2) The second type of app allows you to achieve the minimum amount required to be paid and then requires that so many advertisements be watched in order to receive they payout. If the minimum required number of videos are watched then you are placed into a payment que invariably thousands of “people” long which might start to go down relatively quickly, but will eventually slow down to a crawl and then stop before you ever reach the number 1 spot required to be paid out. 3) The third and most despicable of these apps actually will pay out one or two small payments in order to establish their legitimacy, but this is just used as a ruse by which to trick you into investing more time and/or money into the app and then when it comes time for a significant amount to be withdrawn, all requests for withdrawal are ignored and if subsequent appeals are made to the Google PlayStore for assistance with either obtaining payout or attaining a refund for payments made, you will be informed that the app failing to payout according to the rules within the app do not constitute a valid reason to obtain a refund and you will be referred back to the developer…who will not even respond.
I have conducted an experiment in order to gauge Google’s awareness and culpability to these acts of absolute fraud and have found that even after Google support has been made aware that the app is fraudulently taking money from people, the app remains in the Playstore and Google continues processing payments (of which they receive a very large cut). Now, I can accept Google, as a huge corporate entity or AI or whatever might be unaware that fraud is being perpetrated upon their users by an unsavory developer or two. What I cannot accept is that Google puts these apps into the Playstore en mass, while hiding them behind the blanket of “early access” to the app, which disables any public commentary about the legitimacy of the apps (or obvious lack thereof), thereby not only allowing these unsavory developers to profit from their fraud, but to profit from it themselves as well. I have copies of proof of these facts and I am hoping to gather more evidence from other individuals with perhaps similar experiences by which Google can be made to account for KNOWINGLY PROFITING FROM FRAUDULENT APPS for which they both receive and process payment. This is unacceptable and something needs to be done. If you have had a similar experience with Google and want them held accountable for their fraud, smash a like and share this article.
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