Apple Sued After Pretend iPhone Pockets App Drained $1.8M in Bitcoin – Decrypt
In short
Three Bitcoin holders have sued Apple in California federal court docket, saying a counterfeit Sparrow Pockets app took a mixed $1.8 million.
One plaintiff reported the app to Apple; one other downloaded it 9 days later and misplaced $840,000, the criticism says.
Sparrow Pockets developer Craig Uncooked has publicly flagged copycat iOS apps since January 2024.
Three Bitcoin holders have sued Apple over a counterfeit Sparrow Pockets app they are saying drained a mixed $1.8 million. The criticism, filed on July 24 within the Northern District of California, brings eight counts together with fraud, negligent misrepresentation and strict merchandise legal responsibility.
Every plaintiff entered a seed phrase into the app, based on the submitting. James Ramirez misplaced 7.4 BTC, put at $875,000; Christopher Ellis $840,000; and Jalen Delgado 1.05 BTC, put at $120,000. Sparrow Pockets runs solely on Home windows, macOS and Linux and has by no means shipped an iOS model, so any App Retailer itemizing underneath that identify is an impersonation.
Ramirez reported the app and his loss to Apple on July 25, 2025, the day it occurred. Ellis downloaded a Sparrow app from the shop 9 days later. Nobody from Apple has contacted Ramirez about that report, the criticism says, and fraudulent Sparrow apps had been nonetheless listed when it was filed.
The submitting additionally alleges, on info and perception, that Apple ranked the faux app and included it in curated cryptocurrency collections, “successfully recommending a fraudulent software to shoppers alongside authentic ones.”
The developer’s warning
Craig Uncooked, who constructed Sparrow Pockets and holds the U.S. logos on the identify, has flagged copycat malware on Apple’s App Retailer since January 2024, when he tweeted {that a} rip-off model was nonetheless reside weeks after being reported.
There’s nonetheless a rip-off ‘Sparrow Pockets’ app on the @Apple App Retailer, regardless of myself and others having reported it weeks in the past.
Worse, it’s important to set up it to report it.
All the time go to the pockets’s web site to seek out the hyperlink to obtain it. App shops won’t defend you.
— Craig Uncooked 🐦 (@craigraw) January 6, 2024
He later acknowledged that he had submitted an App Retailer itemizing whose solely goal was to inform iOS customers that Sparrow is desktop-only. Apple rejected it as “placeholder content material,” then flagged his developer account for termination over “dishonest exercise,” a choice reversed on attraction.
Apple declined to touch upon the lawsuit to TechCrunch, as an alternative pointing to its newest ecosystem evaluation which discovered that it rejected greater than 371,000 malicious App Retailer submissions. The agency famous that there are presently no Sparrow Pockets copycats on the App Retailer.
Depend seven asks the court docket to deal with the App Retailer as a product positioned into the stream of commerce, which might expose Apple to strict legal responsibility for failing to warn. The criticism argues Apple’s opposite disclaimers sit buried “deep inside” click-through phrases.
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