Apple faces lawsuit over App Store bitcoin wallet scam losses

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Apple app store bitcoin lawsuit

Highlights

A lawsuit filed July 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleges Apple left a fraudulent bitcoin wallet app on the App Store for over a week after a reported $875,000 loss.
Plaintiffs James Ramirez, Christopher Ellis, and Jalen Delgado claim collective losses of about $1.84 million in bitcoin due to the fake Sparrow Wallet app being ranked and curated by Apple.
Apple states it removed impersonating apps, terminated relevant developer accounts, and cites rejecting over 371,000 misleading app submissions and blocking more than $2.2 billion in potential fraudulent transactions last year.

Lawsuit details and alleged App Store failures

As reported by CoinDesk, citing MacRumors, the complaint filed on July 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California says Apple left the fraudulent app available for more than a week after one customer reported losing $875,000. The plaintiffs argue Apple's marketing of the App Store as a tightly controlled marketplace led them to believe listed apps were vetted and safe.

The suit names James Ramirez, Christopher Ellis and Jalen Delgado, who say they collectively lost about $1.84 million after downloading an app posing as Sparrow Wallet and entering their bitcoin seed phrases. Ramirez says he downloaded the app on July 25, 2025 and lost 7.4 BTC that day, while Ellis allegedly lost about $840,000 after installing it on Aug. 3. Delgado, who says he downloaded the app around May 1, 2025, allegedly lost 1.05 BTC, then worth roughly $120,000.

The complaint alleges Apple ranked the fake app and included it in curated cryptocurrency app collections alongside legitimate products. It also cites a January 2024 warning from Sparrow developer Craig Raw that an impersonating app remained available despite having been reported to Apple weeks earlier.

Ramirez and Ellis say Apple never responded to their reports. The case seeks reimbursement of the allegedly stolen assets, compensatory and punitive damages and potentially multiplied damages, while also asking Apple to disclose limits in its review process, tighten controls and warn users that an App Store listing does not confirm a cryptocurrency app is authentic.

Fraud controls and wider platform liability questions

Apple has faced similar claims before in crypto-related scam cases. In 2021, a lawsuit over a fake wallet app was dismissed after a federal judge agreed with Apple's argument that it could not be held liable because it was the publisher of the app content rather than its creator.

In an update to MacRumors, Apple says it has removed apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet from the App Store and terminated the developer accounts associated with them. The company also says developers who believe content on an Apple service infringes intellectual property can file a dispute with its legal department, while customers can report App Store scams or fraud.

Apple says it previously terminated 193,000 developer accounts over fraud. In its App Store fraud report, the company says it rejected more than 371,000 copycat, spam or misleading submissions last year and blocked more than $2.2 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions.

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