Judge Rules In Apple’s Favor In Crypto Wallet App Lawsuit

A ruling from a federal judge in California dictates that Apple Inc. is not liable in the class action lawsuit that was filed over ‘Toast Plus’.

This involves a fake crypto wallet app that had been listed in the Apple App Store. The tech giant had been sued by the customer after they downloaded the fraudulent app and suffered from crypto losses.

The ruling

Hailing from the US District Court in Northern California, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton said that the iPhone maker is not liable in a class action lawsuit over a fraudulent crypto wallet app in its app store.

A crypto investor named Hadona Diep was the plaintiff in the case and had accused the company of listing a fraudulent mobile app that is similar to a legitimate XRP wallet app called Toast Plus.

The fake app boasted a similar logo and name as the authentic one. The class action lawsuit was filed by the plaintiff last year in September in a federal court in Maryland.

In December, the case against the tech giant had been transferred to the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit

According to the lawsuit, the fake app had been downloaded by the plaintiff in January 2018 from the Apple App Store.

The app had been used for initiating a transfer from the Bittrex crypto exchange of about 474 XRP tokens to a Rippex wallet.

While Rippex had closed in February of the same year, the plaintiff was still able to use other wallets for accessing her coins.

She then set up a link to her private seed phrase or XRP key into the app last year in March. But, in August, when she saw her Toast Plus account, she discovered that her coins could not be found anywhere.

As a matter of fact, her account had been deleted in March. According to Diep, she suffered losses of about $5,000 because Apple hosted the fraudulent crypto wallet app.

Ryumei Nagao, one of her co-plaintiff, claims that he suffered losses of $500,000.

Apple is not to blame

Judge Hamilton gave the decision in favor of Apple and said that the technology giant could not be considered liable for the fake app.

According to the ruling made on September 2nd, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields Apple as it is a publisher of content.

The actual content is provided by someone else, so Apple is not the creator.

The judge also agreed with the iPhone maker about the plaintiff not pleading the claims successfully under the Consumer Privacy Acts of both California and Maryland.

This is because Diep did not allegedly provide specific details of the content, time, and place of the false representations.

In addition, the terms and conditions outlined by Apple also call for the dismissal of Diep’s claims because the company cannot be considered accountable for damages due to the usage of 3rd-party apps.

The ruling said that this is outlined in the company’s terms and conditions that the plaintiff had agreed with.