Fighting fraud online: taking "Google Money" scammers to court

Google on Tuesday revealed that it had filed a trademark infringement lawsuit to prevent Pacific WebWorks, based in Nevada, and other unidentified defendants from using Google's name to promote its money-making scheme.

The scheme goes by a variety of names, including Google Adwork, Google ATM, Google Biz Kit, Google Cash, Earn Google Cash Kit, Google Fortune, Google Marketing Kit, Google Profits, The Home Business Kit for Google, Google StartUp Kit, and Google Works.

Google acknowledges that such schemes can be difficult to stamp out and asks users to exercise caution online, a decision that would make such schemes less profitable. The company believes that thousands of people have paid for these money-making kits.