Google sues AdSense publisher for click fraud

From ClickZ:

Google has filed its first click fraud lawsuit, charging a Texas-based Web site and its owners generated fraudulent clicks on ads in its AdSense program, causing Google to pay them for useless traffic to its advertisers.

The lawsuit, filed last week in a California Superior Court, alleges that, beginning in August 2003, Auction Experts International and its founders Sergio Morfin and Alexei Leonov clicked on AdSense ads on the Auction Experts site and paid up to 50 unidentified individuals to do the same.

I assume these guys were outsourcing their "clicking activity" to home-based entrepreneurs in India, Russia or China. I remember reading an Economic Times report about such activity being a sunrise outsourcing activity in India.

Amazing what con games people can think of. And apparently offshoring can improve the margins to the con business as well!