Spicy tale of an App Store fraud

Despite my history of uncovering App Store frauds, I rarely go looking for these things intentionally! They’re just so pervasive and obvious, they jump out at me. In this case, I was looking at the list of top paid Safari extensions in the Mac App Store, because two of my own extensions are currently on the list, when I noticed the TabControl Extension. TabControl Extension is the #13 top paid Safari extension in the United States Mac App Store as of the time of the above screenshot, #12 when I first noticed the app. The Mac App Store “screenshot” for the app is not actually a screenshot at all. If you look closely, that’s not the real Safari: the toolbar elements are wrong. I suspect that the image was AI-generated. As we’ll see, the app developer, Serhii Mariiekha, is heavily involved in AI. Another thing you should note in the fake screenshot is the “4.9 out of 5” stars, giving the impression that this is the App Store user rating of the app. If you visit the developer’s website…