A counterfeit app is brand impersonation with a payment terminal attached. It carries the name and logo, mimics the booking or login flow closely enough to be plausible, and captures whatever the user types on the way through.
The install itself supplies the trust. A user who found the app in a store assumes the store vetted it, and store review is designed to catch policy violations at scale, not to verify that a given publisher is who they claim to be.
There are two independent grounds for removal and the strongest cases carry both. Intellectual property covers the misuse of the trademark and brand assets. User safety covers what the app actually does, such as sending card details to an endpoint the brand does not control. A report that shows both is much harder for a reviewer to defer.
Filing with the official stores alone leaves the problem half-solved. Removed apps persist on third-party stores and APK mirror sites, which need their own reports to their own hosting providers.
How Fraudox handles it
Fake app takedown