Hidden ad-fraud frameworks embedded in mobile gaming apps (SkyWalk scheme)

$100K-$1M+ in chargebacks, revenue reversals, and accounting adjustments; audit complexity; potential SEC filing errors for public companies; debt covenant violations if fraud not disclosed • $100K-$1M+ wasted on user acquisition campaigns targeting inflated conversion metrics; false ROI signals redirect budget to fraud-infected channels • $100K-$500K in misallocated event budgets (over/under-provisioning rewards, servers, marketing spend based on false engagement forecasts); poor event ROI compounds campaign value

Analysts build custom anomaly-detection SQL queries and spreadsheet-based checks, then manually reconcile MMP, ad network, and in-app telemetry data; they maintain private notebooks and ad-hoc dashboards to filter out obviously fraudulent traffic when advising product and UA. • Analytics and production teams manually reconcile anomalous ad-revenue and UA performance by exporting reports from MMPs, ad networks, and in-game telemetry, then cross-checking in Excel and Slack to explain inflated impressions/clicks and poor ROAS for whale-targeted campaigns. • CS Lead escalates to Tech Lead for 'investigation'; manual log dumps reviewed; no automated malware detection; issue marked 'unresolved' or blamed on OS/device