Google AdSense scam: Edtech giant, Unacademy hit by ₹28.6 lakh YouTube revenue fraud

Bengaluru

In a shocking case of cyber fraud, Bengaluru-based edtech giant Unacademy’s ₹28.6 lakh revenue from five of its YouTube channels was illegally diverted over a span of three months. An FIR was filed with the East CEN Cyber Crime Police Station on June 14, triggering an investigation into what appears to be a carefully orchestrated internal breach. 

The complaint, filed by Harish Sasikumar, Senior Manager – Legal at Unacademy, details how the company first discovered the anomaly during a routine revenue audit in May 2025. The audit revealed that advertising revenue generated over three months—March, April, and May 2025—from five high-traffic YouTube channels had not been credited to Unacademy’s official AdSense account, but instead routed to a separate account that was not authorised by the company.

The five affected channels include

• Social School by Unacademy
• Pathfinder by Unacademy
• Unacademy Atoms
• Unacademy Judiciary
• Unacademy NEET Toppers

All five are among the company’s key educational outreach platforms, hosting recorded lectures and exam preparation content for lakhs of learners across the country.

Sudden account switch on a single day

According to the FIR, the unauthorised diversion began on January 3, 2025, when the monetisation settings for the five channels were switched from Unacademy’s verified AdSense account (pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxx66) to an illegal one (pub-4xxxxxxxxxxxx02). The company says this switch happened in under 45 minutes, between 2:30 PM and 3:15 PM, strongly indicating that it was an orchestrated act executed by someone with backend administrative access to Unacademy’s YouTube infrastructure.

Once the videos were linked to the unauthorised AdSense account, all ad revenue generated by views on these channels for three months—amounting to ₹28,59,371—was directly credited into the fraudulent account.

Google, upon being approached by Unacademy, confirmed the AdSense switch and also disclosed that the illegal account was linked to a bank account ending in digits 784. Unacademy’s internal review of its employee database and associated bank records did not find any match for these digits among current or former employees with access to their YouTube content systems.

Fraudster deletes digital trail

The plot thickened when, during the internal inquiry around May 29 and 30, the illegal AdSense account was manually delinked and deleted from its associated Google account. This was reportedly done by the unknown perpetrator, likely in response to Unacademy’s initial queries and audit movements. “This action appears to be a calculated move to destroy key evidence and obstruct the investigation,” it is said in the FIR.

Unacademy has told investigators that it suspects a former or current employee—likely someone with access privileges at the admin level—may be involved in the fraudulent rerouting and subsequent deletion of the account. The company believes the act was premeditated, well-timed, and designed to go unnoticed until regular audits picked up discrepancies. The police are probing the case.

For More Bengaluru Development here