Spicy tale of an App Store fraud

Spicy tale of an App Store fraud

August 12 2026

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 https://tabcontrol.app/ (I’m not going to link directly), you can see again the claim that the app rates 4.9 out of 5 stars in the App Store, along with the questionable claim, “Join 5,000+ Safari users who already tamed their tabs with TabControl.”

Further down the page, there are purported screenshots of “A few of our favorite reviews from Safari users on macOS” allegedly “From the App Store.”

These purported reviews, all but one of which is 5 stars, are all in English. Yet none of them is in the US App Store. I also looked at other English-speaking countries such as Australia and Canada but found no reviews. Also suspicious is that the name of every reviewer was a first name followed by an initial for the last name. If you’ve ever looked through App Store user reviews, it’s unusual to find this naming format. In most cases, the name on App Store user reviews is a uniquely chosen username, with no space character, often suffixed by a number.

The final and most conclusive evidence that these reviews are fake, totally invented out of thin air by the developer (or more likely, by an LLM), is that the dates on the reviews, such as “Mar 12,” predate the release of TabControl Extension in the App Store!

According to AppFigures, TabControl Extension was first released on June 2, 2026.

The use of App Store screenshots to present false claims is a common tactic of scams that I’ve noted before, for example, Trusted by over 10M+ Users Worldwide. When a developer submits an app to the App Store, Apple reviews not only the app but also the App Store listing and metadata, including screenshots, and the claims in the screenshots of scam apps are often obviously ridiculous, yet Apple approves them anyway.

At the bottom of the developer’s website, there’s a copyright notice: “© 2026 TabControl is a product of Marsoft Research Lab SL. All rights reserved.”

Google brings up some interesting results for Marsoft Research Lab SL.

This service claims to be mentioned, a bit ungrammatically—“Us mentioned in some great medias”—by the magazines Men’s Health, Playboy, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Cosmopolitan. Call me skeptical.

The bottom of the page with another Marsoft Research Lab SL copyright notice also includes some social media links: X, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Threads, and Telegram. However, as you can see in the Safari web inspector, the links are to the front pages of those services, not to any account on those services!

Marsoft Research Lab SL is also responsible for a certified document delivery service.

And for good measure, Marsoft Research Lab SL has an online ADHD test.

Interesting company, no?

The copyright on TabControl Extension in the App Store is actually Marsolab FZ-LLC. Their website (https://marsolab.com) says, “We build AI agents for you and your business.” The developer of TabControl Extension is the founder Marsolab FZ, according to Threads. All of the developer’s handiwork, including the TabControl Extension website with the fake App Store reviews, has the look of generative AI. In other words, AI slop.

Do I expect Apple App Store review to do the research that I’ve done in this blog post? Well, yes. Yes I do! What are they paid for? Apple claims that its App Store protects users from dishonest developers. If App Store review is not doing this work, then what the hell are they doing? Practically speaking, App Store review didn’t even need to go as far down the rabbit hole as I did. The “4.9 out of 5” stars in the App Store screenshot should have been a red flag. Apple has a record of all the ratings and reviews in all the countries, so they know this is false advertising. I didn’t have to download the damn app to know already that the developer is attempting fraud.

You can read more of my App Store exposé in Men’s Health, Playboy, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Cosmopolitan.