Grey Group has continued to defend its widely criticized smartphone app, "I Sea," after it was pulled from the Apple App Store earlier this week when two security researchers exposed it as a fraud.

The app purported to be a crowdsourced way for people to help migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea by spotting satellite images in "real-time." It won third place prize at a major global advertising industry competition held in Cannes, France.

On Thursday, a Grey Group spokesman, Owen Dougherty, insisted to Ars that "the app is real… the attack on us by [an] unnamed ‘tech blogger’ is the fraud in all of this. [It's] not worthy of comment let alone coverage."

Theoretically, app users would spot a migrant in distress on their "plot" of the ocean assigned to them by the app, and then they would tag it and contact a Malta-based charity group, Migrant Offshore Aid Station. However, the app did none of this.

As both @SwiftOnSecurity and Rosyna Keller were quick to point out earlier this week, the app didn’t use real-time satellite data at all, much less provide a functioning way for users of the app to actually contact MOAS. The "plot" assigned was merely a static image: view it here!

Earlier this week, MOAS said in a statement that the it was "dismayed to discover that real time images were not being used. We have since discontinued our relationship with Grey for Good and spoken candidly about our disappointment to the media." Popular Science even quoted a satellite imagery expert, Leopold Romeijn, who said that such an app would be prohibitively expensive.

Daily Dot first reported on the fraud on Monday in the wake of breathless coverage by various media outlets worldwide, including Reuters, Wired, Mashable, and more.

"I'm literally the least-important person in this entire saga," SwiftOnSecurity told Ars via Twitter direct message. "All I did was sit on my couch and complain their app didn't work. Yet I'm the one they target for scorn."

Was anyone actually helped?

In a Thursday e-mail to Ars, Keller wrote: "When I went to check the date of the satellite images retrieved via the Google Maps API (which can be found in Google Earth), I found Google had absolutely no satellite imagery for that area. The app just loaded a static image from iseaapp.com servers and mapped the image onto GPS coordinates using the Google Maps APIs."

In a June 19 statement, Grey Group’s Singapore office, which developed the app, said the app was in "testing mode. However, Grey Group acknowledged that the app was not using real-time satellite imagery, but nevertheless insisted that the app was "loading and mapping satellite images to its GPS coordinates."

When Ars questioned Dougherty about this and noted that the app seemed pointless without real-time satellite data, he dug in.

"The over-arching idea which has been lauded by everyone is the point of all this," he wrote. "Has there ever been an app that didn't need to be refined?"

We then asked him to clarify if the Cannes award was merely for an "idea for an app, and not an actual, functioning bona fide app."

To which he replied: "Criteria for the Cannes Lions in Promo and Activation category: 20 percent strategy; 30 percent idea; 20 percent execution; 30 percent impact and results. Many projects are presented as proof of concept to be finalized."

We responded: "What impact and results did this have? Were any migrants helped via this app?"

Dougherty dodged the question: "Great idea, great strategy... great spotlight on the migrant issue until we were vilified for trying to be of service," and added four minutes later: "3 out of 4 not bad don't you think?"

He did not respond to our most recent message.

However, for his part, Keller found one tiny silver-lining in the app.

"The one thing that does work is the donate button, for the MOAS group, and it really does go to their website," he told Ars.