Santa Clara County has become the latest entity to sue Meta for fraudulent ads on Facebook and Instagram. The lawsuit, filed by County Attorney Tony LoPresti, alleges the company profited from a “vast ecosystem of fraudulent advertisements” that defrauded seniors and other vulnerable people.
The lawsuit refers to a report from last year by Reuters which cited internal documents detailing the billions of dollars fraudulent advertisers invested in Meta’s platforms. Meta earns up to $7 billion a year from such ads, the filing says. He also claims that Meta’s own processes and policies enabled scams.
Santa Clara, which is just one county away from Meta’s Bay Area headquarters, says it’s the first such case brought by a local civil prosecutor. “While our region has certainly benefited from the tech boom, we cannot sit idly by when we know full well that a tech giant is defrauding the public to meet a revenue target,” LoPresti said at a news conference.
In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the company would fight the lawsuit. “This statement is based on Reuters reporting that distorts our motivations and ignores all of the measures we take every day to fight scams,” the spokesperson said. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they are not good for us or the people and businesses who rely on our services. We removed more than 159 million fraudulent ads last year alone, launched new tools to protect people, and worked with law enforcement around the world to thwart these criminals. »
Meta is under ongoing scrutiny regarding its handling of fraudulent advertisers. On Tuesday, the nonprofit watchdog group the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a report on fraudulent Medicare-related ads on Facebook targeting seniors.
The group found that Meta had made more than $14 million from Medicare scams on Facebook, many of which were repeat offenders whose ads had been removed by the company in the past. The scams used many of the tactics used in other types of fraudulent advertising, including fake AI-generated celebrity endorsements.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms and across the internet,” Meta said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they are not good for us or the people and businesses who rely on our services.”
Last month, Meta was also sued by the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America (CFA), which filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in Washington, DC, claiming the company violated consumer protection laws in its handling of fraudulent ads on the platform. The lawsuit cited ads promoting “free” iPhones and $1,400 checks.
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