Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest is the latest high profile businessman to launch a lawsuit against Facebook due to the social media platform’s inability to remove get-rich-quick scams using his name from their platform.
Forrest filed a lawsuit in Australia claiming that Facebook is guilty of breaching the country’s anti-money laundering laws by failing to prevent a number of scam adverts appearing on their platform that use his name and photo to try and trick victim’s into believing a get-rich-quick “opportunity” is endorsed by him.
For years scammers have been exploiting Facebook’s Sponsored Ads platform to promote get-rich-quick scams that claim to use crypto-currency based systems to make people thousands of dollars a day. However these scams don’t have anything to do with crypto-currency and ultimately lure victims to unregulated trading websites where they will likely lose any money they’re coerced into depositing. We’ve previously discussed these types of scams here.
Such scam adverts often direct users to fake “media reports” which in turn lure victims to the scam websites themselves.
One of the fake media websites where these scam adverts direct users..
Because the adverts use Facebook’s Sponsored Ads platform, this essentially means Facebook is being paid to distribute scam ads to its users. In the lawsuit, Forrest’s lawyers argue that is illegal.
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
Facebook has been in trouble before regarding these types of adverts. In the UK, Martin Lewis also launched a lawsuit again the social media site for allowing get-rich-quick ads to appear using his name, though he subsequently dropped the suit in return for Facebook funding an anti-scam initiative.
However unlike Lewis’s civil lawsuit, Forrest is alleging lawsuit that Facebook is criminally liable. Should he prevail in court, Facebook could be fined a sizeable amount and even forced to change the way it allows companies to advertise.
“I’m concerned about innocent Australians being scammed through clickbait advertising on social media.” Forrest said in his statement last week. “I’m acting here for Australians, but this is happening all over the world.”
Facebook’s parent company Meta have not responded to the lawsuit specifically but has offered their oft used response that they take scams seriously and do everything they can to rid their platform of them. However, for many, that response is clearly wearing a little thin.