Meta, Facebook’s parent company, launches major legal crackdown on alleged fraudsters ‘using’ deepfakes and celebrity bait
Social media giant Meta has announced that it is taking major and “aggressive” legal action against alleged fraud on its platforms, filing multiple lawsuits against fraudulent advertisers around the world.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram has accused alleged scammers of misusing images of public figures, creators and celebrities to trick people into engaging with fake ads on scam websites.
These scam websites often encourage users to send money or share personal information.
“We work aggressively to find and prevent scams on and off our platforms. Today, we filed suit against four (alleged) fraudulent advertisers who impersonated well-known celebrities and brands to deceive and defraud people.” Meta said in a statement.
The company filed suit against four fraudulent advertising operations based in Brazil, China and Vietnam.
These include cease and desist letters to eight marketing consultants who allegedly helped clients evade Meta’s enforcement systems.
No criminal charges were filed.
The move comes as Meta redoubles its efforts to combat the fraud epidemic plaguing social media, with the company saying it now protects the images of more than 500,000 celebrities and public figures worldwide from exploitation by fake ads.
“To combat celebrity baiting scams, we have developed protections for celebrities whose images are repeatedly used in these schemes. This program currently protects the images of more than 500,000 celebrities and public figures worldwide,” the company said.
Some lawsuits allege that scam operators are selling dangerous health products using the altered voices of celebrities, while others are using deepfakes to sell products without approval from regulators.
Others allegedly use celebrity advertising to lure victims into fake investment groups.
Allegedly, the deceptive advertiser was selling luxury products of purported brands such as Longchamp to users at a highly discounted rate in exchange for surveys. Victims who provided credit card information never received items and were subjected to unauthorized recurring charges, known as subscription fraud.
“Our teams worked closely with Longchamp to investigate and stop this fraud on our platforms,” Meta said.
“Longchamp has a zero-tolerance policy and invests a reasonable amount of resources to combat illegal activity such as counterfeiting or fraud using our brand both offline and online.
“We are happy that Meta has stepped up and shown such cooperation.” Maison Longchamp said in a statement.
As part of its actions to combat fraudsters and improve detection and enforcement methods, Meta said it would implement a “multi-layered approach to combating fraud” and “improve our methods of detecting cloaking, a malicious technique that undermines ad review systems by hiding the true nature of a website linked to an ad.”
