Aussie Billionaire Files Criminal Case Against Facebook (Meta) for Running Illegal Crypto Ads

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Fortes­cue Met­als Group Chair­man Andrew For­rest has filed a crim­i­nal case against Face­book in Aus­tralia for its fail­ure to stop scam ads fea­tur­ing his image. Accord­ing to the Aus­tralian min­ing bil­lion­aire, this is the first time that Face­book is fac­ing a crim­i­nal charge any­where in the world.

“I’m doing this on behalf of inno­cent Aus­tralians who don’t have the resources to take on com­pa­nies like Face­book,” For­rest said in his lawsuit.

Fol­low­ing Forrest’s crim­i­nal suit, the Aus­tralian Com­pe­ti­tion & Con­sumer Com­mis­sion (ACCC) has report­ed­ly start­ed an investigation.

“While Dr. Forrest’s pro­ceed­ings con­cern sim­i­lar adver­tise­ments to those that the ACCC is inves­ti­gat­ing, the ACCC’s inves­ti­ga­tion is sep­a­rate and con­cerns dif­fer­ent ques­tions of law. Dr. Forrest’s pro­ceed­ings have been brought under the Com­mon­wealth Crim­i­nal Code,” ACCC Chair Rod Sims told The Australian.

Forrest’s Lawsuit

For­rest alleged that fake cryp­to invest­ment ads on Face­book used his image to claim that the min­ing bil­lion­aire endorsed cer­tain invest­ment schemes, and it result­ed in many conned peo­ple. Accord­ing to Forrest’s lawyers, Face­book “know­ing­ly prof­its from this cycle of ille­gal ads,” and it amounts to a vio­la­tion of anti-mon­ey laun­der­ing laws.

They also not­ed that For­rest had spent thou­sands of dol­lars since 2019 when these ads start­ed appear­ing to dis­so­ci­ate him­self from the false claims.

In an open let­ter in Novem­ber 2019, For­rest asked Mark Zucker­berg to stop fake ads on Face­book fea­tur­ing his face as an endorse­ment of the cryp­to invest­ment schemes. But there was no appre­cia­ble change in the social media’s ad pol­i­cy, and ads fea­tur­ing celebri­ty tes­ti­mo­ni­als con­tin­ued to appear as spon­sored posts. How­ev­er, the Aus­tralian finan­cial watch­dog cau­tioned investors about fake cryp­to ads and sites with celebri­ty testimonials.

Meta, the par­ent com­pa­ny of social media giant Face­book, offered a clar­i­fi­ca­tion with­out acknowl­edg­ing Forrest’s law­suit. It said, “We don’t want ads seek­ing to scam peo­ple out of mon­ey or mis­lead peo­ple on Face­book – they vio­late our poli­cies and are not good for our community.”

Where is the Problem?

Social media com­pa­nies often blame “cloak­ing” for dubi­ous ads to bypass the checks. Cloak­ing is a process that lets scam­mers show dif­fer­ent con­tent when it’s being reviewed by social media fil­ters, while the actu­al ad to run on the plat­forms could be different.

“I want social media com­pa­nies to use more of their vast resources and bil­lions of dol­lars in annu­al rev­enue to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who are tar­get­ed and fall vic­tim to these scams,” For­rest said in his lawsuit.

“Like Dr. For­rest, we con­sid­er that Meta should be doing more to detect, pre­vent, and remove false or mis­lead­ing adver­tise­ments from the Face­book plat­form so that con­sumers are not mis­led and scam­mers are pre­vent­ed from reach­ing poten­tial vic­tims,” Sims from ACCC said.

Ear­li­er this week, Facebook’s par­ent com­pa­ny Meta revealed dis­ap­point­ing Q4 2021 results, lead­ing to a sub­stan­tial dou­ble-dig­it price decline of its shares in after-hours trading.

Fea­tured Image Cour­tesy of The West Australia

SPECIAL OFFER (Spon­sored)

Binance Free $100 (Exclu­sive): Use this link to reg­is­ter and receive $100 free and 10% off fees on Binance Futures first month (terms).

PrimeXBT Spe­cial Offer: Use this link to reg­is­ter & enter POTATO50 code to get 25% off trad­ing fees.

Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *