We work aggressively to find and disrupt scams – on and off our platforms. Recently, we worked closely with law enforcement in the UK and Nigeria to help take down a scam center, which resulted in seven arrests. And today, we filed lawsuits against four scam advertisers who impersonated well-known celebrities and brands to deceive and defraud people.

We’ve taken technical enforcement actions against these scammers, which includes suspending their methods of payment, disabling related accounts on our platforms, blocking the domain names for websites they used for their scams, and sharing this information with our industry partners so they can block them, too.

Today’s lawsuits and our ongoing efforts to combat scams send a clear message: those who seek to exploit others on our platforms will be held accountable.

Fighting Celeb-Bait Scams in Brazil and China

Scammers often misuse the images of public figures, such as celebrities and content creators, to trick people into engaging with ads that lead to scam websites. These sites commonly ask people to share their personal information or send money.

Of course, celebrities are featured in many legitimate ads. But because scam ads are designed to look real, they’re not always easy to detect. This scheme, referred to as ‘celeb bait,’ undermines people’s trust and violates our policies.

To fight celeb-bait scams, we 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 around the world.

Today, we filed lawsuits against the following deceptive advertisers for using this tactic:

• Brazil-based Vitor Lourenço de Souza and Milena Luciani Sanchez used altered images and voices of celebrities to promote fraudulent healthcare products.
• Brazil-based B&B Suplementos e Cosméticos Ltda. (Brites Corp), Brites Academia de Treinamento Ltda., Daniel de Brites Macieira Cordeiro, and José Victor de Brites Chaves de Araújo are part of a scam operation that used deepfakes of a prominent physician to advertise healthcare products without regulatory approval and sold courses teaching the same tactics.
• China-based Shenzhen Yunzheng Technology Co., Ltd used celeb-bait ads to target people in the US and Japan, among other countries, as part of a larger fraud scheme that lured people into joining so-called investment groups.

We continue to fight celeb-bait scams like these, and we build product features to protect individual accounts and legitimate businesses against fraud.

Exposing Subscription Fraud and Cloaking

We’re improving our methods for detecting cloaking, a malicious technique that impairs ad review systems by concealing the true nature of a website linked to an ad. In instances like this, a webpage connected to a seemingly legitimate ad displays one version of its content to our ad review system, but shows different content to real users. We block and remove these ads when we detect them, and we share them with our partners so they can take action on their platforms as well.

Our latest tools use AI to help us analyze cloaking and better detect ads that redirect to harmful websites. These tools also help us more quickly reject these ads, and we can more swiftly take action when users report suspected malicious ads.

Today, we filed a lawsuit against Vietnam-based Lý Văn Lâm who used cloaking to circumvent our ad review process. This deceptive advertiser also used scam ads to offer deeply discounted items from well-known brands, such as Longchamp, in exchange for completing a survey. People who engaged with these ads were redirected to websites where they were asked to provide credit card information to purchase items they ultimately never received. Their credit cards also incurred unauthorized, recurring fees: a practice known as subscription fraud.

Our teams worked closely with Longchamp to investigate and stop this scam on our platforms

“Longchamp has a zero tolerance policy and invests a fair amount of resources in combating illicit activities — such as counterfeiting or fraud using our brand — offline and online. For this fight to be efficient, we need to rely on active cooperation between all stakeholders, including intermediaries. We are happy that Meta takes action and demonstrates such cooperation.”

– Maison Longchamp

Combating Abusive Practices

We recently issued cease and desist letters to eight former Meta Business Partners who offered abusive services, including phony “un-ban” or account restoration services and renting access to trusted accounts that helped clients evade our enforcement systems. We will consider taking additional legal action, including litigation, if they don’t comply. 

To help combat this kind of abuse in the future and to protect the integrity of our platforms, we’re reviewing our Business Partner ecosystem and are actively working on enhancing our vetting methods for approving these business partnerships.

Our Ongoing Approach to Stopping Fraud

We continue to improve our detection and enforcement methods and have developed a multi-layered approach to combating fraud, which includes using automated, technical defenses to help protect people on our apps; disrupting criminal scam networks; and strengthening cross-industry partnerships.

For more insights and practical tips to help recognize common scams online, please visit our Scam Prevention Hub.