Meta is being sued for fraudulent ads on Facebook and Instagram

On Tuesday, the nonprofit Consumer Federation of America filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the way the social networking giant… Scammers On its platforms, it violates consumer protection laws in Washington, DC.

While many online scams involve live operations Awareness For victims by scammers (who are often… themselves Victims of human trafficking are trapped in Scam vehicles),CFA lawsuit It focuses on fraudulent advertising that the CFA claims Meta has profited from and allowed to “spread on its platforms”, despite publicly promising that it takes anti-phishing and anti-fraud measures seriously.

In its complaint, CFA points to ads in the Meta ad library that CFA claims are types of known scams, including several scams that appear to target people by their year of birth and promote $1,400 checks, as well as others advertising free government iPhones.

Speaking with WIRED, Ben Winters, director of artificial intelligence and data privacy at CFA, said others can find more questionable ads simply by searching Meta’s ad library using keywords like “free phone” and “stimulus check.” WIRED’s quick perusal of the ad library on Monday shows more direct ads for “secret tax checks” leading to a website promising to reveal Wall Street’s “recession-proof investing strategy.”

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The CFA is seeking to recover damages and what it says are illegal profits from Meta, as well as business reforms. Winters says more needs to be done to crack down on repeat offenders and screen ads that promise things like free government programs that don’t exist before they’re put in front of consumers.

Meta has faced particular scrutiny because Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — all owned by Meta — are among the most widely used online platforms by Americans, according to a recent Pew Research Center finding. a report. In late 2025, Reuters I mentioned On a set of internal white papers detailing how the company handles fraudulent and blocked user activity, including a May 2025 presentation that estimated its platforms were involved in a third of successful fraud in the United States. Another presentation cited by Reuters claimed that an internal Meta review found that it was “easier to advertise fraud on Meta platforms than on Google.”

One Meta document from 2024 cited by Reuters estimated that the company would earn 10.1 percent of its revenue that year — about $16 billion — from ads that were actually scams or other types of banned content. To put that number in perspective, the F.B.I estimated That in 2024, Americans will lose $16 billion from all cybercrimes. At the time, a Meta spokesman called the estimate “rough and overly comprehensive” and said the trove of documents reported by Reuters “distorted Meta’s approach to fraud and deception” and that actual revenues were lower, but he declined to tell Reuters by how much.

In June 2025, a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general urge Meta is cracking down on Facebook ads that led consumers to WhatsApp groups that were used to carry out investment scams. The letter, signed by New York AG Letiticia James, said Meta’s solutions were not working and that investigators in New York continued to see fraudulent ads months after reporting to Meta.

Since then, the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney’s Office foot Meta’s lawsuit, among other things, alleged that the company not only failed to crack down on fraudulent ads, but charged advertisers higher prices for running ads flagged as potentially fraudulent. This lawsuit is ongoing.

Although the federal government and many states have similar consumer protection laws like the D.C. law that the CFA claims Meta violated, Winters says he’s not holding his breath for the federal government to take action, and while he appreciates the work of state attorneys general, he believes consumers need relief now.

“We appreciate their work and think it’s critical, but we can’t wait for them to act when we don’t see them being able to act as quickly as we need to,” Winters says. “This is why nonprofits and civil society exist in an ideal world, right? To fill gaps where there are gaps.”