The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has filed a lawsuit against Meta, Facebook's parent company, for allegedly running misleading celebrity scam ads.
The regulator claims the ads promoted crypto investments and money-making schemes on behalf of well-known Australians who had nothing to do with the projects in question.
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According to the institution, the ads contained links that took Facebook users to a fake news article that included supposed statements from the public figure featured in the ad.
The scammers would then ask users to sign up, after which the scammers would contact users and try to convince them to invest in bogus schemes.
Rod Sims, head of the regulator, said:
"When a user clicks the link in an ad and visits the ad's landing page, those visits generate substantial revenue for Facebook."
The ACCC claims Meta did nothing to prevent these fraudulent ads from being served.