{"id":516900,"date":"2026-03-03T23:03:29","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/516900\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T23:03:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:03:29","slug":"scam-ads-on-meta-enabled-large-scale-looting-of-australians-savings-forrest-claims-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/516900\/","title":{"rendered":"Scam ads on Meta enabled large-scale looting of Australians\u2019 savings, Forrest claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta allegedly deleted crucial evidence in a landmark US lawsuit brought by mining billionaire Andrew \u201cTwiggy\u201d Forrest, who says the tech giant\u2019s advertising systems helped criminals loot Australians\u2019 savings at industrial scale.<\/p>\n

The US civil case<\/a> is the highest-profile legal challenge to date to the way Meta\u2019s advertising machine handles scam content, and its outcome could reshape the rules for tech platforms globally.<\/p>\n

\"AndrewAndrew Forrest is leading the legal challenge. <\/p>\n

Forrest\u2019s fight began in 2021 when he sued Meta in a California court after years of having his face used on fraudulent crypto ads on Facebook and Instagram, which were allegedly used to lure ordinary Australians into handing over their savings to criminals.<\/p>\n

Forrest\u2019s legal team argues that Meta is not merely a passive bulletin board for fraudsters, but that its automated, AI-driven ad tools \u2013 such as its \u201cAdvantage+\u201d system \u2013 actively generate and amplify scam content. Advertisers supply basic text, images and video, they say, and Meta\u2019s software then rewrites headlines, highlights key phrases, crops and augments images and selects thumbnails using generative AI to make the pitches more enticing before its targeting systems push those ads at users most likely to click \u2013 including vulnerable investors in Australia.<\/p>\n

In US legal filings viewed by this masthead, Forrest accuses Meta of ruining ad data crucial to the case by failing to preserve any final versions of nearly 30,000 scam ads that misused his name and image, despite being sent a letter in August 2019 warning of impending litigation and demanding it \u201cpreserve all data about the advertisements\u201d.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"After<\/a><\/p>\n

Forrest\u2019s claims carry echoes of one of Australia\u2019s most notorious document destruction scandals. In 2002, Victorian Supreme Court judge Geoffrey Eames found that law firm Clayton Utz and client British American Tobacco had systematically destroyed thousands of scientific documents to deny dying cancer patient Rolah McCabe a fair trial \u2013 a finding that, while overturned on appeal, led to law reform and a reckoning over corporate evidence destruction.<\/p>\n

Meta plans to argue that Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act \u2014 which shields platforms from liability for third-party content \u2014 protects it from Forrest\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

But Forrest\u2019s lawyers say Meta let key databases keep auto\u2011deleting and now can\u2019t show what the scam ads actually looked like on screen, or exactly how its systems changed the original ad material before people saw it.<\/p>\n

Without that data, Forrest says, he cannot rebut Meta\u2019s argument that anything unlawful came solely from rogue advertisers.<\/p>\n

\"MetaMeta denies wrongdoing and has been granted extra time to respond. A hearing has been set for April 16.
\nAPRelated Article\"Andrew<\/a><\/p>\n

Forrest is asking US District Judge P. Casey Pitts to find Meta violated federal evidence preservation rules and to impose sanctions that would effectively sink its Section 230 defence. He wants the judge to find sufficient doubt about Meta\u2019s claim to legal immunity that a jury must decide it; to stop Meta arguing that gaps in the record are Forrest\u2019s problem; and to tell jurors they can assume Meta\u2019s ad tools were switched on and working at full power on the scam ads for which the detailed data is now missing.<\/p>\n

In a February 24 hearing, fellow judge Virginia DeMarchi ordered Meta to explain what, if any, fraud or scam review it carries out after an advertiser hits \u201cpublish\u201d but before it is delivered users. The judge also ordered Meta to explain any internal \u201cscoring\u201d it uses to rate the likelihood an advertisement breaches its own scam policies, and to report back on what it has produced.<\/p>\n

Meta denies wrongdoing and has been granted extra time to respond. A hearing has been set for April 16. The company also told the court it has acted diligently in discovery and pushed back on Forrest\u2019s spoliation claims, saying it does not routinely store every final ad impression and that some of the data he wants either had not existed in the form he describes or was unduly burdensome to retrieve.<\/p>\n

\"AndrewAndrew Forrest is not the only famous Australian used by fraudsters in their scam ads.Nathanael Scott<\/p>\n

Roughly one-tenth of Meta\u2019s total revenue comes from scam ads and banned goods, according to internal documents reported by Reuters in November 2025. They showed Meta projected it would earn roughly $US16 billion ($22.6 billion) in 2024 – about 10 per cent of its annual revenue – from ads for scams and banned goods, with one internal slide estimating the company was serving users 15 billion \u201chigher risk\u201d scam ads every day across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta has called the figures \u201crough and overly inclusive\u201d, saying the analysis was done to justify planned integrity investments.<\/p>\n

Australians lost more than $2 billion to scams in 2024 according to the National Anti-Scam Centre\u2019s combined data. Globally, losses topped $1.4 trillion according to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s competition watchdog the ACCC is running its own Federal Court case accusing Meta of profiting from scams including a scheme that used images of former NSW premier Mike Baird to lure victims into bogus crypto investments. That case is still before the courts.<\/p>\n

Meta and Forrest were contacted for comment. The case continues.<\/p>\n

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"DavidDavid Swan<\/a> is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-516900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}