Australian billionaire and mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest has launched a criminal case against Facebook, alleging the social media giant failed to prevent false cryptocurrency advertisements that used his image.
Mr Forrest argued in the case lodged in the Western Australia Magistrates Court that the social media platform breached Australia’s money laundering laws by failing to prevent false advertisements.
“The three charges filed in Australia allege Facebook was criminally reckless by not taking sufficient steps to stop criminals from using its social media platform to send scam, fraudulent and deeply dishonest advertisements to fraud Australian mums and dads and innocent users,” the billionaire told local news outlets.
“This legal action follows many attempts by me asking Facebook to prevent my image from being used by criminals to scam Australian users, innocent mums and dads, hard-working Australians, and hard-working people around the world,” said the chairman of the Fortescue Metals Group.
He alleged Facebook, which rebranded to Meta last year, “failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its systems being used to commit crime”.
“It is alleged such scam advertisements which have used my image and the image of other well-known Australians and claim to promote cryptocurrency investment schemes and these have appeared on Facebook since March 2019,” Mr Forrest added.
In a statement, he said the “world-first (sic)” action was taken on behalf of “everyday Australians” to protect their savings from being “swindled away by scammers”.
“I’m concerned about innocent Australians being scammed through clickbait advertising on social media,” he said.
The criminal charges are brought under Part 10 of Australia’s Commonwealth criminal code with the consent of the Commonwealth Attorney-General, the billionaire said, adding that a separate civil proceeding was also launched in California against the company last September.
The case’s initial hearing is expected to be held in the Western Australia Magistrates Court on 28 March.
In a statement, a spokesperson from Meta reportedly said the social media platform does not want ads seeking to scam people out of money or mislead people on Facebook.
“We take a multifaceted approach to stop these ads, we work not just to detect and reject the ads themselves but also block advertisers from our services and, in some cases, take court action to enforce our policies,” the spokesperson told ABC News.
