While many online scams involve direct access by scammers to victims (who are often victims of human trafficking themselves ensnared in the scam), CFA’s lawsuit focuses on fraudulent advertising, with CFA alleging that Meta profited from and allowed advertising to “proliferate on its platforms” despite publicly promising that it seriously cracked down on fraud and scams.
In its complaint, CFA points to ads found in Meta’s ad library that CFA claims are a type of well-known scams, including several that target people based on their birth year and tout $1,400 checks, as well as other scams that advertise free government iPhones.
Speaking with WIRED, Ben Winters, CFA’s director of AI and data privacy, says others can find more questionable ads by searching Meta’s ad library using key terms like “free phone” and “promotional check.” A quick check of WIRED’s ad library on Monday shows that more live ads for a “secret tax investigation” lead to a website that promises to expose “Wall Street’s anti-recession investment strategy.”
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to trade reforms, the CFA is also trying to recover losses and what it calls illegal profits from META. Winters says there’s more to be done to remove repeat violators and investigate ads that promise things like free government programs that don’t exist before they’re placed in front of consumers.
Meta has faced particular scrutiny because Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — all of which are owned by Meta — are among the most widely used online platforms by Americans, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. In late 2025, Reuters reported on a set of internal meta documents detailing how the company dealt with fraud and prohibited user activity, including a May 2025 presentation that estimated that its platforms were involved in a third of all successful scams in the US. Another presentation cited by Reuters alleged that an internal Meta review found that “it is easier to advertise scams on the Meta platform than on Google.”
A 2024 Meta document 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 prohibited content. To put that figure into perspective, the FBI estimated that in 2024, Americans lost $16 billion from all Internet crimes. At the time, a Meta spokesperson called the estimate “gross and overly inclusive” and said the set of documents reported by Reuters “distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams” and that actual revenues were lower, but declined to tell Reuters by how much.
In June 2025, a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general urged Meta to ban Facebook ads that lead consumers to WhatsApp groups that were used to conduct investment scams. The letter, which was signed by New York AG Letitia James, said that Meta’s solutions were not working and that investigators in New York continued to see scam ads months after Meta submitted the report.
Since then, the US Virgin Islands Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging, among other things, that the company not only failed to crack down on scam ads, but also charged advertisers higher rates for running ads flagged as likely to be fraudulent. That case is going on.
Although the federal government and many states have consumer protection laws similar to the D.C. law that CFA alleges 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 absolutely vital, but when we haven’t seen them able to act as quickly as we need, we can’t wait for them to act,” says Winters. “That’s why nonprofits and civil society exist in an ideal world, right? To fill the gaps where there are gaps.”
<a href