Meta just escalated its war on platform fraud, filing lawsuits against four scam operations spanning three countries. The social media giant's legal action targets advertisers who used AI-generated deepfakes and celebrity impersonation to run fraudulent ads reaching users across Facebook and Instagram. The move comes as Meta deploys new AI tools to detect cloaking techniques that hide scam content from automated review systems, marking a shift from purely technical enforcement to aggressive legal pursuit of bad actors.
Meta is taking scammers to court. The company announced today it's filing lawsuits against four deceptive advertising operations that weaponized AI-generated celebrity likenesses and sophisticated cloaking techniques to run fraudulent campaigns across its platforms. The legal offensive comes just weeks after Meta worked with UK and Nigerian law enforcement to dismantle a scam center that resulted in seven arrests.
The lawsuits expose how scammers are increasingly turning to deepfake technology and what Meta calls "celeb-bait" tactics. In Brazil, the company is going after Vitor Lourenço de Souza and Milena Luciani Sanchez for allegedly using altered celebrity images and voices to push bogus healthcare products. A separate Brazilian operation - B&B Suplementos e Cosméticos Ltda. and its principals - went further, according to Meta's complaint, creating deepfakes of a prominent physician to advertise unregulated healthcare products while simultaneously selling courses teaching others the same deceptive methods.
The scope extends beyond Latin America. China-based Shenzhen Yunzheng Technology Co. allegedly deployed celeb-bait ads targeting users in the US and Japan, funneling victims into fake investment groups. Meta's technical enforcement already suspended payment methods, disabled related accounts, and blocked domain names associated with these operations, but the lawsuits signal the company wants financial damages and permanent injunctions.
