Mining billionaire Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest has launched criminal proceedings against Facebook, now known as Meta, for its alleged role in facilitating clickbait advertising that defraud victims.
Forrest launched the criminal proceedings in the Magistrates Court of Western Australia, alleging the tech giant has committed offences against Australia’s anti-money laundering laws.
The action is being taken on behalf of everyday Australians who have lost money to clickbait advertising scams on Facebook and it's the first time the tech giant has faced criminal charges.
The charges allege Facebook was criminally reckless by not taking sufficient steps to stop criminals from using its social media platform to send scam advertisements to defraud Australian users.
It is alleged such scam advertisements, which have used Forrest’s image and claim to promote cryptocurrency investment schemes, have appeared on Facebook since March 2019. It is also alleged that Facebook failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its systems being used to commit crime.
“I’m doing this because I’m concerned about innocent Australians being scammed through clickbait advertising on social media,” Forrest says.
“I’m committed to ensuring that social media operators don’t allow their sites to be used by criminal syndicates.
“This action is being taken on behalf of those everyday Australians – Mums and Dads, Grans and Grandads – who work all their lives to gather their savings and to ensure those savings aren’t swindled away by scammers. I’m acting here for Australians, but this is happening all over the world.
“I want social media companies to use much more of their vast resources and billions of dollars in annual revenue to protect vulnerable people – the people who are targeted and fall victim to these horrible scams with their hard-earned savings.
“Social media is part of our lives, but it’s in the public interest for more to be done to ensure fraud on social media platforms is eliminated or significantly reduced.”
The criminal charges are brought under part 10 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code.
The legal action follows requests by Forrest asking Facebook to prevent his image from being used by criminals to scam Australian users, including an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg in November 2019.
An initial hearing before the WA Magistrates Court will be held on 28 March.
Forrest also launched civil proceedings against Facebook in California.
The separate US civil case against Facebook, which was filed in September 2021, seeks injunctive relief and other remedies and is pending in the Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo.
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