Australian billionaire, Andrew Forrest, has filed a criminal case against Facebook, alleging that the social media giant failed to prevent the circulation of fraudulent cryptocurrency ads that featured his image.
Forrest, the billionaire founder and chairman of mining giant Fortescue Metals, alleges that Facebook breached Australia’s anti-money laundering laws for failing to act against cryptocurrency scam ads on its platform featuring celebrities, including himself, according to reports.
Forrest’s suit alleges that Facebook failed to implement proper systems or a culture that would prevent the use of the social platform to carry out such scams. The billionaire and his legal team noted that they believe this would be the first time Facebook would face a criminal charge anywhere in the world, however, in 2019, the company faced a criminal investigation in the U.S. for its data handling practices.
The Magistrates Court of Western Australia will begin hearing the case from March 29, 2022 and if Facebook is found guilty it could face fines and be forced to change its handling of third-party advertising.
The report further disclosed that Forrest has also filed a civil suit against Facebook in California, where the company is headquartered. In that lawsuit he alleges that Facebook “knowingly profits from this cycle of illegal ads”.
It is reported that One victim of the scam in Australia allegedly lost $940,000 because of a fake endorsement featuring Forrest, the lawsuit alleged.
In a statement released to the media, Forrest said: “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”.
In 2019, Forrest publicly criticized Facebook for allowing cryptocurrency scams to proliferate and shared a letter he had sent to the social media giant’s leadership team. In it, Forrest warned that innocent people were losing their life savings after being misled by scam crypto investment ads that falsely used his endorsement and images.
The billionaire’s lawsuit could be another bad news for the company which faces a string of controversies and regulatory investigations across the world. While Facebook could claim safe harbor protections—that ensure that it is not liable for content posted by its users—it is unclear how effective such a strategy might be as Australia attempts to wind down some of those protections, some reports indicated.
Last year, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that he was prepared to make companies like Facebook and Twitter liable for defamatory comments posted by their users.
Meanwhile, In a statement to media, the social media company said that scam ads violated its policies.
“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”.
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