Aussie competition watchdog is investigating Meta because of crypto scam ads

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is looking into Facebook’s parent firm Meta for a long-running series of fraudulent cryptocurrency advertising on the platform.

According to the publication, which is owned by blockchain company Koinex, this week’s move was in response to Cointelegraph’s report that billionaire businessman Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest was pursuing criminal action against Facebook for allegedly including crypto scam advertisements and fakes articles that used his name and image.

Celebrities including Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman have all been defrauded by investment frauds in the past.

The ACCC claims that Meta aided and abetted the crypto con artists in breaching Australian consumer legislation, defrauding customers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The ACCC’s inquiry is independent and focuses on different legal issues, according to Rod Sims, the chair of the commission, in comments to The Australian on Thursday. “The ACCC’s investigation is separate from Forrest’s case because it concerns different questions of law,” he added.

The ACCC will be looking into whether Meta has “riled” consumers in Australia under the Australian Consumer Law, according to a report by news.com.au. The case concerns potential breaches of the Commonwealth Criminal Code in Australia, but the ACCC will also investigate whether Meta has “raised issues.”

“Like Dr Forrest, we consider that Meta should be doing more to detect, prevent and remove false or misleading advertisements from the Facebook platform so that consumers are not misled and scammers are prevented from reaching potential victims.”

Forrest claims that Meta has committed a “criminally reckless” act by failing to take adequate measures to prevent the fraud from being disseminated on its platform. He will file his case before the West Australian Magistrates Court on March 28, with a committal hearing anticipated later in the year.

In 2020, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) issued a warning about fraudulent celebrity-endorsed crypto advertising, including Jackman, Kidman, and even Waleed Aly.

Celebrities such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson have all had their photographs used to promote crypto frauds. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were lost by Australian Facebook users in the scheme, according to The Australian, with one victim claiming they thought it was real because it included Forrest.

“Andrew Forrest is an icon for millions of Australians, and you hold him in high regard; anything involving him, you’d assume is genuine since it comes out via Facebook,” they continued. In 2019, Forrest was one of several Australian celebrities falsely represented as giving testimony for a bogus cryptocurrency.

According to the complaint, a celebrity endorsement for a phony popular news piece touting a fraudulent Bitcoin investment platform was published. According to Cointelegraph , Australian investors lost more than $55 million in fraudulent investments between August and December 2021, with crypto scams accounting for more than 50% of the losses.

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