Meta owns about half a dozen of the world's most popular social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which have become a part of the daily lives of billions of people, have also been found to be used for digital fraud.

More worryingly, the company is aware of this and fraud is being encouraged by the significant revenue generated from fraudulent advertising, according to a recent investigative report by international media outlet Reuters.  According to Reuters, in 2024, Meta earned 10 percent of its total annual revenue from fraudulent advertising and advertising of prohibited content. On the one hand, Facebook talks about user data security, but on the other hand, it displays advertisements of ‘scams’ (fraud) and prohibited content on their ‘walls’. Reviewing Meta’s confidential internal reports from various times, Reuters claims that Meta’s platforms display 15 billion ‘scam ads’ daily.  Annual income from fraudulent advertising

According to Meta’s confidential internal documents obtained by Reuters, the company estimated that in 2024, fraudulent or prohibited advertising would generate 10 percent of its total revenue, or about $16 billion. A December 2024 document states that the company serves 15 billion “high-risk” ads to its users on its platform every day. 

“Most fraudulent ads are those that Meta’s internal warning system can easily identify,” Reuters wrote. “However, the company only blocks ads that its automated system finds to be at least 95 percent suspicious. Even if there are signs of fraud, those ads are not blocked until they are 95 percent certain.” 

Instead, Facebook has been penalizing ads by increasing the price of running them once they are identified as suspicious, Reuters noted. The document says that its goal is to discourage such ads. “Once a user clicks on an ad for fraudulent or restricted content, they are more likely to see similar ads on their wall,” the document says. “Meta’s personalized ad system (algorithm) tries to serve ads that are more relevant to the user’s preferences.” 

In the UK, a similar investigation by regulators last year found that Meta’s platform was used in 54 percent of fraudulent payments, double the share of all other social media platforms combined

 Sandeep Abraham, a “fraud investigator” who once worked as a security researcher at Meta, said the documents exposed a lack of regulation in the advertising industry. “Regulators who don’t accept that banks are profiting from fraud cannot tolerate the same kind of activity happening in the technology industry,” he told Reuters. 

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the documents obtained by Reuters were incomplete and selective. He said reading them alone would misrepresent Meta’s approach to fraud. “The company estimated that 10.1 percent of its revenue in 2024 was from fraudulent and other prohibited ads, including legitimate ads,” Stone said. “The company later revised that number to a much lower number.” However, he did not disclose the latest figure.

Stone said the company is conducting a self-assessment to combat fraudulent ads. The report also mentions Meta’s investment in combating fraudulent ads, he said. “We have been aggressive in combating fraudulent ads because our platform users do not want to see this kind of content,” he said. “Our legitimate advertisers do not want fraudulent ads on the platform, and neither do we.” He said that 58 percent of the ads reported by users have been removed from the social network in the last 18 months. “So far in 2025, we have removed 134 million fraudulent ad content,” he said. 

Some documents also show that Meta is trying to do more to discourage fraudulent ads. A 2024 document states, “Meta aims to eliminate 50 percent of such ads by 2025.” In part of the same document, managers thank staff for their efforts to successfully reduce the number of fraudulent ads. In another part, it is stated that Meta’s network has become a pillar of the global fraud economy. Meta itself has found this through its own research.

In a presentation given by Meta’s security staff in May 2025, it was stated that “one third of all successful frauds in the United States appear to have used the Meta platform.” Meta has also acknowledged that its major competitors do a better job of controlling fraudulent ads. “It is easier to advertise fraudulent ads on Meta than on Google,” states a Meta review report from April 2025. The leaked Meta documents come as regulators around the world are pressuring social media companies to protect their users from online fraud. 

The documents also show that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Meta in the US for financial fraud advertising. In the UK, a similar investigation by the regulator last year found that Meta’s platform was used in 54 percent of fraudulent payment cases, double the share of all other social media platforms combined. Reuters has also asked the SEC and the UK regulator about the report, but they did not respond. 

A report by senior technology journalist Jeff Hurwich, titled “Meta is Earning a Fortune on a Deluge of Fraudulent Ads, Documents Show,” published on November 6, provides an answer to the question of how and why Meta has not adequately addressed the “scam ads.” Journalist Hurwich has previously written about how Facebook prioritizes increasing engagement on its platform over social harmony or democracy. After reporting on the Facebook Files scandal, he won the George Polk Award for Business Reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award. He has written a book called Broken Code, revealing Facebook’s internal strategies.

Meta’s business interests 

Meta is investing heavily in new technologies, including AI, to compete with other companies like Google and Open AI. The company has said it will spend about $72 billion on infrastructure and technology by 2026. Despite the large expenditure, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has claimed to investors that the company’s revenue can cover it. 

“Meta’s advertising business can cover this expense, we have enough capital for it,” Mark said last July. As planned, Meta is building a grand data center in Ohio. It is said to be the size of New York City's Central Park. Meta has also estimated in its internal documents the amount of money it loses by controlling fraudulent ads and the financial penalties it will pay to the government for failing to protect users. The 2025 document clearly states, "Meta aims to reduce illegal advertising revenue in the future, such as fraud, illegal gambling, sexual services and dubious health products. However, reducing this suddenly could affect the business plan."

An internal document states that it could have to pay fines of up to $1 billion annually for failing to protect users. This is much lower than the revenue it generates from fraudulent ads, so it seems that Meta would benefit from paying the fines. "Meta earns $3.5 billion every six months from very high legal risk ads, which is much higher than the fines it would have to pay to any regulatory body," another document from November 2024 states. 

Silence on online fraud 

A 2022 document states, “Meta discovered an account with six members who were claiming to be soldiers deployed to the battlefield. They sent millions of messages to Facebook users in a single week asking for donations. Sextortion was also common on Meta’s platform. In this, cybercriminals lured teenagers to take offensive or confidential sexual photos or videos of them and threatened to make the content public if they did not comply.”

Another document states that the company failed to classify or separate the flood of illegal advertising on social media for at least three years. At that time, fraudsters brought ‘e-commerce’ and various investment schemes to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users. Online casinos and banned drug manufacturers were aggressively promoting. The document states that the company did not invest enough to combat all this while seeing all this happening.

 Meta described such ads as a “less serious problem” or “bad user experience,” meaning that certain users were simply unfortunate enough to see them. A 2023 document indicates that Meta has denied a large number of reports of fraudulent ads, despite users reporting them. That year, security staff estimated that Facebook and Instagram users were filing 100,000 legitimate reports each week, alleging that cybercriminals who were sending them messages were sending them fraudulent ads. However, Meta dismissed about 96 percent of those complaints. Another 2023 document states that “the company aims to address at least 25 percent of complaints in the future.” 

Examples of fraud 

Last October, a Royal Canadian Air Force soldier woke up to find that her Facebook account had been hacked. Shortly after, a photo of her face and a fake employee ID badge was posted on the account. The caption read, “I am so happy to announce that I have received a cryptocurrency certificate.” She immediately complained to Facebook about this, but she told Reuters that she did not receive a response for weeks. 

For several days, her hacked account posted statuses claiming that crypto trading had made her rich, that she had bought land to build a house, and that she encouraged her friends to invest in crypto. After a while, her supervisor filed a complaint with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which provides police services in 11 provinces in Canada. She asked her friends not to communicate with the account and to report it. 

About a month later, a former Canadian army officer, Mike Lavery, called her and said, “I lost $28,000 by investing in crypto. I invested in it thinking I was talking to a trusted friend. But I got scammed.” Lavery, who worked with her a few years ago, said she was extremely embarrassed to see that she had been targeted by cybercriminals when she trusted him. After a long effort, Meta finally took her hacked account offline. However, she says that by then, four other military friends had been scammed. 

Brian Mason, a police investigator in the Canadian city of Edmonton, discovered that 65,000 Canadian dollars had been earned from fraudulent advertising and sent to Nigeria, but it was difficult to get the money back. “It was difficult or impossible to get the money back because it was sent to a Nigerian bank account,” he says. Meta declined to comment on the matter. 

The documents indicate that Meta is slow to take action even when fraudulent advertisers are caught red-handed. “For small advertisers, Meta will only block them after they have received at least eight financial fraud complaints,” the 2024 document adds. “For large advertisers or high-value accounts, Meta will only take action after they have received more than 500 strikes.”