Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 3): Australian billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest is taking Facebook to court over “scammy” cryptocurrency ads that he alleges used his name to defraud victims.

Cryptocurrency news portal Cointelegraph on Thursday (Feb 3) reported that the Fortescue Metals chairman is accusing Facebook of breaching Australia’s money-laundering laws, claiming that it “knowingly profits from this cycle of illegal ads” that it failed to remove.

The portal stated that an initial hearing in the Western Australian Magistrates court is scheduled for March 28, with a committal hearing expected later in the year.

Forrest is bringing forward the charges under Part 10 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, with the consent of Australia’s Attorney-General, Michaelia Cash.

According to the filings, an Australian victim lost A$952,000 (RM2.84 milllion) after falling for a scam.

The court documents stated that the scam “defrauded victims out of millions of dollars”.

According to the report, Forrest’s lawyers said although they do “not know the precise number or identities of the individuals defrauded by reason of this vicious scam, the scope of the harm is vast”.

They added that Forrest had spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to distance himself from the scam since March 2019, when it first started being promoted on Facebook.

The complaint claims that Facebook’s access to user data has been a leading “contributor to the proliferation of illegal advertisements, ‘fake news’ and other unwanted internet material”.

Forrest added that the company’s failure to remove the fraudulent ads was “criminally reckless”.

Meanwhile, Cointelegraph reported a spokeswoman for Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, telling The Australian daily that it is taking a “multifaceted approach to stop these ads” by detecting the them, blocking the fraudulent advertisers, and in some cases, taking court action.

Forrest, however, believed that the social media giant should be doing more to prevent fraud from being spread on its platform.

Since the scammers are mostly located overseas, Forrest said they “can’t be easily tracked down”.

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