Fortescue Metals boss, Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest, has launched criminal proceedings against Facebook claiming the social media giant failed to stop clickbait advertising scams using his image.

The action alleges the tech giant breached federal anti-money laundering laws and is being taken in the Magistrates Court of Western Australia, Dr Forrest’s home state.

It is the first time Facebook, rebranded as Meta last year, has faced criminal charges globally, Dr Forrest says.

The scam ads use the mining magnate’s image and other well-known Australians to promote cryptocurrency schemes, he claims, and have appeared on the platform since 2019.

Dr Forrest has made repeated requests asking Facebook to prevent the use of his image, including an open letter to founder Mark Zuckerberg in November 2019.

The Australian billionaire said he is concerned about innocent Australians being scammed by criminal syndicates through clickbait advertising on social media.

“This action is being taken on behalf of everyday Australians – mums and dads, grans and grandads,” he said in a video statement on Thursday.

“Innocent Australians who have worked all their lives to gather their savings so they might retire as we all hope to in comfort, and not to have those hard-earned savings swindled away by people who just simply could not care less.”

The criminal charges have been brought under the Commonwealth Criminal Code with the consent of the Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, he said.

They allege Facebook was “criminally reckless” by taking insufficient steps to stop criminals from using the platform to defraud innocent users and failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its system being used to commit crimes.

Dr Forrest, who was worth an estimated $27.25 billion in mid-2021, said he wants social media companies to use their vast resources to protect vulnerable people being targeted by the scams.

“Social media is part of our lives like newspapers, like publications, like roads, like hospitals,” he said.

“But we all are responsible. Everything I just named has deep legal responsibilities except many players in social media. The time has come to call that to account.”

An initial hearing in the WA Magistrates Court will be held on March 28. A civil case has also been filed against Facebook in California.

A Meta spokesman declined to comment on Dr Forrest’s WA court action as “an active legal matter”, but said the company did not want ads on Facebook seeking to scam people out of money or mislead them.

“They violate our policies and are not good for our community,” they said in a statement.

“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.

“We’re committed to keeping these people off our platform.”

AAP

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