• by Wendy Davis , October 10, 2025

Meta Platforms has been hit with a lawsuit alleging that it distributed fake ads created by scammers who misappropriated the identities of financial professionals in order to promote fraudulent stock schemes.

In a class-action complaint filed October 7, Florida-based financial advisers John Suddeth and Sara Perkins allege that their names and headshots were wrongly used in ads suggesting that they endorsed Pheton Holdings -- a China-based medical devices company. Those ads allegedly "steered users into WhatsApp 'investment' groups used to perpetrate a pump-and-dump scheme."

Meta Platforms "systematically approved, delivered, amplified, and profited from ads and related promotional content that misappropriated class members’ identities to sell fraudulent securities schemes," Suddeth and Perkins allege in the complaint, brought in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The plaintiffs are seeking to represent a class of all financial professionals whose likenesses were misappropriated in Meta Platforms ads that promoted securities or investment opportunities, from 2023 through the present.

During that time, "a plague of scammers purchased and ran sponsored ads on Facebook and Instagram impersonating real financial professionals like plaintiffs, falsely suggesting those professionals endorse specific securities; the ads then directed users to WhatsApp 'investment' groups administered by the scammers," the complaint alleges.

The plaintiffs also say Meta delivered the "impersonation ads" to millions of U.S. users.

The complaint includes claims that Meta violated a federal false advertising law, as well as Florida and California laws that prohibit the misappropriation of names and likenesses for commercial purposes.

The suit comes several months after 42 attorneys general called on Meta to clamp down on ads that misappropriated images of prominent investors in order to bilk users.

"There have been widespread reports of constituents losing life-changing money," the attorneys general wrote to Meta in June.

"The ease with which these scams can be initiated and disseminated on your platforms, targeting our most vulnerable population, is alarming," they added.

The law enforcement officials specifically urged Meta to "improve its processes," such as by "conducting additional diligence on its advertisers and human reviews of advertisements before they are run."

"If Meta is unable to implement a more effective process, then it should just stop running investment advertisements as a category," the attorneys general said in the letter.

Meta has not yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment on the new lawsuit.

Suddeth and Perkins aren't the only ones suing Meta over phony ads.

Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest has also filed suit against Meta over fraudulent cryptocurrency ads that used his name and image.

Meta argued in that matter that it was immune from suit under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That law broadly protects web companies from lawsuits over material created by third parties -- including by outside advertisers. But Section 230 also has some exceptions, including a judicially created exception that applies when web companies develop illegal content.

U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts in the Northern District of California rejected Meta's bid to dismiss the case, writing that the Forrest's allegations raised a "factual dispute regarding whether Meta's ad systems were neutral tools that anyone could use (or misuse) or whether the tools themselves contributed to the content of the ads."

Former Arkansas Governor and current ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also alleged in a lawsuit against Meta that his name and image were wrongly used in ads on the platform for sell CBD gummies.

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Williams in Delaware recently dismissed Huckabee's complaint, ruling that his allegations, even if proven true, wouldn't show that the company knew it was hosting fake ads.

Huckabee has appealed that ruling to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.