Creator of Big Brother sues Facebook over fake get-rich-quick ads

ByCraig Haley

The creator of Big Brother and The Voice is the latest public figure to take Facebook to court over the social networks inability to tackle get-rich-quick trading scams that use the identities of celebrities to help trick users.

Facebook is – and has been for a while – awash with scam adverts that appear in its sponsored adverts platform (meaning the scammers pay Facebook to show users adverts) that lead to fake news reports promoting scams that claim visitors can get rich with online trading. Often these scams use the names of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin to add authenticity.

And another method of adding authenticity is that the scams also falsely claim to have been endorsed or created by well-known public figures.


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One of those public figures to have had their identity hijacked by these scams was Martin Lewis, the UK based “money saving expert”. He filed a lawsuit against Facebook since he claimed the adverts damaged his reputation when victims thought he was genuinely involved with the schemes. He dropped the lawsuit when Facebook agreed to donate money to a “scam action” initiative as well as implement a more effective method of reporting the scams before May 2019 (something we reported last week hadn’t been done.)

Now the latest figure to take Facebook to court is John de Mol, the Dutch biollionaire behind the original Big Brother series and co-founder of production company Endemol. Just like Lewis, de Mol’s lawyer has claimed the fake Facebook ads are hurting his reputation as victims believe that he is involved with the scams.


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Figures well known in the business world are often used by these scammers since a common ploy is to claim that such business celebrities have developed software that can make anyone rich. However such software doesn’t really exist, and victims are forwarded to unregulated trading platforms where they’ll be asked to make hefty investments which they’ll more than likely lose.

Facebook has said it will do more to remove such scams from their sponsored adverts platform, but not only is the social network still failing to purge these adverts, they still can’t seem to remove them even after they’re reported by their own users.

A judge overseeing the case has advised both sides to reach a settlement over the case. But the real question is how many lawsuits and settlements will it take before Facebook finally takes meaningful action on this front.

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