Leaked Meta documents reveal $16 billion revenue from fraudulent ads and banned products

On November 7, 2025, internal documents from Meta Platforms Inc., the giant behind social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, were revealed by Reuters. The documents disclosed alarming findings about Meta’s revenue, estimating that 10% of the company’s 2025 annual revenue, amounting to $16 billion (approximately 520,000 million baht), would come from ads related to scams and banned products.

The documents, covering data from 2021 to present, show that Meta has consistently failed to identify and stop large volumes of fraudulent advertisements. These ads exposed billions of users to scams in areas ranging from illegal e-commerce, hoax investment schemes, online casinos to the sale of banned medical products.

By the end of 2025, it was estimated that Meta’s platform displayed "higher risk scam advertisements" an average of 15 billion times per day, generating $7 billion annually (around 227,500 million baht). Additionally, 22 billion organic scam attempts were reported daily, further highlighting the scale of the issue.

The severity of the problem was underscored by internal documents, which indicated that Meta’s platforms were involved in 1 in 3 frauds in the U.S. as of May 2025. The fraud-related financial damage in the UK linked to Meta products was reported to be 54% in 2022, double that of other platforms.

Meta’s policy for dealing with suspicious advertisers involves banning them only when the company’s automated systems are 95% confident that fraud is occurring. If confidence is below this threshold, Meta imposes "Penalty Bids", raising ad costs for potentially fraudulent advertisers, acting as an indirect deterrent while reducing the likelihood of fraudulent content being further promoted.

The internal documents also revealed a concerning business incentive: revenue from high-risk ads outweighed potential legal penalties. Meta predicts the maximum fine could be $1 billion (approximately 32,500 million baht), compared to the $3.5 billion (around 113,750 million baht) earned every six months from such ads.

Further insights pointed to Meta executives proposing to Mark Zuckerberg in October 2025 to focus fraud control efforts only on countries with imminent regulatory actions, rather than implementing a comprehensive global crackdown.

Additionally, in the first half of 2025, the team responsible for monitoring ads was prohibited from taking action that could cost the company more than 0.15% of its total revenue, or approximately $135 million (around 4,387 million baht).

In a statement, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the documents seen by Reuters “present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.” The company’s internal estimate that it would earn 10.1% of its 2024 revenue from scams and other prohibited ads was “rough and overly-inclusive,” Stone said. The company had later determined that the true number was lower, because the estimate included “many” legitimate ads as well, he said. He declined to provide an updated figure.

“The assessment was done to validate our planned integrity investments – including in combatting frauds and scams – which we did,” Stone said. He added: “We aggressively fight fraud and scams because people on our platforms don’t want this content, legitimate advertisers don’t want it and we don’t want it either.”

"Over the past 18 months, we have reduced user reports of scam ads globally by 58 percent and, so far in 2025, we’ve removed more than 134 million pieces of scam ad content,” Stone said.

Some of the documents show Meta vowing to do more. "We have large goals to reduce ad scams in 2025," states a 2024 document, with Meta hoping to reduce such ads in certain markets by as much as 50%. In other places, documents show managers congratulating staffers for successful scam reduction efforts.

Sources: Reuters, Thansettakij