If scam ads make money, who has a reason to stop them? That question sits at the center of a new lawsuit from Rhode Island, and Meta’s answer so far has been a big number and a complaint about the plaintiff’s lawyers.
Attorney General Peter Neronha filed suit against Meta, alleging the company does not do enough to prevent fraudulent ads on its platforms. The complaint goes further than negligence. It claims Meta has held back from stronger action because the scams bring in revenue. Neronha said that, as alleged, Meta “knowingly exposed vulnerable users to fraud and scams, and made enormous profits in doing so.” Rhode Island is the first state to sue on these allegations, according to the AG’s office.
Meta’s response, given to Reuters, leans on volume. Spokesperson Andy Stone said the company has removed more than 159 million scam ads. He also said the attorney general refused to talk with Meta and hired an out-of-state private law firm to “concoct” a lawsuit that ignores the company’s anti-scam work.
Look at that number carefully. 159 million removals tells you how many ads Meta caught. It says nothing about how many ran first, how long they stayed up, or how many people lost money. Takedown counts are a vendor-chosen metric, and they are easy to inflate or shrink depending on what you count.
The revenue angle is what makes this hard to wave away. A 2025 Reuters report found that scam ads across Meta’s networks could be bringing in billions of dollars, possibly as much as 10 percent of the company’s revenue. If that estimate is anywhere near right, the incentive problem is built into the ad business. Fraud and legitimate advertising pay the same.
For users, the privacy angle is easy to miss. Scam ads work because ad targeting works. The same profiling that lets Meta sell precise audiences to legitimate brands lets scammers find people who are older, isolated, or financially stressed. Better ad review would help, but so would asking why those targeting tools are so easy to buy.
This is also not an isolated case. The Consumer Federation of America sued Meta in April, and Santa Clara County in California followed in May. Meta has shut down some of the bad actors behind phony ads, sued the creators of others, and added protections for suspicious messages earlier this year. Those steps are real. But they arrived while regulators and plaintiffs were circling.
Expect more states to follow Rhode Island. Discovery is where this gets interesting, because internal documents could show what Meta knew about scam revenue and when. Until then, treat any ad you see on Facebook or Instagram with suspicion, especially if it promises easy money or uses a celebrity face.