PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island has become the first state to take Meta to court over fraudulent advertising, with Attorney General Peter F. Neronha filing a lawsuit in Providence County Superior Court that accuses the social media company of profiting from scam ads it promised to stop.
The complaint argues that Meta kept running ads for fake investments, bogus Medicare and Social Security benefit offers, impersonation schemes and risky health supplements because those ads brought in large amounts of money, even as the company told the public it had strong tools to catch them.
The state also claims Meta did more than host the ads. According to the filing, the company offered design help, audience targeting and delivery tools that let scammers find and repeatedly reach people most likely to respond, with older residents among the hardest hit.
The case is brought under the Rhode Island Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The attorney general is asking the court for penalties and an order requiring changes in how the company handles these ads.
Neronha said companies of any size that take advantage of Rhode Island consumers will be held to account by his office. A similar case was filed earlier by Santa Clara County in California.
Among the claims in the filing: the company served roughly 15 billion obviously fraudulent ads to users each day, and ads the company itself flagged as carrying higher legal risk produced about $7 billion a year in revenue. The state says the company knew those figures.
The complaint also says Meta told consumers and regulators it had built effective systems to find and remove scam ads, but in practice ignored internal findings of fraud and in some cases declined to roll out tools that would have caught the ads.
For Rhode Island residents, the case centers on ads that reached local users, including seniors who lost money after responding to offers they saw on the company’s platforms. The attorney general’s office handles consumer protection cases under state law.
The allegations have not been proven in court, and the case now moves through Superior Court in Providence.
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