Meta policies fail as scam ads, deepfakes impersonating Nigerian public figures litter Facebook

In mid-April, a sponsored video appeared on the Nigeria Daily Report Facebook page. The video shows a figure of Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, the senator representing Kogi Central at the National Assembly, introducing viewers to a “lucrative” investment scheme.

“I am going to reveal a secret to you…today is your lucky day,” she appeared to have said in the video, a deepfake now seen and liked by over a thousand users on Facebook.

Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan’s figure in the video told viewers they could invest a one-off N430,000 to earn N14 million monthly –a mouth-watering 3,000 per cent monthly return on investment.

“It is important to understand one thing, opportunities like this can’t be opened up to everyone at once,” her figure said in the video.

But the senator didn’t make the video, and she had long disclaimed any endorsement of investment platforms before this video surfaced.

“Although the video looks like me and even sounds like me, it is not real,” she had said about a similar video a month earlier. “It is fabricated and misleading content created to scam unsuspecting members of the public.”

The creators used deepfake technology to create a physical persona of the senator, then uploaded it. The creators also promoted the video to reach more Facebook users.

Meta Ads for fraud

Through Meta, Facebook’s parent company’s advertising platform, anyone can pay Facebook to promote posts to targeted audiences. The scammers who created this video paid for the ads, and the social media platform inadvertently helped them reach more potential victims to defraud.

As traditional advertising in the mass media dwindles due to increased use of social media platforms, tech companies have cashed in on digital advertising, raking in billions of dollars. But these sparsely regulated advertisements have also served as a launchpad for fraudsters farming for new, unsuspecting victims.

The tech giant said it is constantly taking steps to address the scam ads. But critics argue that it has been slow to address the problem because the fraudulent ads continue to generate revenue for the company.

Meta’s own internal documents confirm the social media company earns money from scam ads like this.

Reuters reported last year that Meta internally projected in 2024 that it would earn $16 billion, or about 10 per cent of its overall annual revenue, from running advertising for scams and banned goods.

Internal documents reviewed by Reuters also revealed that Meta charges higher ad rates than rejecting ads when it suspects an advertiser is likely a scammer.

Although Meta’s ad policies state that it doesn’t allow fraudulent or misleading ads, such ads have flooded the social media platform, some of them specifically targeting Nigerians.

“…we don’t allow advertisers to run ads that promote products, services, schemes or offers that use identified deceptive or misleading practices, including scams to take money from people or access personal information,” reads part of Meta’s advertising policy.

However, more deepfake videos impersonating prominent Nigerians have appeared on the social media platform and have remained on the platform months after they were fact-checked.

In May, a deepfake video appeared on the Facebook page Nigeria Daily Bulletin, showing the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress, Peter Obi, asking social media users to invest N350,000 to earn N4.5 million.

“This is not just about making money for some people; it means achieving financial independence earlier than expected,” Mr Obi appeared to have said in the video. “For others, it creates a chance to rebuild savings, support their families and plan for the future with confidence.”

The caption for the video asked social media users to hurry and register as “Registration Is Closing — Only Limited Access Still Available.”

But the link in the video leads to a phoney website –‘welceastming.website.’ The website clones Channels Television’s website, using its emblems, but with false stories about investment platforms.

The website also contains a false interview purportedly conducted by the TV station’s Seun Okinbaloye and Mr Obi. In the interview, the page attributed several comments on the ‘AfriQuantumX’ investment scheme to Mr Obi. The hyperlink on the page leads to a form requesting users’ names, emails and phone numbers.

Meanwhile, the video with the deepfake of Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan is also linked to another fishy website –‘springbunnhopes.online.’

A review of the webpage on a website analysis page, WHOIS, showed that key details about the webpage had been redacted through a privacy service provided by a company named ‘Withheld for Privacy ehf.

‘Withheld for Privacy ehf’ is an Icelandic domain privacy service used by website administrators to protect their personal contact details from public directories.

Meta confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that the ads and deepfake videos violated its policy. But these posts remained on the platform for months. They were only removed in July after this newspaper contacted the social media company, asking if they violated its policies.

“We have reviewed the material shared with us and are taking action on content that violates our policies,” a Meta spokesperson told our reporter in an email.

“It’s against our policies to run ads that deceptively use public figures to try to scam people, and we remove these ads when we detect them.”

The tech giant also told PREMIUM TIMES that it is investing heavily in “trained review teams” to identify and remove such ads.

“This problem isn’t new,” it added. “Scammers use every platform available to them and constantly adapt to evade enforcement. That is why Meta has specialised systems to detect celebrity bait, invests heavily in trained review teams, shares tips on avoiding scams and offers tools to report potential violations.”

Deluge of deepfakes

Deepfake videos of influential Nigerians have flooded Facebook, often used to promote fraudulent investment scams, and in some cases to drive traffic to gambling websites.

Facebook first announced plans to remove deepfake videos in 2020, but such videos have only flooded the platform six years later.

In another deepfake video on Facebook, the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, appeared in her signature Ankara, delivering a speech. The video, which cloned her voice, introduced social media users to an investment scheme where users can invest N380,000 to earn N2,660,000 daily.

“It is real, verifiable and backed by a system designed for your success…I personally assure the safety of your funds and complete confidentiality,” it said.

But Mrs Okonjo-Iweala took to her X handle to warn Nigerians against the video and other investment platforms using AI and deepfakes to impersonate her.

“As I repeatedly said, I never post anything on Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp,” she wrote. “Anything emanating from these sources with my image is not from me. I only post on Twitter/X. I just don’t want people to be duped.”

Dormant FB pages

The page that posted the video –Moonbeam Meadows– remains active on Facebook, but appears dormant. It only featured a few posts and pictures of gardens. It has fewer than 10 posts in all.

It’s similar to the page that shared the deepfake of Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan. The page, Nigeria Daily Report, remains on Facebook, but with no visible activity. Although it ran the video as an ad in April, a search of the page’s ad history on Meta Ads Library turns up empty search results. The Ads Library was supposed to show details of the ads, including the target, for how long they ran and who paid for the ads.

Meta said it removed over 159 million scam ads on Facebook last year alone and took down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram associated with criminal scam centres.

But the pages, featuring the deepfake of Mrs Akpoti-Uduaghan and Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, have remained on the platform for months. Although hidden from the page’s profile, one could still visit it with the link, indicating it has not been taken down by the platform. The post was only taken down in the first week of July, after PREMIUM TIMES contacted Meta, asking if the post violated its policies.

“What they (scammers) do is to hide the post from the public profile of the page, but you can see it as a sponsored ad if you fall into the target audience,” said Nurudeen Akewushola, a fact-checker at FactCheckHub.

Mr Akewushola explained that users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta’s ad-personalisation system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user’s interests.

AI, deepfake impersonation

The platform also said in March that it has deployed Artificial Intelligence to analyse and take down celebrity-bait and brand impersonation.

“Scammers use subtle tricks and deceptive framing that are hard to catch with traditional detection systems,” it said. “Our experts and specialists in combating scams built advanced AI systems that can analyse multiple signals — such as text, images, and the surrounding context to spot a broader range of more sophisticated scam patterns faster and at scale.”

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Despite this, the videos have continued to thrive on Facebook, and many prominent Nigerians have continued to be victims of these deepfakes. The Chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA), Tony Elumelu, the Group Chairman of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia, and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, have all featured in deepfakes used to promote fraudulent investment schemes and posted on Facebook.

Popular journalists like Channel TV’s Seun Okinbaloye and RadioNow’s Kadaria Ahmed have also been victims of these deepfakes.

On several occasions, each of these individuals has distanced themselves from any investment platforms. Yet, new videos promoting new platforms have shown up, with little done by the social media company to curb them.

“It looked and sounded remarkably real, but it was completely fake,” Mr Elumelu said in a statement distancing himself from a deepfake featuring him and used to promote an investment scheme. “This incident highlights a growing and serious threat to digital trust.”

Nigerian fact-checkers have already fact-checked lots of these videos. “(But) it has become very difficult to even fact-check all of these videos,” said Mr Akewushola.

Mr Akewushola, who has fact-checked several similar videos, explained that the sheer scale of such ads overwhelms the fact-checkers who get to work on them frequently.

He said the practice has also become sophisticated as the scammers learn new ways to hide their identities.

Meta told PREMIUM TIMES that the scammers have constantly adapted to evade its scrutiny, but noted that it will continue to intensify efforts to identify and remove them and offer tools for users to report potential violations.

This article was published under the Tech Justice and Platform Accountability Project of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), with support from Luminate.