The founder of MoneySavingExpert sued Facebook for fake advertising

Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert, is suing Facebook because the platform refused to remove fake ads until Lewis formally reported the violation to relevant advertising regulators.

However, UK advertising regulators are unable to take action against the alleged scammers because the ads are posted outside the country.

Lewis said that Facebook has been running ads for over a year with his name and photo, which Lewis himself did not publish, encouraging investors to invest in binary trading, in which investors bet on whether the value of an asset will be higher or lower than a set price in the future. More often than not, this type of trading turns out to be a scam, with losses exceeding £87,000 per day, according to Action Fraud. 

In his blog, Lewis called binary trading “financially dangerous and unprofitable.” He also wrote about a woman who recently lost £100,000 to scammers. “I have been fighting for over a year to get Facebook to stop scammers from using my personal data for such operations. It bothers me every time a new victim invests money to scammers, thinking they are investing it in me,” Lewis said.

“It’s time to hold the company accountable. Facebook claims it is a platform, not a publisher - but this is not just a post on a web forum, it is paid to publish, publicize and promote advertising, which in this case is fraudulent.

Facebook must comply with the law, says Mark Lewis, a lawyer at law firm Seddons, which is representing Martin Lewis. “He cannot hide outside the UK and be considered untouchable.”

Martin Lewis is going to sue Facebook for such an amount of fines that the company will be damaged and which cannot be written off as a cost of doing business. Martin will donate the money he wins to charities that fight fraud.

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According to http://www.itpro.co.uk