Santa Clara County accused tech giant Meta of knowingly permitting scam ads and misleading consumers about its anti-scam policies in a complaint filed Monday in Santa Clara Superior Court. 

The county alleges that Meta “chooses profits over proven scam-prevention methods,” “contributes to the creation, optimization, and targeting of scam ads” and “deceives the public and breaks its promises” in scam prevention. Meta is further accused of intentionally preserving scams above a certain profitability margin and misleading legitimate advertisers.

These claims constitute violations of several California statutes and codes governing business practices. The county is seeking civil penalties, restitutions and an enjoinment of Meta’s behavior.

Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti told The Daily that the lawsuit centered around “accountability.” 

“We think we have a special duty, being a civil prosecutor in the Silicon Valley, to hold Big Tech in Silicon Valley accountable to the law,” said LoPresti, who filed the suit. He added that the county “felt compelled to take on the system as a whole,” in order to address the “broader systemic issues” of Meta’s advertising harms.

Ad revenue has been enormously important for Meta, comprising nearly 90% of the company’s total income. Combining its user base of nearly 4 billion with a potent and personalized algorithm, the Facebook and Instagram parent company has generated much of its revenue through advertising in reels, posts and user feeds. By the end of 2026, Meta is expected to make over $243 billion from its advertisements, topping fellow digital giant Google. Critics have argued that the company’s lucrative revenue stream harms users, citing examples ranging from illegal medical products to deepfake marketing campaigns.

The Daily has reached out to Meta for comment.

Much of the county’s complaint is also grounded in Jeff Horwitz’s Pulitzer-winning 2025 investigation of leaked internal Meta documents. Horwitz’s report found that the tech giant had knowingly allowed over 3 billion users to be exposed to 15 billion fraudulent or illegal advertisements per day in order to increase its bottom line. The report also concluded that $16 billion — nearly 10% of Meta’s 2024 revenue — had come from such advertising. Meta has denied those claims.

“When you’re pushing out 15 billion scam ads a day to 3.5 million active daily users, it’s just hard to get your mind around anything much bigger than that,” LoPresti said. “It’s a battle worth fighting.” 

The County’s case partly rests on alleged misrepresentation. “What they’re telling the public is that they are protecting you,” said LoPresti. “When, in fact, the internal documents that we point to in our complaint and our allegations tell a very different story.” LoPresti specifically referenced Horwitz’s reporting, which found that Meta disbanded several anti-scam measures that had demonstrated effectiveness on internal tests. 

According to Avi Josefson, an attorney working on the case and a member of the County’s special counsel, “the extent of Meta’s decision to downplay or limit its fraud prevention tools, while expressly basing those decisions on the impact of fraud prevention on its ad revenues, brings a really strong case to Meta responsible for the frauds that are proliferating on its platforms.” Josefson added that many of Meta’s AI tools helped “optimize, create, and target” ads, creating numerous pathways for harms to users. 

Meta has described Horwitz’s original reporting as “misleading” and “[presenting] a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams.” The company told the San José Spotlight that it “aggressively [fights] scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services.”

Meta has vowed to defend itself against the suit.