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Forrest’s Facebook fight dropped by Australian prosecutors
By Jesinta Burton
Andrew Forrest’s legal battle to hold social media giant Meta to account over the proliferation of scam ads using his likeness on Facebook has been dealt a major blow.
The Commonwealth filed a notice of discontinuance on all charges in the case on Friday morning, putting an end to the mining magnate’s two-year-long court crusade in Perth.
The case has been dropped by the prosecution. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions lawyer Tahlia Zerafa told the District Court the federal body had made the decision after assessing the evidence behind the three charges of recklessly dealing with the proceeds of crime.
The court consented to receiving the notice and Meta was discharged within a matter of minutes.
Forrest launched the case in 2022, claiming the trillion-dollar company had blatantly refused to address fraudulent content on its site, including deepfake crypto scams and get-rich-quick schemes featuring his image. The DPP formally took over in December 2023.
The billionaire branded Friday’s decision a “tragedy” for the innocent victims who had been duped by the sophisticated scam and said it demonstrated the social media giant was beyond the law in Australia.
In a statement, Forrest, who was mulling further legal action, vowed to campaign for urgent law reform to allow action against foreign-owned social media platforms like Facebook for facilitating scams, which cost Australians more than $3 billion a year.
Outside court, one victim — who requested to remain anonymous — revealed she had lost more than $600,000 in retirement savings to the crypto scam in 2019 after believing the advertisement to be genuine.
The victim took the matter to Canberra with Forrest’s help, meeting with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to discuss the need for a major overhaul of the law.
The victim — who requested to remain anonymous — revealed she had lost more than $600,000 in retirement savings to the crypto scam.Credit: Jesinta Burton.
The woman said she was disheartened by the DPP’s decision to abandon the pursuit, which she believed reinforced just how far behind Australia was in tackling the issue.
“Shame on them [Facebook]… you can’t make money on someone else’s tragedy,” she said.
“The Australian law doesn’t see this as a crime — the message I got when I approached the authorities was that I didn’t use my brains and I should have known it was too good to be true.
“It just goes to show Australia has a long, long way forward to address the major, major issue — which I would call an attack on Australia. The government has to do something.”
Forrest had released a video expressing concern about deepfake videos featuring his image just hours ahead of the Perth hearing, where he sought to have Meta held liable for its alleged failure to remove and prevent the ads.
And it came ahead of a second hearing in a Californian civil court, where Forrest’s lawyers are challenging the tech giant claim it is shielded from liability via a 30-year-old publishers’ immunity law buried in the Communications Decency Act.
A judge is expected to review Forrest’s evidence before ruling on whether the matter should go to trial.
“I’ve repeatedly asked Facebook to remove the thousands of scam ads featuring my image, but they continue to proliferate, with Facebook’s knowledge, on their paid advertising campaigns,” Forrest said in the video released on Friday.
“This law, this well-meaning law going back into the dark ages, well before the digital platforms even existed, actually gives full immunity for the content published on any of the company’s platforms, designed, of course, to help the internet.
“But it doesn’t, it overrides democracy all over the world. This law means that these tech companies can publish the actions of criminals on their platform because they’re getting money for it and turning the other way.”
Forrest used the video as a call to action for the courts, arguing it was crucial Facebook knew it was accountable not just to the American law, but to Australia’s, too.
And he called on the social media companies to use their deep pockets to safeguard their users, particularly when it came to content designed to swindle those most vulnerable.
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