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Meta Platforms filed lawsuits Thursday against multiple individuals and companies in Brazil and China, accusing them of deploying artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes of celebrities to run fraudulent advertising campaigns across its platforms, the company said in a statement.
The suits target what Meta described as “four scam advertisers who impersonated well-known celebrities and brands to deceive and defraud people.” The defendants span two continents and a range of alleged schemes, from fake healthcare endorsements to counterfeit luxury goods and sham investment clubs.
In Brazil, Meta named two companies — B&B Suplementos e Cosméticos and Brites Academia de Treinamento — along with two unnamed individuals. The complaint alleges they ran a coordinated operation that fabricated video likenesses of a prominent physician to market healthcare products that had not received regulatory clearance. Brites, according to Meta’s statement, went further, selling instructional courses that taught the same deceptive methods to others.
Among those whose image was allegedly misused was Drauzio Varella, a widely known Brazilian oncologist and public health communicator. Varella confirmed the unauthorized use of his likeness and welcomed the legal action in principle, though he was pointed in his assessment of its scope. He told the O Globo newspaper it amounted to “a drop in the ocean of fraud against public health.” He also held Meta’s platforms directly accountable, describing them as “partners in the fraud” given their role in distributing the content. “They earn billions by spreading this and ensuring the video reaches as many people as possible,” he told the paper.
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Meta separately sued two Brazilian individuals — Vitor Lourenco de Souza and Milena Luciani Sanchez — on similar grounds, though the company’s statement offered limited detail on the specific allegations against them.
In China, Meta’s target was Shenzhen Yunzheng Technology, a Shenzhen-based firm accused of running what the company called “celeb-bait” advertisements designed to steer users in the United States, Japan, and elsewhere into fraudulent investment groups. The scheme, Meta said, was part of a broader fraud operation rather than an isolated advertising violation.
The fourth action named Ly Van Lam, a Vietnamese company, over the publication of fake advertisements impersonating the French luxury brand Longchamp.
The lawsuits are the latest in a series of legal actions Meta has brought against operators allegedly running scam campaigns through its advertising infrastructure. The company has in recent years pursued similar cases involving pig-butchering fraud, fake customer service accounts, and coordinated inauthentic behavior, often targeting actors in Southeast Asia and China.
The cases reflect a growing challenge for large platform operators as generative AI tools lower the barrier to producing convincing synthetic media. Voice cloning, face-swapping software, and AI-generated video have been documented in scam operations across multiple countries, with public health figures, financial commentators, and entertainment personalities among the most frequently targeted.
Meta did not disclose in its statement whether any of the defendants had been served or whether it had sought emergency injunctive relief to remove the content. The company did not specify which courts in which jurisdictions the complaints were filed, nor did it provide an estimated financial value for the alleged harm.
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Varella’s characterization of the legal effort as insufficient underscores a tension that regulators and consumer groups have frequently raised: that civil suits brought by platforms, while carrying some deterrent effect, move slowly relative to the pace at which fraud campaigns operate and replicate online.
The defendants named in the Brazilian and Chinese actions have not publicly responded to the allegations.
Meta said the lawsuits were part of its ongoing effort to hold bad actors accountable and deter future misuse of its systems.
No trial dates or preliminary hearing schedules have been announced.
