Ads Inc. it has been shut down, but millions of lives have survived the tools that Facebook users have used to cheat

In the fall of 2019, Facebook sent him a letter to leave and leave Ads Inc. to the San Diego marketing company He bought more than $ 50 million in Facebook ads he used images of celebrities without their permission to get people to sign up for difficult-to-cancel monthly subscriptions.

Ads Inc. responded by dismissing its employees and terminating operations, saying in a statement that it was “suspending the operations of Ads Inc. and its subsidiaries”.

But Facebook has been unable to exclude the company’s remnants from its platform, according to a study by BuzzFeed News with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and an international consortium of journalists led by the Organized Crime and Corruption Project.

Until closing in April, ezlp.io, a web domain previously controlled by Ads Inc., hosted pages that promoted fraud, including counterfeit cryptocurrency investments. economically devastated people in more than 50 countries. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post. The Facebook accounts that the company used to place ads are also still active. These accounts were transferred to a new unknown owner earlier this year, according to a source who was aware of the transaction.

California and Puerto Rico corporate records Ads Inc. the company is still active, but sources say BuzzFeed News sold or otherwise sold the company – including parts of it rented Facebook accounts – and has been asleep since last fall. Ads Inc. It was created by Asher Burke, who died in a helicopter crash in Kenya in March 2019. The company is now owned by his estate, and himself is owned by Brad Burke, Asher’s father. Brad Burke had no response to his wife and daughter via Facebook and emails.

Facebook has vowed to stay away from these types of ads.

“We don’t want people to advertise on Facebook that they want to cheat their money; they are not good for people, they erode trust in our services and they damage our business, “Rob Leathern, Facebook’s director of product management, told BuzzFeed News. in some cases, we take them to court. While enforcement isn’t perfect, we continue to research new technologies and methods to stop these ads and the people behind them. ”

Ads Inc. the ongoing operation of former assets underscores how Facebook cannot completely eliminate scammers.

In July, Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen found his image while an unknown person was using it in an ad that encouraged crypto investment scams. Disappointed, Facebook wrote to EU head of affairs Aura Salla to complain.

“So far we know that this scam is being done in a great way,” Salla wrote in Messenger, apologizing. “The number of these scams is very high because it is impossible to verify them through human labor.”

Prior to its closure, Ads Inc. earned more than $ 1 million in commissions by promoting cryptocurrency trading products that attracted people to financial disaster.

“I have nothing to live for” he said Maj-Britt, a 67-year-old Swedish woman. He lost his life and sold the house to cover losses in a similar one that was left homeless. cryptocurrency investment fraud. (He asked not to publish his full name to protect privacy.)

Victims who sucked the Facebook ads falsely claim that the celebrities made money using automated cryptocurrency trading software with names like Bitcoin Revolution and Bitcoin Code. People were asked to click to enter their personal information. This information was sent to call centers that track you by phone within minutes to request money. The truth is, software doesn’t exist and their profits are a mirror.

Earlier this year, it was published by Dagens Nyheter, OCCRP and other media partners Fraud Factory investigation, Delved into a Ukrainian crypto call center run by a shadow company called Milton Group. After the stories surfaced, a source said he was working to enforce the law when Dagens contacted Nyheter.

“I saw it from a screen [one of] the celebrity ads you used to illustrate your story. This ad was created by Ads Inc., ”they wrote and shared a link to an ezlp.io online database that included images of celebrities using tens of thousands of web pages to promote crypto investment offerings. Ads Inc. information to people they were destination sheets sent to convince you of personal delivery.

The company made no effort to disguise the property. The home screen displayed the “Welcome to Ads Inc.” home screen. multiple sources confirmed to BuzzFeed News that Ads Inc. that he belonged to the company.

The OCCRP found approximately 15,000 pages on ezlp.io that promoted at least 17 different investment offers in 11 languages. Some products have received public warnings from regulators in at least eight countries since 2018. The relationship between Ads Inc., the people who bought its assets and the Milton Group is unclear, but the investment marks found in various cryptographic ezlp.io also appeared in Milton Group documents.

That business seems to be rich. Ads Inc. began promoting cryptographic investments in the second quarter of 2019. At a July 2019 meeting of the company, a slide presentation listed the “crypto” as one of the company’s “celebratory victories,” generating $ 1.15 million in commission earnings that quarter. The document said the crypto has generated a return on investment of 120%, is the company’s vertical return and is a top priority in the next quarter.

Sites Ads Inc. whether he passed the control of the company after it was said that the company wanted to leave the business is not clear. But it was still being updated with new content until dark on April 25, six months after the announcement that Inc. had ceased operations.

Internal discussions obtained by BuzzFeed News on Facebook reveal that the company continues to monitor the activity of former employees of Ads Inc. It is not clear what action was taken.

“My team is still investigating former employees to understand the current state of the operation after the company was disbanded,” a Facebook threat researcher wrote in October on the Workplace, the company’s internal discussion platform.