Media magnate, John de Mol, filed a lawsuit against Facebook yesterday. He wants Facebook to take measures against fake ads about bitcoin (BTC) with his name and photo on it. Talpa Networks, the media company of the Mol, has announced this. At the beginning of April, the Fraud Help Desk announced that € 1.7 million in damage had been reported regarding these false bitcoin advertisements.

The advertisements include clickbait-like fake quotes from famous Dutch people (Dutch celebrities) such as Humberto Tan, Waylon, Alexander Klöpping and also John de Mol. According to De Mol, Facebook would not do enough to prevent these fraudulent advertisements. He says in a statement that Faceboook is contrary to his own advertising policy and does not comply with European regulations:

I gave the company the opportunity to start the conversation and take action, but I ran into a wall of unwillingness. Facebook must finally stop these fake ads in the interest of all those who are being cheated over and over again.

Presenter, Alexander Klöpping, has been warning about these practices on social media for some time. He even changed his name on Twitter to Alexander * BITCOIN ADS HIS FAKE * Klöpping. Former actor Ruud Feltkamp, ​​who was on CES 2019 with his company Cryptohopper, recently announced that he had been the victim of this type of fake ads. He says that he supports John de Mol's summary proceedings, but does not expect much from it:

I think he is not going to be happy with the answer, because the judge cannot do much with this either. But as the Netherlands we know again what Facebook is doing wrong and I am very happy about that.

A Facebook spokesperson says that the company has been working for a long time to keep this type of advertising out, but he did not want to go into the charges. John de Mol added the following to his statement:

I am shocked that people lose their hard-earned money to this scam. My name and image, and those of other famous Dutch people, are being misused to fool ignorant consumers. Everyone understands that we think that is terrible.

The above story is reminiscent of the many fake Twitter pages of last year where the name and face of celebrities like Elon Musk were used to give away so-called cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH).