Security News > 2021 > July > Facebook Sues 4 Vietnamese for Hacking Accounts and $36 Million Ad Fraud
Facebook on Tuesday revealed it filed two separate legal actions against perpetrators who abused its ad platform to run deceptive advertisements in violation of the company's Terms and Advertising Policies.
"In the second case, the defendants are a group of individuals located in Vietnam who got users to self-compromise their Facebook accounts and ran millions of dollars of unauthorized ads."
The company, along with Mohit Melwani and Vishaal Melwani, also actively blocked complaints and negative reviews shared by users who fell for the scheme, Facebook said, adding it took steps to disable the defendants' accounts and Pages.
Separately, four Vietnamese nationals - Thêm Hữu Nguyễn, Lê Khang, Nguyễn Quốc Bảo, and Pham Hữu Dung - have been accused of exploiting a technique called cookie theft to take over accounts of employees of advertising and marketing agencies, using them to run unauthorized ads worth $36 million.
To achieve this, the individuals developed a malicious Android app called "Ad Manager for Facebook" that prompted the victims into sharing their Facebook login credentials, thereby enabling the defendants to access their accounts and run ads, including some that promoted online scams.
The app has since been removed from the Google Play Store, with Facebook also refunding the impacted victims.