Meta Earned $14.3 Million in 2025 From Medicare Scam Ads Targeting Seniors

Meta collected $14.3 million in ad revenue during 2025 from Medicare-related scam ads aimed primarily at Facebook users aged 65 and older, according to a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The watchdog described the figure as record-setting for this category of fraud.

The report, published in May, examined 90,000 ads in Meta's public ad library placed by 30 known Medicare scammers. Those ads generated 215 million impressions across Facebook — a reach CCDH called "six times the reach of all previous years on record combined." The campaigns concentrated on users in Texas and Florida.

What did the scam ads look like?

The malicious creative fell into several recognizable patterns:

• False promises of "free benefits" for Medicare recipients
• AI-generated celebrity deepfakes endorsing fraudulent offers
• Fabricated enrollment deadlines designed to force quick action

Enforcement, according to CCDH, consistently lagged the damage. Scammer accounts had, on average, 151 ads removed by Meta. "By the time those ads were removed, they had already generated 72 million impressions and earned Meta $3.7 million," the report stated. "Removed ads were replaced with near identical copies. Disabled accounts launched new ones."

That churn-and-replace dynamic matters for advertisers and agencies running legitimate campaigns in health-adjacent categories: it shows Meta's ad review pipeline can be gamed at scale, and it puts pressure on the entire vertical's credibility with older audiences.

What has Meta said?

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone acknowledged the problem in a statement to NBC News: "Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection on our platforms and across the internet."

Stone defended the company's record with hard numbers. "We removed over 159 million scam ads last year alone — 92 percent of which we took down before anyone reported them — launched new tools to protect people, and partnered with law enforcement around the globe to disrupt these criminals," he said.

Those two data points — CCDH's 215 million impressions from just 30 operators against Meta's 159 million takedowns — frame the dispute. Meta argues the enforcement volume proves aggressive action; CCDH argues the revenue figures prove the incentives point the other way.

How big is the broader scam-ad economy?

The $14.3 million figure sits inside a much larger pattern. FTC data released in April shows Americans lost $2.1 billion to social media scams in 2025, with 30 percent of financial-scam victims saying they were first targeted on a social platform.

A Reuters investigation previously reported that Meta earns roughly $7 billion in annualized revenue from "high risk" advertising. Internal documents cited in that reporting showed the company expected "ads for scams and banned goods" to account for 10 percent of its 2024 ad revenue — approximately $16 billion.

That reporting triggered legal action. A class-action lawsuit filed against Meta in April alleges the company intentionally charged "high risk" advertisers higher rates, profiting from the premium while failing to act on user fraud reports and relying on scam-fighting tools the complaint calls ineffectual. "These allegations misrepresent the reality of our work and we will fight them," Meta said in a statement to Mashable at the time.

What does this mean for practitioners?

For social media marketers, the report carries two practical implications. First, categories targeting older demographics — insurance, healthcare, financial services — face a trust deficit that legitimate advertisers now have to spend against. Second, if the class-action suit proceeds, "high risk" ad pricing and enforcement gaps will face sustained legal scrutiny, with potential downstream effects on how Meta prices and polices sensitive verticals.

The CCDH findings, Meta's own takedown statistics, and the pending lawsuit all point in one direction: the economics of scam advertising on Facebook are now a documented, quantified problem, and the April court filing will test whether platform accountability follows.