Leaked Meta docs show Zuckerberg disbanded the anti-fraud team making $3B/year from Chinese scam ads and capped enforcement at 0.15% of revenue

Meta Shut Down Its Anti-Fraud Team. Chinese Scam Ads Were Making Too Much Money.

Internal Meta documents leaked and analyzed by 80,000 Hours show that the company disbanded its dedicated anti-fraud enforcement unit after internal analysis revealed that Chinese scam advertisers were generating approximately $3 billion per year in revenue. The documents show Meta subsequently capped fraud enforcement at 0.15% of total revenue — a figure low enough to make the cap functionally meaningless.

The Revenue Model

Meta's internal projections, included in the leaked documents, estimated that scam advertisements — including romance fraud, investment fraud, and cryptocurrency fraud targeting users in Western markets — represented approximately $16 billion in revenue, or roughly 10% of Meta's projected 2024 total. The company was serving an estimated 15 billion scam ads daily at the time the documents were produced.

The Enforcement Cap

Meta set a formal internal limit on the percentage of revenue that could be lost through fraud enforcement action. At 0.15% of revenue, the cap created a structural barrier to meaningful enforcement: any enforcement campaign that would have reduced scam ad revenue beyond the threshold was subject to internal override. The documents show this was not an informal understanding — it was a documented policy.

Who Was Buying

The leaked documents identify Chinese advertising agencies as the primary buyers of the scam ad inventory. These agencies operated at scale, running coordinated campaigns targeting elderly users in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Meta's ad review systems flagged many of these campaigns. The enforcement cap meant most flagged ads continued to run.