Social media investment scams operate beyond law enforcement reach. You see an Instagram ad with the Wealthsimple logo. The returns look good. You click into what appears to be an official forum. You invest. Hours later, everything disappears. The scammers, the forum, the ad, all gone. You call the RCMP. They tell you the crime happened in another country. No jurisdiction. You call Facebook. They tell you they've raised ad prices for suspicious accounts to discourage fraud. The scammers are making so much money that higher ad rates don't even register as a cost.

 

Levy puts responsibility on the platforms. Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok architectures make it easy for fraudsters to create convincing scams without detection. The platforms profit from the fraudulent ads while refusing better controls. Mark Zuckerberg specifically named. There's no accountability or punishment, so there's no incentive to change. One listener reported credit card fraud attempts in their name. RCMP response: because no money was actually spent, no crime was committed. The laws themselves fail victims. Levy still recommends reporting because aggregated case data gives law enforcement better information for future action even when restitution is unlikely.

 

The crime happens outside Canada, so jurisdiction doesn't help. The platform profits from fraud, so Facebook won't help. The only variable that changes is whether you keep logging in and supporting the system that enables this.

 

Topics: social media investment scams, Facebook scam ads, Instagram fraud, online fraud jurisdiction, platform accountability

 

GUEST: Carmi Levy

Originally aired on 2026-01-27