In a significant legal development, plaintiffs John Suddeth and Sara Perkins have initiated a class action lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc., along with its subsidiaries Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. The lawsuit, filed in a California federal court, centers around allegations that Meta unlawfully utilized the names, images, voices, and personas of financial professionals in paid advertisements.
The core of the plaintiffs’ argument is that Meta’s actions have not only misappropriated identities but have also contributed to fraudulent investment schemes involving thinly traded securities based in China. This conduct, they assert, violates several legal statutes, including the Lanham Act, the California Right of Publicity, the California Unfair Competition Law, as well as the Florida Right of Publicity and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
According to the lawsuit, the process for creating paid advertisements on Meta’s platforms involves a standardized workflow through Ads Manager. Advertisers select objectives, upload creative assets, define audience parameters, and designate budget strategies—all of which, the plaintiffs argue, Meta has exploited to facilitate the unauthorized use of financial professionals’ identities.
Meta failed to take action despite warning, plaintiffs claim
Suddeth and Perkins further contend that Meta ignored warnings from a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general regarding the proliferation of paid impersonation ads and WhatsApp investment groups that were being used to defraud U.S. consumers. The lawsuit claims that despite these alerts, Meta continued to allow similar impersonation ads to circulate on its platforms as recently as July 2025.
The plaintiffs seek to represent a nationwide class of financial professionals whose identities have been used without consent in advertisements or promotional content on Meta’s platforms, specifically targeting those affected from January 1, 2023, to the present. They are demanding a jury trial, along with declaratory and injunctive relief, and are pursuing actual, statutory, and punitive damages for themselves and all class members.
This lawsuit follows an earlier class action filed against Meta, which accused the company of facilitating a stock manipulation scheme that exploited its social media platforms to defraud victims of millions of dollars.
The plaintiffs are represented by John T. Jasnoch of Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP and Tom Grady of GradyLaw. The case is officially titled Suddeth, et al. v. Meta Platforms Inc., et al., and is registered as Case No. 5:25-cv-08581 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Jose Division.
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