Swedish lawyer sues Facebook

Lars Olofsson, lawyer filed a lawsuit against Facebook Sweden AB, in the Stockholm District Court on March 21, 2024. Facebook Sweden AB is the Swedish holding company for Meta in Sweden, and manages the data centers of the company – the largest non American based server facility for Meta outside of the US.

Lars Olofsson, “Facebook, whose parent company is META Platforms Inc., has a very complicated corporate structure. This is in part to avoid as much tax as possible. But it is also difficult to hold them accountable. The people and functions responsible for the company are spread all over the world.”

Olofsson’s intent in launching this litigation is to force Facebook to pay damages to his clients who were harmed in several different investment scams. Facebook has, according to him, not done enough to prevent private individuals who use the media platform from being exposed to frauds of this nature, which is in fact against corporate policy.

Meta and Facebook have been increasingly criticized over the last decade for, among other things, exposing users to unsuitable content and fraudulent offers. They have also previously promised that such ads would not be published on their platform and if they had been published, then they would be immediately removed.

So far, this has not been done.

The first of several lawsuits

Olofsson has worked on the Juicy Fields case for over 2 years, but this is far from his only fraud case. He has roughly 4,500 clients, who are located all over the world. At the moment, Lars Olofsson represents crime victims from six different frauds and he and his colleagues are looking at six to seven other cases for which they plan to help crime victims, he explains.

Each of these scams has in one form or another promoted itself on Facebook or on Instagram and his plan is to hold Facebook accountable for all of these scams.

The first suit against Facebook has been chosen on the basis that the underlying fraud is so obvious and there is extensive evidence of the criminal activity. Previously Olofsson launched a legal claim to attempt to bring Marc Zuckerberg to Sweden to face trial. This effort failed. This is the second legal challenge against Facebook in this matter.

What Are The Chances of Winning?

Olofsson remains highly optimistic about his chances of winning. “The evidence is extremely extensive. There are also more and more people who are demanding change and accountability, from internet companies, banks and financial institutions. Investment scams and other forms of fraud are sweeping the world like a tsunami, aided by the internet and social media.

The police and other authorities have too few resources and legal support to be able to prosecute the criminals.

Now his strategy is to demand responsibility for those who made the crimes possible by not carefully enough finding out who is doing business with and what is being advertised on the platforms.

“My ambition is to bring about new practices and to start a process that others can join,” Olofsson concluded.