Inside Andrew Forrest’s $60 million war on Facebook

(BIRDS CHIRPING) The Australian Financial Review. Mining billionaire Andrew Twiggy-Forest is taking unprecedented court action against Facebook. If you ask Andrew Forest what triggered his mega court battle with Mark Zuckerberg, it was a phone call from his dad. In 2019, Forest Senior told his billionaire son, a friend was about to invest in the online crypto scheme he was sprucing on Facebook. And dad was calling me saying, "When did you start doing this?" And I said, "Dad, I've never done it. This is an impersonation." Forest's image was being used by scammers in Facebook ads to lure victims. And when I raised this with better at the highest authorities, all I got was to revolt and excuse the saying, "They didn't have the technology to stop it and hence I decided in frustration to take them to court." Seven years on and tens of millions of dollars later, Forest is fighting Facebook's parent company Meta in a Californian court. If he's successful, it would be a significant blow, not only for the tech giant's reputation, but also its bottom line. For good or for ill, he sees himself as a bit of a savior here. And really, who better to take on a company as rich as Meta than an angry billionaire? Welcome to the Fin. I'm Lisa Murray. This week, legal affairs reporter Yarnik Drebakowski on why Twiggy is taking on Meta, whether he can win and what happens if he does. It's Thursday, July 30. Hi Yarnik, thanks for coming on the podcast. Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Lisa. It's not every day that an Australian billionaire takes on one of the world's biggest tech giants. How did this case come about? And how much money is being spent? Around March this year, we got a tip that Andrew Forest was telling people he had spent $100 million on this case in legal fees that turned out to not quite be the amount that's been spent to date. His lawyers estimate that his legal bills so far reach over 60 million. But that they could approach $100 million when the case is all finished. This is an astonishing figure and prompted us to think why is he spending so much on this case? How much is going on and got me digging further to find out what actually is the lay of the land in this kind of colossal back and forth between one of the largest tech companies of our time and one of Australia's richest men? So I had a call set up with Simon Clark, Andrew Forest's personal lawyer. He doesn't work for Fortescue, Andrew Forest's mining company. He isn't even directly employed by Minduru, Forest's charitable foundation. He's essentially a fixer who works on the billionaires personal crusades. All of what is being spent on this case is personally his. So it's not Fortescue, it's not Minduru. This is a personal battle for him. Simon Clark was very keen to make that point when I spoke to him. He laid out what was happening with the case and after we finished, he sent me through a whole series of court documents. This is a case where the main action today is happening in the United States. The United States legal system makes available all kinds of different documentation, much more generously often than Australian courts. So this is a really great one for legal affairs reporter like me to dive in and follow the nitty-gritty of who's doing what and when. After all of this though, I knew that I just had to speak to Twitty. And so I went with my most winning smile to his media people and asked for a call to be set up and he eventually agreed. It took a few post-ponements, a few late cancellations, but we got there eventually. So very billionaire behaviour. What was that phone call like? I'd asked for ten minutes as told of the outset that we had only five. He was very animated. He was keen to talk at length. He is a great talker. He launched into it and I really had to work to get my questions in edgeways. It commenced with phone calls and emails from mums and dad. He started the call by talking about how his office contains a system for responding to every request that members of the public might make to him. But then I started getting a distress call from retirees and others saying that they believed in me. Clearly for him, he wanted to draw this back to the little guys who have lost money as a result of these scams. They invested because of me and now they've completely lost their retirement funds that worked for all their lives. And really wanted to make this about the big predatory company that had made a lot of money at the expense of people who had lost a lot of money in vulnerable circumstances. Andrew Forest's father who has since died got in contact with him at the very outset of this case to ask why his son was promoting what didn't look like the kind of blue chip shares or investment options that somebody of his stature would normally be associated with. And dad was calling me saying when did you start doing this? And it turned out that one potentially several of Andrew Forest's dad's friends were considering investing in these scam schemes that were associated with Andrew's image on Facebook. And so Simon Clark, his personal lawyer, tells me that he was sitting in the room at Forest HQ on the other side of the desk when Andrew's father picked up the phone. And his father rang up and said that his friend was investing in these financial matters that he had been recommending on Facebook. Andrew's father asks why is it Andrew that you seem to be appearing alongside these really dodgy investment schemes and Andrew in Simon's telling, "I could just really feel Andrew grabbed down the phone and go, 'Dad!' grabs down the phone and says to his dad, "It's a fraud, don't let him do it." That seems to be the moment where the penny really dropped for Twiggy. "It was like at that point, you know, at really his home." And he knew that he had to take Metta on. "I'm sorry Andrew, just said listen, do what you can to fix this." There's another story that those who have watched this case for some time like to tell and that story involves a particular acronym, five letters HDGFS. The story that I'd heard was that at some point in this now long-running stash, Metta sent Twiggy Forest a settlement offer. Nobody from Twiggy's camp will comment on whether this settlement offer existed or how much was offered. But the story continues that Twiggy's response was just those five letters, HDGFS. So when I was on the phone to hear my how to ask him, "What does HDGFS stand for?" He replied, "You mean how does get F'd sound?" He then went on to tell me, "I'm not going to confirm or deny that that is actually what it stands for, or that those letters were actually how he replied to a settlement offer." What I think this story shows, this is stash where tempers are getting high, where the money is not necessarily what it's all about. This is not Forest playing nice. This is Forest with an agenda to prosecute, and it's not just about making this litigation go away on the most sensible terms. In some ways, you can understand why Twiggy would be so aggraved on Metta's own data that they were forced to release during the court case. His image has appeared in at least 230,000 scams as of May 2025. Scams released on Metta's platform. It's a huge amount of what Forest sees as misuse of his likeness. And as you say, his office is getting inundated with distressed phone calls from people who've lost their savings. Before we get to the details of the court battle, explain exactly how the scams work. I spoke to one of the earliest victims of these kinds of scams using Forest's image. She got in touch with Forest and his companies early on in the piece sometime in 2019. She was an engineer from Western Australia. She was by no means unsophisticated. She hadn't invested in the share market before, but she had made a lot of money through her career, and she thought now is the time. She, on Facebook, came across an image of what looked like Twiggy Forest, telling her that she could make a lot of money by putting her cash into a complicated share scheme. She clicked on the ad or somehow interacted with the ad, and before long was contacted by somebody purporting to be a financial advisor. Turned out that that person was a con artist. Over the following months, they then followed a series of phone calls. She was courted by this con artist. and eventually she was convinced to give up about $670,000, most of her life savings, which bit by bit were invested into what looked like a share of the game. Eventually she realized what happened, the con artist disappeared. She contacted the police, they couldn't do anything. She was approaching her 60s, her partner was unable to work. She didn't think that there would be anything like a retirement for her because all of the money that she was expecting was now gone. She met up with Swiggy. He said that he felt awful for her and his people saw her cases, one of the early indications that they had to do something. - So Andrew Forest is meeting with people like this person. His dad rings him, says a friend was about to invest. He decides to do something. How did Forest take on Facebook's parent meta? - He starts by trying to get in contact with the powers that Bay. He starts with Will Easton, matters head of operations in Australia. There's a back and forth between them. Easton tries to say that they're taking this very seriously. They know that scams are proliferating on their platform. It's an industry-wide problem that affects all social media companies and they're doing what they can. His best advice to Swiggy is to keep flagging every time that he and his people learn of a scam involving Swiggy's face. That will really help us, Easton says, and will be able to crack down on this hard up. That's not good enough for Andrew Forest. He then tries Cheryl Sandberg, who is the Chief Operating Officer of the entire company at the time, and Mark Zuckerberg, and in Forests telling there is no response from either of them. - And when I raised this with meta at the highest authorities, all I got was forrival and excuses saying they didn't have the technology to stop it. - So he then publishes what he calls an open letter. It's really kind of a press release, which condemns Zuckerberg and the company that Zuckerberg runs for allowing these scams to spread on their platform, misusing Swiggy's face and costing what he describes as vulnerable victims, hundreds of thousands of dollars. This back and forth goes on for a while. There isn't any movement that satisfies Swiggy, and so in 2021, he's out enough. - Mining billionaire Andrew Twiggy Forest is taking unprecedented court action against Facebook. - And he decides to launch a civil case. - Saying he wants to protect all Australians from internet scams. - He launches that case not in Australia, but in Northern California, in a courthouse, which is really the home of Big Tech Law Fair. He chooses Northern California because it's very hard to sue meta in Australia. When an Australian tries to sue meta here, often the company's legal response is to argue Australia is not the appropriate place for it to be sued. They'll spend a lot of money on getting most litigation transferred to the US. And they do that to make use of a legal landscape that their lawyers understand. And in particular, some crucial legal doctrines that meta social media Big Tech have used over the decades to protect their business activities. One of those doctrines is the target at the heart of Andrew Forest's case. The doctrine in question is a kind of free speech inspired immunity. The doctrine is called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It's a law that says internet platforms are not responsible for the things that their users upload. So long as those internet platforms are essentially passive, they aren't the authors of the material that's going online, then you can't sue the platform itself. They can't be held responsible. To put this in really simple terms, say I write something defamatory about you Lisa on Facebook. Please don't. I'll try not to. Under the orthodox understanding of Section 230, you can sue me. I wrote the post, but Section 230 stops you from suing Facebook. It's just the platform. It's the host. It's not the author. Forest isn't having any of that. What he predicted meta is going to say is, they'll say, well, our algorithms isn't us. This is all our algorithm, and our algorithm isn't us. I'll say, yes, baby, it is. Twiggy's legal team says that this is actually all wrong. It says Facebook is effectively a co-author of the ads that appear on its platform, including the scam ads, because of its ad optimization software. That's the software that takes material. You might upload the bare bones of an ad. You might include the text that you want to add to appear with. Facebook's software then takes those bare bones. It tweaks parts of it. It might resize aspects of it. It might include certain amounts of text. Then it releases an altered ad, Twiggy's legal team say, to a potential targeted audience. Twiggy's legal team says that amounts to co-authoring the ad. All of the changes that Facebook has made. If you're an author, no immunity under Section 230. Twiggy's legal team says we should be able to sue matter for being complicit in these scams. They say because matter is complicit in these scams on their argument, matter should pay up. But Facebook denies this. Facebook denies this. As is often the case in US litigation, their denials are really just a big blanket no. We deny everything. The minutiae of their argument will only appear at trial. Exactly why they shouldn't be held liable. But from some court filings and some of the pretrial skirmishes that we've seen so far, it seems that they deny that their ad software is as invasive as Twiggy's team say. What this might mean is that this case is an argument about the facts. There might be a back and forth about what actually matters ad optimization tools do. What actually is involved in producing one of these ads, a lot's going to turn on the evidence that's available to Twiggy's team, and a lot's going to turn on the documents that Twiggy's team can force matter to relax. That's also why the issue of evidence destruction has become so important in this case. Twiggy's lawyers are arguing that after they brought their claim against matter, metadestroyed records or failed to keep records that it should have of how the scam ads appeared to users. This could be significant. If the judge hearing the case agrees with Twiggy, then it's possible he will punish matter for their destruction or their failure to keep these records. Whether the Section 230 defense is available for Facebook in this case will largely be a matter for the judge. It's possible that he would essentially boot it down the road to a jury to decide. It seems that that's unlikely from US experts I've spoken to seems much more likely that the judge himself will at some stage possibly later this year, possibly early next year, have to rule as a matter of law, whether this defense is available in this case. And at one point, there's an idea in Andrew Forest Camp that they can also take court action in Australia. But that case didn't go to plan. What happened? So the California case gets rolling. It's a civil case. It's Andrew Forest saying that matter owes him a lot of money in a civil courthouse. But a few months after it starts, someone has a brilliant idea. Why don't we bring a criminal case against matter back home in Australia? That's very unusual. Normally criminal prosecutions are brought by the prosecution service. In this case, it's Dr Andrew Forest himself bringing a criminal complaint against matter. The basis for that complaint is that Facebook was knowingly dealing in the proceeds of crime. It's unclear exactly how forest was going to argue this because the case didn't get that far. But it seems he was saying that the company's directors knew these scams were afoot. Indeed, Forest himself had told them that these scams were afoot. And they knowingly took the money they received from scammers placing those ads on Facebook. Forest's arguments seem to be that that money that matter was receiving was proceeds of crime. They should be held criminally responsible for it. It was the first time anywhere in the world that there had been a well-publicized criminal prosecution brought against matter. It was a big deal. The criminal prosecution had been chugging along, but then in early 2024, it went all wrong for Andrew Forest. A federal prosecutor took the case over. They're allowed to do that. Looked at the evidence and decided there's just not enough evidence here to take it all the way. And so that federal prosecutor booted Forest off the case and the case was dropped. When I spoke to him on the phone, he told me that the decision to drop the case had been a bad idea. He thinks that Australian prosecutors should revisit a criminal case against matter. And he thinks that especially now, because of recent head lines about some of matters well publicised losses in courts around the world. Now that the wind seems to be changing, against the company, Forest is really encouraging prosecutors to come back to this idea that the company is criminally liable for the scam ads that it hosts on its platform. Nonetheless, after the Australian case is discontinued, Forest returns to Northern California, his legal team redoubles its efforts there and the case there continues moving a pace. This case is a big deal because it could go to Meta's bottom line. Meta itself says that it earns 95% of its revenue or more from ads. If Andrew Forest is successful in this case, not only could there be a major reputational hit to the tech giant, but the case could really set a precedent that would be a major blow to Facebook's earnings, Facebook's influence and Facebook's business model. We're talking about Andrew Forest's legal battle with Facebook's parent company Meta over scams on its platform that use his image to law victims. Yannick, what happens if Forest wins his case? How much damage will it cause Meta? This comes at a bad time for Meta and its courtroom activities. It's had some substantial losses already this year in US court houses. Meta and Google have been found guilty of intentionally building addictive platforms. Meta had to pay an amount of damages to a child who was addicted to Facebook. A few days later, there was a decision in the state of New Mexico. The jury found that Facebook met a knowingly harmed kids mental health. Where the government of that state won $375 million US dollars out of Facebook for proving that the company had deceived the public on child safety issues. I asked Andrew Forest whether his litigation was just another piece of this puzzle. He seemed almost offended by the suggestion that all he was doing was opening a check in Facebook's armor. No, I don't think so. Check. I don't think it's a check. And instead said that his litigation went to the heart of Facebook's activities. Your algorithms designed by you are aiding in a bed in criminals. Those are the bread and butter of Facebook's whole business model. For which you are charging a lot of money for, it is not a check. And this case is significant because it could affect how much money Facebook earns from those ads. A large component of Facebook's ad revenue on Facebook's own internal documents comes from money received for scam ads as for fraudulent investment schemes or for banned goods. That was revealed by a Pulitzer Prize winning Reuters investigation last year that showed in 2024 on Meta's own calculation 10% of its annual revenue or about $16 billion came from scam ads or ads for banned goods. The same documents showed that on Meta's calculation more than 22 billion scam attempts were made every day. Every day. Every day. Not all of those attempts would be successful. A very small number would be successful. But it shows the automated nature of these scams. It shows the reach that these scams have. It shows how far the kinds of ads that forest is complaining about can travel and how many people they can reach. Other platform providers will be watching this case closely. Twiggy's allegations are about Meta's ad technology specifically, but most social media platforms have similar tech that optimizes ad material before it goes out to the public. They'll be looking at the decision very closely. There's also movement on this kind of issue in Australia. There's a very similar case that the competition regulator, the A-Triple C, is bringing in the Australian Federal Court against Meta. Much like Forest's case in California, A-Triple C has in its sights the scams that appear on Meta's platforms. And in particular, the scams that misappropriate the likeness of celebrities. That case is still in a very early stage, although it's been travelling along for some years now, so watch this space. So if Forest wins, if he's able to show, well, this section 230 immunity doesn't apply here, Facebook should have to pay up and pay up big, then a few things happen. Meta may be forced to pay a large damages bill. More importantly though, this kind of case might well open the floodgates. If Forest is able to say, well, your misuse of my likeness was wrong, then any number of individuals who were somehow affected by scams might be also able to say, you should be responsible, Meta, for the harm I've suffered. That could range from other celebrities whose image has been used for scams all the way to victims themselves. In particular, victims could well band together in a class action. The United States is a very class action-friendly jurisdiction. Class actions that tend to net substantial damages. This could result in some very big payouts for Facebook. If Forest is successful in the argument that he makes, I tried putting a lot of this to matter itself. The company didn't want to comment on really anything, not Twiggy's allegations, nor the road is investigation. Forest has been praised for taking on this fight, which if he wins, as you say, could Forest Meta to clean up its act or face a deluge of lawsuits. But the Forescue founder has also been on the other side of legal battles, like these. And as we saw with the recent Native title ruling in the Pilbra, does that make it harder for him to claim the high moral ground? In the Native title lawsuit that we saw out of the Pilbra recently, the traditional owners of an area that Forescue mines were awarded $150 million against Forest's company. The reason that they were awarded that money was Forescue had mined on their Native title land without seeking their permission. This was one of the largest ever Native title payouts, but it was still far lower than what the traditional owners were seeking, as some that was in the billions. I found it fascinating that one of the leaders of the traditional owners, the Yinjabande people, a man called Michael Woodley, described their legal fight with Forest and his company Forescue as a David versus Goliath battle. And interestingly, this is exactly the kind of language that Forest used to me and has used elsewhere to describe his fight with Meta. It started off not even as a David against Goliath. I found it difficult to see Forest as a David, or even an aunt. He has three powerhouse US law firms acting for him, including some really serious litigators out of New York. At any one time, as his legal team told me, there are four or five partners working on this case. There are four to six associates up to 15 other lawyers across three different time zones. This is a huge investment of resources which Forest is one of Australia's richest men can muster. It's very difficult to see this is the little guy versus the big guy. It's almost difficult to imagine anybody other than one of the richest people in the country being able to take on Facebook and using his immense resources to do so. So a lot of resources are going into this case. Where does it go from here? Yarnick, do you think Andrew Forest will be able to take on Meta and win? The case is ticking towards a really crucial moment where the judge rules on the Section 230 defense. If the judge decides that Facebook can't use that Section 230 defense, then the social media giant has some pretty big problems. How the case continues from there is anybody's guess whether it ends in a settlement, whether it goes to a full trial, whether one of the parties withdraws really depends on how that Section 230 issue plays out. Simon Clark, Twiggy's lawyer, seemed to think that his bosses chances were really good. Twiggy is certainly spared no expense on the legal team and some really creative arguments are being made. Certainly the first time that anybody has brought so much firepower, so much creative thinking from a lot of these US lawyers into undoing what has been a key plank of how Big Tech resists litigation. At the very least if Twiggy wins, you'd have to think Meta would take an even closer look at tightening up how it deals with scam ads. When I spoke to Andrew Forest, one of the things that stood out the most was how aggrieved he seemed to be on behalf of the people who have lost money in these scams. There was this sense of a special bond almost that Twiggy seems to think he has with the ordinary Australian. It seems like he's really going into bat for the mums and dads, the older Australians who have trusted in his good name as he put it and invested in what turned out to be scams because his image was associated with them. (upbeat music) The question could probably quite reasonably be asked, well, Andrew, you're spending so much money on fighting this case in an Northern Californian courthouse. Why don't you just give some of the money to the victims of these scams? You could go a long way to compensating the financial losses that Australians have suffered. But it seems that Forest is going for what he sees as an even bigger win. He's going for setting a precedent, embarrassing meta, perhaps, undoing a key plank of its legal strategy in a way that he hopes at least will force it to clean up its act for good. And of course, there's no small amount of ego involved in this as well. Tregi is a famously colorful character. - Thanks, Yarnik. - Thanks, Lisa. (upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to The Fin. If you want to read more about Andrew Forest Court Battle with Meta, check out the show notes. And don't forget, you can listen on the AFR app. The Fin is produced by Mandy Kuhlun. Fiona Bafini is head of premium content. Alex Gow composed our theme. For more stories about markets, business and power, subscribe to the financial review at afr.com/subscribe. I'm Lisa Murray. See you next week. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)