The trade body has reported Zuckerberg for fraud, aiding and abetting fraud, and preparation to commit fraud, and also for contravening a law which protects people against use of their name and image in advertisements without permission.
Three prominent television presenters – Anna Brolin and Olof Lundh at TV4 and Karin Mattisson at SVT – are cited in the report as the injured parties.
In the press release, the trade body said that it, and its members SVT, Sveriges Radio, UR, TV4, Sveriges Tidskrifter and Tidningsutgivarna, had on repeated occasions demanded that Facebook that it take measures to stop the fraudulent ads, without any meaningful action being taken.
"This problem has been going on for many, many years and we, the assembled Swedish media, have been pointing out these problems to Meta. We've spoken to them, we've lobbied them. We've gone and met them, and yet the problem persists, " James Savage, the chair of Utgivarna and also the CEO of The Local, said.
"So we need to take this to another level. Why report him for fraud and and being an accessory to fraud? Well, because according to us, that's exactly what he is."
The fake adverts, the press release claimed, primarily harm the vulnerable individuals who are convinced by the use of trusted journalists and media brands to spend money on various scams, causing them psychological distress and economic losses.
They also infringe the trademarks of media companies like SVT, TV4, Aftonbladet and Expressen, and damage the journalistic credibility of their brands.
As a result, the trade body argued, the adverts undermine the credibility of Swedish professional news journalism more broadly, making the public more vulnerable to disinformation, and undermining democracy.
Meta was partly responsible for the fake ads, the trade body argued, because it had consistently refused to invest sufficient resources in manual or automatic systems to reduce the number of fake adverts. It also profited from them, with its own internal documents estimating that 10 percent of Facebook's revenue in 2024 was linked to scam ads.
According to the Financial Supervisory Authority, over 5,000 people in Sweden lost a combined half a billion kronor in 2025 due to fraud linked to scam adverts. SVT recently investigated the issue, revealing that these ads are often linked to international criminal organisations.
Instead of taking action, Utgivarna said, Meta instead passed responsibility for policing the ads on to the media companies and journalists affected, requiring that they report fake adverts using their brands, image or voice themselves, a process, the trade body complained, that rarely led to the desired result.
Meta wrote in an email to SVT that pretending to be a company or a public figure "goes against our policy".
"We will remove these accounts when we become aware of them," the company wrote.
For the police report, Utgivarna selected three of the most egregious cases involving fake messages from high-profile presenters, and has also linked each case to "actual harm done to individual Swedes".
"We have provided the police with significant information, but we're also obviously willing to assist in providing them with further information, because we've been monitoring this issue for a long time," Savage said.
"It's obviously a long way to from where we are now to a prosecution and a conviction. But we think there is a really good case to answer here."
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