# Temu shut down its billion-dollar fake account network

> After Fortune exposed Temu's scheme, the shopping app axed nearly all its fake influencer accounts on Meta's platforms within days.
- Title: Temu shut down its billion-dollar fake account network
- Summary: After Fortune exposed Temu's scheme, the shopping app axed nearly all its fake influencer accounts on Meta's platforms within days. Temu dismantled a network…
- Keywords: temu, meta, fake accounts, instagram, facebook, advertising fraud, online risk labs, shut, billion-dollar, fake, account, network
- Source: Fortune — https://fortune.com/2026/09/25/temu-axed-its-1-billion-network-of-fake-accounts-on-meta
- Author: Jim Edwards
- Read time: 1 min
- Topics: temu, meta, fake accounts, instagram, facebook, advertising fraud, online risk labs
## Temu's billion-dollar fake network exposed
Temu spent nearly one billion dollars funding fake influencer accounts on Instagram and Facebook across the UK and all twenty-seven EU countries, according to Online Risk Labs, a Czech research group.
## Most top influencers were probably fake
Online Risk Labs examined sixteen months of Temu advertising ending in April twenty twenty-six. Around seventy-three of the one hundred influencers with the most Temu ads were probably fake, with nonsensical names and bases in China, Russia, Bangladesh, or Iran.
## The reach was staggering
The one hundred fake accounts ran more than one point four million partnership ads, reaching almost seventeen billion pairs of eyeballs. Temu was running four thousand nine hundred separate partnership campaigns daily when Fortune first reported the scheme on August thirty-first.
## Temu shut down most accounts within days
By September fourth, ninety accounts featured zero Temu advertising. Of the top one hundred accounts, fifty-four stopped using partnership ads almost immediately after August thirty-first. Overall, Temu's partnership ads almost halved after Fortune's story.
## The biggest fake account went silent
Ya Lili, with one hundred eighty-three thousand Instagram followers and one hundred twenty-nine thousand Facebook followers, ran two hundred seventy-eight thousand Temu ad campaigns. By September fourth, only five ads remained, and she stopped posting entirely on September seventh.
## Strict ad laws may have driven the pullback
Partnership ads ceased almost entirely in Ireland, Cyprus, Austria, Denmark, Latvia, and Slovenia. Those jurisdictions have very strict misleading advertising laws, with penalties including criminal conviction and imprisonment in some cases.
## Key takeaway

Temu dismantled a network of fake accounts on Meta platforms that had cost nearly one billion dollars after Fortune's reporting exposed the scheme.