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Meta, the company responsible for Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, continues to display betting advertising for Brazil weeks after receiving a notification from the government to remove advertisements of this type.
A provisional measure signed by President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) on September 25 prohibited the exploration, offering, intermediation and advertising of this type of online game.
The MP prohibits content aimed at the Brazilian public that promotes fixed-odd bets or facilitates access to them. The deadline to remove advertising material ended on October 5th. The measure obliges platforms to prevent circulation and remove infringing pieces when notified.
In consultations on November 10th and 11th, BBC News Brasil found more than 700 advertisements with invitations to play in online casinos, bonus offers and promises to multiply money.
Among them were new campaigns from pages and websites that had already been reported by the government itself to Meta, according to internal documents seen by BBC News Brasil.
Two reports, obtained by the reporter through the Access to Information Law, show that the government had demanded from the company both the removal of hundreds of identified advertisements and explanations on how to prevent new similar advertisements.
In the documents, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security listed more than 500 advertising records at the company.
The ministry notified Meta in October to remove the ads from the list and explain what it was doing to prevent new similar pieces from circulating. The company responded that all the links indicated were inaccessible to users in Brazil.
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When contacted, Meta said that it does not allow illegal advertisements on its platforms and that it removes them as soon as they are identified.
BBC News Brasil searched the advertisements again on November 12th and noticed that some of them became unavailable after contacting Meta. But others began to appear in their place, published on the same pages.
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BBC identifies more than 700 adverts in November
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The survey carried out by BBC News Brasil shows that advertisements aimed at the Brazilian public already denounced by the federal government are still active and that there are also other new pieces of propaganda, with texts and videos in Portuguese and aimed at Brazil.
There are also new advertisements that point to domains already reported by the government.
The Eleva's On page appeared in 30 advertisements in the official list and also in 22 other pieces in the BBC survey. Although the old and new ads used different addresses, the intermediary sites led to the same destination, ElevaBet.
Another case involves Faturapix, a platform that offers casino and sports betting. The government had linked an advertisement published by the Faturapix.io page. In November, the BBC found 54 adverts from another page, Sophia Clica, which linked to the same site. One of the calls said "The home of great players" and invited the user to register.
In a statement, the Ministry of Finance said that it "constantly works to combat the illegal betting market, with a focus on identifying and blocking clandestine websites", but did not comment on the BBC's findings on the advertisements still on air.
The government's survey of advertisements was carried out in October by the National Secretariat for Digital Rights, an area of the Ministry of Justice known as Sedigi.
Analysts searched for terms such as "tigrinho", "aviator" and "fortune tiger" in the public tool that allows you to consult ads on Meta's platforms, the Ad Library.
The ministry reported having gathered 501 advertising records attributed to 130 profiles.
One of the pieces showed a character on a speedboat, holding a cell phone with an image of an airplane and the indication "400x", referring to 400 times the amount bet.
Next to the Eleva brand, a red button invited: "Play now".
It was an advertisement for Aviator, a game in which the bet amount can be multiplied as a plane rises on the screen. The player needs to withdraw the money before the flight ends; If you wait too long, you lose the bet.
The ad came from a page called Eleva's On and led to ElevaBet, a betting site.
Some ads repeated the same image or video with different identifiers.
Advertisements mention people and companies from Brazil
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The BBC News Brasil analysis found the names of individuals and companies from Brazil and the United States in the information about who advertises and pays for part of the betting advertisements on Meta.
On the promoted websites, references to an operator registered in Costa Rica also appear.
In one of the cases, an advertisement published by the "Betuxo" page presents Alfredo Andrade da Gama Cruz as advertiser and payer.
The website indicated in this advert displays a CNPJ for a road freight transport company in Aracaju, in Sergipe. The report attempted to contact the company, but received no response.
Outside Brazil, an advertisement promoting the Win4bet platform identifies "Campesino LLC", from the United States, as the advertiser and payer. The website informed in the form belongs to a supermarket. The reporter sent an email seeking clarification, but there was no response.
BBC News Brasil also found signs of the use of artificial intelligence in the images of some of the pages that published these advertisements.
Advertiser Renata Keito, who appears with 21 pieces about betting in the survey, for example, had just one follower and displays an image of a smiling woman, with the tag "AI content" made by Facebook itself.
Other similar pages didn't even have a follower.
BBC News Brasil sent messages to all those mentioned, but did not receive a response until closing. The space remains open.
Failures in identifying who advertises
For Bruno Mattos and Nicole Sanchotene, coordinators of NetLab, the Internet and Social Network Studies Laboratory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the cases reveal problems in monitoring advertising and identifying those responsible.
The laboratory researches topics such as disinformation and advertising on digital platforms.
"The persistence of irregular advertisements is not a particularity of the betting market", says Mattos.
According to him, fraudulent advertisements for other products and services also continue to circulate on Meta's platforms despite repeated warnings.
In the researcher's opinion, combating these practices requires investments in security and can reduce the revenue obtained from advertisers who break the rules.
Mattos says that Meta has information that could help with this inspection, such as the history of page name changes, changes in administrators and periods of inactivity.
For him, advertisers' verification mechanisms need to be more rigorous and rely on specialized professionals.
Sanchotene states that pages with generic names, few followers and no apparent relationship with the advertised product are recurring features in research into fraudulent or prohibited advertising.
But these signs, in isolation, do not prove that the profiles are part of the same operation.
“Without this level of transparency, it is possible to identify suspicious patterns and operational similarities, but not reliably demonstrate the existence of a coordinated structure,” he states.
To establish these links, she says, data such as the verified identity of the contractors, the origin of payments and the relationships between advertising accounts would be necessary.
The researcher argues that the Ad Library preserves campaigns even after they are removed and informs who actually financed them, how much they spent and which audiences they sought to reach.
According to Sanchotene, the absence of this information makes it difficult to identify those responsible and measure the financing of operations.
Active registrations
In another response to the Access to Information Law of November, the Ministry of Finance reported having identified 33.6 million CPFs with active registration in at least one brand in the Betting Management System, Sigap.
Among the bettors identified in the database, 67.65% were men and 32.35% were women. The groups up to 24 years old and 25 to 30 years old together represented 42.16% of the total. The 31 to 40 year old group accounted for another 28.85%.
A spreadsheet provided by the Treasury brings together movements from January 2025 to June 2026, the last consolidated month.
In June, there were 8.1 million CPFs who placed sports bets and 8.5 million who bet on online games. A person can appear in both groups.
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