Counterfeiters Are Advertising Fake Cash On TikTok

0:28This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for a 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Today on Forbes, counterfeiters are advertising fake cash on TikTok.

1:04On TikTok in October, what appear to be stacks of euros peek out of black envelopes, their distinctive holographic foil demarcating the green, blue, and orange banknotes of the European Union. The ad's tagline reads, quote, discover what everyone's talking about. Other ads run by the account are less coy about what's on offer. The text in another video reads, quote,

1:34In another, an AI-generated video of a teenage boy who looks like the star of a Pixar movie uses fake cash to buy an iPhone at an Apple store. These ads direct users to a Telegram account that offers a menu of fraudulent bills in 5, 20, and 50 euro increments. The account boasts that its counterfeit tender can pass all the security tests. That includes the ultraviolet scanners now used by many stores to spot fake notes. And the account even offers a discount code These are just some of a deluge of ads served to a TikTok account operated by Forbes over the last three months. from more than 54 TikTok accounts promoting the sale of counterfeit euros and British pounds, with a handful offering American dollar bills.

2:28The ads largely direct users off-platform, where orders are taken and payment is made in private telegram groups. Trying to pass off counterfeit notes as legal tender is illegal and can earn a prison sentence of up to 10 years in some countries. So-called prop money used in movie or TV productions is legal, but the holographic stickers and foils used to make such props look more convincing can also be illegal to possess. In terms of raw numbers, the 54 accounts Forbes found are a drop in the vast TikTok bucket, where over 100 million videos are uploaded a day. But the nature of TikTok's powerful algorithm means that a user who interacts with one such ad is funneled more and more.

3:17Forbes revealed earlier this month that TikTok quietly gutted its rules to police advertisers last year. That has opened the door to a black advertising market on the social network for fake GLP-1 weight loss drugs, experimental Chinese peptides, knockoff luxury handbags, and scams where people order goods that never arrive. The company disputed Forbes reporting. Counterfeit products also now fall into a gray area, where running ads for them doesn't result in an immediate suspension unless the advertiser is impersonating a big brand. This according to multiple sources and internal documents seen by Forbes.

3:57But fake cash crosses a line. TikTok's publicly stated content rules says that it will take down individual posts related to counterfeit currency. TikTok's community guidelines, which govern user-generated videos, ban, quote, trading fake currency. Its rules for advertisers also prohibit content involving forgery and counterfeiting. TikTok said it had banned the accounts identified by Forbes and that such content was a breach of its rules for both users and advertisers. The company said that its AI and human moderators removed 16 million advertiser accounts for breaking its rules in the first quarter of 2026, and that around 99.8 % were removed before users could report them.

4:45Forbes also reached out to Telegram for comment, with a list of messaging app accounts facilitating the sale of counterfeit currency on TikTok. While Telegram did not respond, its own content and advertising guidelines bar illegal content and specifically counterfeit currency. TikTok's primary business model is advertising. It rakes in money on every ad run on its app. The Beijing-China-based company was reported to have made$200 billion in revenue last year. Many of the advertisers that targeted the Forbes account with counterfeit cash ads were not visible in TikTok's ad library. That's the company's compendium of ads that run in the UK and Europe.

5:32Others had videos removed for unspecified, quote, content violations, but continued to buy new ads related to counterfeit cash. Forbes reported earlier this month that TikTok advertisers can run as many ads as they want that violate content restrictions. as long as they don't run afoul of one of the company's few red-line policies that result in an immediate ban. TikTok said that when ads violate its policies, it is required by the European Union's Digital Services Act to remove the ad content and the advertiser name from its library. But many of these ads did not appear in the library on the same day they were served to the Forbes account.

6:13TikTok said that it can take up to 24 hours for ads to appear in its ad library. For full coverage, check out Ian Martin's piece on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.

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