A bank's name is the bait
Scam ads borrow names people trust. Platforms remove few of the ones reported, and the rest come back under new pages.
lost to online fraud in Hungary in 2025, by the central bank's count 5
Banks see the payment. They never see the ad.
- 27%
of reported scam ads were removed when consumer groups reported about 900 to Meta, TikTok and Google. 2
- 56%
of illegal financial ads the UK regulator found on Meta in one week came from advertisers it had already flagged. 3
- 88%
of in-scope losses were refunded by UK banks in the first year of mandatory reimbursement. The bank pays for what the ad started. 4
From an ad to a case, automatically
One pipeline runs after every search. A person checks the cases before a bank sees them.
Watch
Meta's public ad library, searched at a fixed, agreed pace for bait phrases and bank names.
Judge
Every ad is judged from its text and the text printed in its picture. Fixed rules show why.
Follow
Each scam ad's link is followed from an isolated machine: redirects, domain age, hosting, tracking IDs.
Link
Copies join into one case by image fingerprint, shared landing page or shared Meta pixel.
Report
A case report for each bank, with a draft notice to the platform under the Digital Services Act.
Research so far
From every ad collected to the ones flagged as scams. Each stage is part of the one before.
More financial phrases, every day
Each new financial phrase finds new scam ads, and most run for only a few days. Searching every phrase daily keeps the record while they run.
10 financial phrases searched for the first time
On 20 October 2026, in Hungary. Together they found 779 ads, 253 of them flagged as scams. The six that found the most:
Ads seen, by how much is searched
One case, traced as far as public data goes
The four ads in the case at the top. What public data showed, and who takes over from there.
- First web address registered
- First ad, page A
- Second web address registered
- Two ads, pages B and C
- Third web address registered
- Last ad, page D, five days after its address was registered
- Reinstand finds all four. The ads have stopped; the pages are still up
- All three addresses still lead to the same landing page
The four pages, the picture, the three addresses and the landing page belong together. When and where each address was registered, and which tracking ID the page reports to.
Pages, addresses, tracking IDs and dates, every ad linked to the ad library, and a draft notice. Ready for the fraud and legal teams.
Meta can act on all four pages at once and see whose account owns the tracking ID. The registrar can be told about all three addresses.
Who paid for the ads: Meta. Who registered the addresses: the registrar. A person's name: the police. Where the money went: the bank.
Why now
Liability moves to the platforms
Under the new EU payment rules, a platform that was told about fraudulent content and did not remove it becomes liable to the bank. A dated record of the ad and of the notice becomes evidence. 6
The record exists, but not for long
EU law makes large platforms keep public ad libraries. An ad removed as illegal leaves almost nothing behind, so the record has to be made while the ad runs. 7
Banks pay for fraud prevention
Visa agreed to buy BioCatch, which sells to more than 350 banks, for USD 2.4bn. We found no one selling banks a shared record of scam ads. 8
How it grows
A yearly subscription for a bank's fraud team. It starts with a free report.
The way in
The first report covers the ads that use the bank's names in its country. A pilot adds a weekly report, alerts and notices ready for the platform.
Price assumptions
for a mid-size continental bank, and USD 150-250k for a large UK bank. To be tested in the buyer interviews.