Australia's richest person Gina Rinehart unleashes on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in scathing letter

Australia's richest person has taken aim at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg urging him to do more to combat scam accounts impersonating her and other celebrities.

Gina Rinehart in a letter to the Meta CEO said 'numerous scammers' on his social media networks have been using her name and likeness to swindle others out of their money.

Ms Rinehart penned the November 9 letter on behalf of other celebrities such as billionaire real estate developer and Meriton CEO, Harry Triguboff, and entrepreneur Dick Smith whose identities were also being used by scammers.

'In the last few weeks, I have had more than 750 scams on Facebook, as opposed to only one on Twitter (now known as X) in the same time ­period, hence I'd appreciate more efforts taken in attempting to ­address these issues,' she said in the letter reported by The Australian.

'Greater ­action is needed to stop scams and intentionally fraudulent content from being available and advertised to.'

'Meta needs to do more (as) innocent Australians are falling victim to job scams through Facebook.' 

Ms Rinehardt claimed she personally wrote the letter after Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, ignored official complaints by her staff.

'According to the National Anti Scams Centre, Australians reported a record $3.1bn lost to scams in 2022. This represents an 80 per cent increase from the year before,' she said.

'The NASC also estimates that about 80 per cent of all scams reported include some form of impersonation of a legitimate entity. 

'This has happened using me hundreds of times, and my staff can't keep up; there are so many,' Mrs Rinehart said. 

TV personalities Tracy Grimshaw, Karl Stefanovic and David Koch have also recently hit out at Meta for not dealing with fraudsters using their identities. 

Koch in September told 2GB's Ben Fordham he had plans to file legal suits against social media platforms that don't take down fraudulent content.

'I'm so frustrated with this that I'm looking in the possibility of defamation against social media platforms that run these ads because it's damaging me,' the former Sunrise presenter said.

'People are getting hoodwinked into this thinking 'I've done this because you told me'.

'It's all a massive scam using high profile people and really trashing our reputation in the process.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Meta for comment.