Temu’s $962 Million Network of Fake Influencers Is Unraveling

Temu’s bargain blitz in Europe may have come with a second, quieter machine behind it: a huge web of creator-style ads that investigators say were often fake. Online Risk Labs, a Czech research group, tracked Temu’s activity on Meta’s platforms for 16 months through April and found about €830 million in partnership ads, most of them posted in the name of creators.

The scale is hard to ignore. The network covered all 27 EU countries and Britain, ran more than 1.4 million campaigns, and generated about 17 billion impressions. But the people behind the top accounts look deeply suspect. Of the 100 most important creator partners, about 73 were likely not genuine, according to the researchers, and only eight were identity-verified.

The geography is awkward too. Even though the ads were aimed at Europe, 28 of the top 100 accounts were based in Russia and 19 in China, while only six were in the EU or Britain. Some profiles had odd names, and one changed its name 15 times. The biggest account, called “Ya Lily,” had 183,000 Instagram followers and used AI-generated images to push products. Its content alone produced more than a billion impressions over 16 months, while at times running about 225 Temu campaigns a day.

Once Fortune published the findings at the end of August, Temu seems to have moved fast. Within days, 54 of the top 100 accounts had stopped running partnership ads, and the overall volume nearly halved. Temu and Meta did not comment to Fortune, but the legal risk is obvious: ads that impersonate real people can run into EU and British rules on misleading advertising, plus AI disclosure requirements. And Meta is in the frame too, since it hosted the ads and earned from them for years.