Most of the creators Temu pays to push its products on Facebook and Instagram in Europe do not appear to be real people, with 73 of its top 100 partners flagged as likely fake accounts, according to Online Risk Labs research seen by Jim Edwards at Fortune. Those creator posts made up 65.8% of Temu’s ads in the region against roughly 2% for a typical advertiser, and ORL estimates Temu put as much as $962 million behind them in the 16 months through April 2026. The accounts look built for the purpose, since only eight of the 100 were verified and most were run out of Russia, China, and the US rather than the markets they sold into. Whether Temu is buying them knowingly or getting fleeced isn’t clear, but European law bars misleading ad formats, and ORL has taken it to the DSA regulator.
