Temu spent up to $962 million on ads that helped finance an army of fake creators on Meta platforms, research claims

If you are one of Ya Lili’s 183,000 followers on her “@findgadgetswithme” Instagram account, you may have seen this video she posted recently: A man stands on a sunny beach, dressed only in swim shorts, his back covered in dirt. “This won’t come off!” he shouts as he rubs futilely at the brown filth covering his arm. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fully dressed woman walks into the frame and says, “Because you’re doing it wrong!” She then takes a bath mitt and wipes away a large swathe of the soil.“If you’re still using your bare hands, you are missing out,” the voiceover says, as the action switches to a close-up of a woman using the sponge glove to clean a series of inexplicable squiggly lines from her bare thighs.It’s AI slop, obviously. But if you want to buy this shower scrubber, there’s a link under the video where you can find them for sale on Temu.

Ya Lily is the top creator for Temu’s partnership ads on Meta platforms in the U.K. and Europe, according to research seen by Fortune. The problem is, Ya Lily almost certainly does not exist. She’s a fake account. 

In fact, of the top 100 creators boosted by Temu’s partnership ads, 73 are likely fakes, the research suggests.

It is not clear whether Temu is doing this deliberately or is being fooled by scammers into spending money on influencers who don’t exist. But the likely fake accounts potentially set up a legal quagmire for Temu, as European law bars the use of misleading formats for advertising. 

Neither Temu nor Ya Lilly responded to multiple requests for comment from Fortune. Meta declined comment when reached.

Above: One of YaLily’s Temu partnership ads on Instagram.

Real money going to fake accounts

Ya Lily has a further 129,000 followers on Facebook, where she goes by a completely different name, “Must good.” That page gives her location as “England, Birmingham, MO, United States.” Her bio says “You are my dream of dead.” And her email address appears to be Chinese.

And yet her posts—which all contain links to a random assortment of Temu products—were boosted by Temu and seen more than 1 billion times across both platforms in 16 months ending in April 2026, according to Online Risk Labs. ORL is an independent non-profit based in the Czech Republic, which researches cybersecurity and systemic risk online.

Ya Lily’s content ran in nearly 109,541 Temu ad campaigns in that period, the data show. That’s about 225 campaigns per day.

Using creators on Facebook and Instagram to churn out an endless stream of........

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