A Wellington business is taking on one of the world's biggest social media platforms after its fan Facebook page was taken over by hackers two months ago.
Around 30,000 fans follow Kiwi tribute band The Pink Floyd Experience and are now at risk of being scammed themselves - while the band say Meta is giving them the run-around.
They're an imitation act of a legendary British band.
"A lot of our punters have seen our show 15 times, it's amazing the repeat business that we get and social media has a big part of that," director Darren Whittaker told Newshub.
Now The Pink Floyd Experience is the victim of a scam that's putting their 36,000 Facebook fans at risk of further fraud.
The tribute band's Facebook page was hacked in October after Whittaker responded to a fake message.
"I got a message through one of my accounts that the page was going to be closed down because it had breached copyright," he told Newshub.
He's now in a battle with Facebook parent company Meta after being locked out of his personal Facebook account which is also linked to the band's page.
"The people that took the page, they saw that I was admin to the page, The Pink Floyd Experience - me and my daughter - so they've removed us, made themselves admin and then somehow they've had my account disabled," he said.
Whittaker's daughter is the business's social media manager and has sent over 180 emails and about 30 Facebook messages to Meta in the last six weeks to get answers.
In those messages, Meta acknowledged fraudulent activity had occurred and was investigating, but there's been no resolution.
Meanwhile the fake Pink Floyd Experience page hasn't been closed down and is advertising a fictitious tour.
"They're now charging a subscription fee of $17.50 a month if anyone is stupid enough to pay that," Whittaker told Newshub.
It's fooling some punters - he's received a receipt for US$500 going straight into the hacker's bank account. Meta still hasn't shut the page down.
"They want to censor everything that you say and fact-check everything that you share and yet treat you like this as a business after you spend thousands of dollars, so this is why we are making some noise," Whittaker told Newshub.
A case of us and them - a Kiwi business taking on a social media giant.
