“A New Chance to Get Your Finances Back on Track!”: New Desenrola Brasil Program Accompanied by Increase in Fraudulent Ads
Fraudulent advertisements can be understood as a disinformation strategy based on paid content and social engineering techniques to generate revenue, causing financial and reputational harm to users.
On social media, this type of advertising often relies on sensationalist language, promises of unrealistic results, prices or discounts far below market value, and AI-manipulated images. Scammers also create fake profiles that imitate official pages or pose as qualified professionals.
In this report, we focus on fraudulent advertisements that exploit public policies aimed at addressing household indebtedness. These ads improperly use visual identities and refer to federal government programs and initiatives to mislead users.
This study seeks to gather evidence on fraudulent advertisements related to public policies targeting indebted populations, such as the New Desenrola Brasil, in order to understand the campaigns and strategies used to deceive users.
We mapped advertisements placed by Meta on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads, and Messenger, as well as through the Audience Network, through which Meta serves advertisements on third-party apps.
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How to cite
SANTINI, Marie; SALLES, Débora; SANCHOTENE, Nicole; MATTOS, Bruno; BARROS, Carlos Eduardo; MOREIRA, Alékis; MELLO, Danielle; GRAEL, Felipe; FERREIRA, Fernando; HADDAD, João Gabriel; BORGES, Amanda; MENDES, Arthur; DIAS, Bernardo. “A New Chance to Get Your Finances Back on Track!”: New Desenrola Brasil Program Accompanied by Increase in Fraudulent Ads. Rio de Janeiro: NetLab – Internet and Social Media Studies Laboratory, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Published on July 30, 2026.
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WARNING
This report is an independent production by NetLab UFRJ. All decisions regarding this work were made exclusively by the laboratory's researchers. NetLab UFRJ's funders have no influence over the laboratory's research agenda and did not participate in any stage of the production of this report.
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