Owners of large Instagram accounts are receiving false copyright claims and then paying ransoms to extorters, according to a report by the BBC.

The criminals are exploiting Meta’s infamously slow appeal process by holding accounts hostage with bogus copyright claims and demanding relatively small amounts of money to drop them.

One Instagram user, called Olly, who operates the Lost in Time History page, tells the BBC that he paid $50 to get his account back. Olly ultimately decided that because Meta’s arbitration process takes weeks, he may as well pay the demand rather than lose thousands in revenue.

Olly says his account features public domain images or photos that he has permission to use. He says that in 2026, he has received dozens of “obviously fake” complaints. And since Meta doesn’t check the veracity of these complaints, when an account is hit repeatedly, it’s temporarily removed from the platform.

Olly says that after being hit by multiple claims all at once from the same email address, he then gets a message from someone requesting to speak to him on the private messaging app Telegram “demanding a certain amount of money” to withdraw the claim. Olly paid one extorter $50 in cryptocurrency and his account was restored; police warn victims not to pay ransoms because it adds fire to the criminal enterprise.

But Olly says that after he paid, he was then immediately hit with yet more copyright strikes. “That’s the worst part,” he tells the BBC. “Having to pay the person who’s actively put you through all of that anguish only for it to happen straight away again.”

Olly’s page has been hit so many times that his account has been demonetized, meaning Instagram will not pay him for his content when it performs well.

“There’s no investigation into abuse, or system detection [from Meta] that it could be abuse,” he adds.

The BBC investigation spoke to three extorters who were all reportedly based in India or nearby countries.

“We understand this can be frustrating for those impacted, and our systems are designed to protect people from this happening in the first place,” a Meta spokesperson says. “Following our review, we have restored the affected content and added additional protections to safeguard accounts against further attempts of this kind.”

Image creditsHeader photo licensed via Depositphotos.