San Francisco (United States) (AFP) - The US Federal Trade Commission and 22 states filed a lawsuit against Amazon on Monday on charges of "rigging" online digital advertising auctions, resulting in 1.2 million customers being charged overcharges exceeding $20 billion.

Published on: 01/09/2026 - 00:59

The complaint, filed in a federal court in Washington state, accuses Amazon of “secretly and systematically imposing inflated fees on its approximately 1.2 million advertising customers, by manipulating the ‘auctions’ that it uses to determine advertising prices on its platform.”

For its part, Amazon described the lawsuit in a blog post as “misleading” and “flawed,” and said that regulators were “selective” in its selection of outdated internal documents.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters on Monday that Amazon “manipulated billions of advertising auctions,” noting that this initiative has bipartisan support, Republican and Democratic, something that “does not happen very often these days.”

California is one of the states that participated in filing the lawsuit alongside the Federal Trade Commission.

"Based on numerous internal documents describing 'hidden surcharges', Amazon's scheme likely illegally extorted more than $20 billion from its advertising customers without their knowledge," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleges that in 2018, “Amazon began secretly manipulating the results of its auctions to raise the prices of its ads” and that “it did not notify its customers of this change, but rather took actual steps to hide it.”

This is the third major lawsuit filed by the FTC against Amazon.

In September 2025, Amazon agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle allegations that it used deceptive practices to sign up customers for Amazon Prime and made it difficult for them to cancel subscriptions.

A trial is scheduled to begin early next year in a case accusing Amazon of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the field of online retail trade.

© 2026 AFP

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