Meta has been ordered to pay a $25 billion penalty over false statements connected to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, bringing a staggering price tag to deception that dates back nearly a decade.

A New Mexico judge imposed the penalty Wednesday after a jury determined in late September that company executives violated state laws by making statements they knew were false following the scandal. The ruling applies the highest penalty permitted under the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act.

New Mexico State District Court Judge Francis Mathew pointed to the sweeping nature of the conduct and the involvement of senior Facebook officials when explaining the decision.

“The extraordinary number of willful violations found by the jury, the duration and repetition of the conduct, the breadth of subjects on which violations occurred, the involvement of senior Facebook leadership, the size of New Mexico audiences reached, and the clear intentional and systematic nature of Facebook’s repeated misstatements established in the trial record support the highest level of penalty allowed by the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act,” Mathew wrote in a court filing.

The underlying scandal involved Cambridge Analytica, a political firm financed in part by benefactors supportive of Trump. The firm harvested private information from tens of millions of Facebook users.

That information was eventually conveyed to members of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and used for political targeting. Meta is now being forced to confront the cost of statements its leaders made about the scandal and the company’s treatment of user data.

The case was separate from another landmark trial that Meta lost in New Mexico. In that case, the company was found liable for putting profits over consumers and knowingly exposing children to harms it knew existed on its platforms.

According to Tech Policy Press, the statements that jurors found willfully deceptive included remarks from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and other company executives.

Those statements addressed the company’s response to Cambridge Analytica, protections for user information, and the presence of misinformation and hate speech on Meta platforms. They included comments from Zuckerberg and Sandberg concerning when access to private user data had been closed.

Jurors also examined a 2017 statement from Zuckerberg claiming that Meta, which was then known as Facebook, had “always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism.”

Another statement deemed willfully deceptive came from Zuckerberg in 2020. He claimed there were no exceptions for politicians who violated platform rules governing content that “may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote.”

The jury also found that a 2020 statement by former Meta executive Nick Clegg was willfully deceptive. Clegg said Meta “doesn’t profit from hate” and claimed the company used a “zero tolerance approach” toward hateful content appearing on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta rejected the outcome and quickly returned to a familiar corporate shield by framing the dispute as a matter of free expression. The company had already disputed the jury’s September decision and promised to appeal.

In a statement issued late Wednesday afternoon, Meta’s chief legal officer told MS NOW that the ruling “makes it all but impossible to do business in the state of New Mexico.” The executive also accused the judge of imposing a “tax on speech” and again vowed to appeal the decision.

A company spokesperson previously defended Meta’s approach in comments reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican. “Meta’s platforms are forums for free expression. We have a First Amendment right to manage those platforms in a way we believe best serves the interests of our community,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

“This means prioritizing free speech, protecting our users’ information and giving them control over their data,” the spokesperson added.

The $25 billion order follows the jury’s findings about repeated statements by some of Meta’s most prominent executives. Mathew’s ruling made clear that the scale, duration and intentional nature of those misstatements warranted the maximum penalty available under state law.