Stockholm university
Department of Law

From Followers to Fraud: Criminal Law Perspectives on Influencer Marketing

Seminar

Date: Monday 8 December 2025

Time: 12.30 – 13.30

Location: Stockholm Centre for Commercial Law (SCCL) Floor 6, Library Building, Södra huset, Frescati

Invitation to an advanced seminar organized by the Swedish Law and Informatics Research Institute on the topic of "From Followers to Fraud: Criminal Law Perspectives on Influencer Marketing" with Florian Nicolai, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Florian Nicolai currently holds a postdoc position at the Chair for Criminal Law, Criminal Procedural Law and Philosophy of the Law at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. Cybercrime and digital investigations are part of his main areas of research.

Influencers are the ‘opinion leaders’ on social media. They have a significant impact on their “followers'” purchasing decisions, particularly because they suggest a special closeness between them. Since companies are aware of the advantage of being able to target specific consumer groups with an influencer as a role model, they are willing to pay high sums for collaborations with social media stars. The latter, in turn, know that their media reach – in other words, the number of their viewers and followers – determines the price they can charge for advertising. This is reinforced by the fact that individual discount codes and affiliate links can be used to track how many consumers individual influencers have actually persuaded to make a purchase. However, it is precisely this structure that can tempt people to cross the boundaries of legality: Do influencers really do anything for money?

The seminar examines the phenomenology of influencer marketing and uses examples from legal practice to address the extent to which influencers can be held criminally liable for their advertising behaviour and their behaviour to widen their reach on social media. The focus will be on economic criminal law, particularly with regard to fraud and criminal violations of competition law.
 
Warm welcome! 
Liane Colonna and Stanley Greenstein

Registration

Please inform Liane Colonna of your participation by the 5th of December:
liane.colonna@juridicum.su.se
 
 

Research subject
Law and Information Technology

Last updated: November 12, 2025

Source: Department of Law

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