Falsifying scientific research involving hundreds of millions of dollars is serious crime too, and yet the president of Stanford and researchers at Duke are where they are.
I have no idea what goes on at META or any other public company. I just know people have repeatedly underestimated the odds of misrepresentation in the past.
It does take ~10 years in practice for people to notice the lies and for the FBI to finally arrest you. At least in Enron or Worldcom cases, these things can go on for a very long time.
USA is eventually correct, but we take our sweet ass time getting there.
The closest a report like this could be to "incorrect" is poorly planned short-term/long-term tradeoffs. You could, for example, renew an expensive contract with a vendor for a 1 year term instead of 5 years at a lower annual price. This quarter's costs will go down significantly compared to the last time this contract was up for renewal - but now you need to add the same cost to your ledger next year instead of 5 years down the line. Repeat that same short-sighted planning many times over and it's possible to fabricate a profit increase. But that will only last so long. It could work for people prepping for an IPO when they plan to essentially pump-and-dump. Not so much for a mature public company.
One of the selling points of buying shares of businesses publicly listed in the US (and some other countries) is that the probability of the numbers being correct is very high.