Packages ride on a conveyor belt during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days at an Amazon fulfillment center on December 2, 2024 in Orlando, Florida.
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The Federal Trade Commission is going after an e-commerce company that allegedly took millions of dollars from consumers as part of a “passive income” scheme, which spun up Amazon storefronts on their behalf and promised “insane returns” that were higher than the stock market.
The FTC said Tuesday it filed a lawsuit against the company, called Click Profit; its co-founders Craig Emslie and Patrick McGeoghean; and two other business associates. It also asked a judge to bar the parties from doing business temporarily.
The case is the latest example of the FTC cracking down on e-commerce “automation” services. These companies launch and manage online storefronts on behalf of clients, who pay money for the services and the promise of earning tens of thousands of dollars in “passive income.” The companies often make extravagant claims about potential earnings and the use of artificial intelligence technology to guarantee profits. Despite their assurances, consumers frequently end up losing money.
Click Profit, which also operated under the names FBALaunch, Automation Industries and PortfolioLaunch, promised investors they would “build you a massively profitable e-commerce store from the ground up” by selling products on Amazon, Walmart and TikTok, according to the FTC.
The company charged consumers between $45,000 to $75,000 for the initial investment, plus an additional $10,000 or more to pay for inventory, the FTC alleged in its complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Click Profit took up to 35% of any profits from their customers’ stores, the complaint states.
The company claimed the business opportunity was “safe, secure and proven to generate wealth,” according to marketing materials referenced in the FTC’s complaint. They posted screenshots of purportedly successful Amazon storefronts, including one they claimed generated product sales of over $540,000 in one month.
Emslie often appeared in TikTok videos and other online ads to pitch prospective consumers. In one ad, he said that “the stock market, real estate or precious metals will never be able to offer you” the level of security offered through investing in Click Profit, according to the FTC’s complaint. Other TikTok videos show him appearing alongside an image of Warren Buffett while “fanning himself” with wads of cash, per the complaint.
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Click Profit talked up its expertise by claiming it had product sourcing partnerships with legitimate brands, including Nike, Disney, Dell, Colgate and Marvel, the complaint alleges. It also claimed to have spent $5 million to build a “super computer” and other AI technologies to locate the “most profitable products,” claiming the super computer had generated “around $100 million in sales,” per the complaint.
The company even implied that investors’ online store could be bought out by venture capital firms connected with Click Profit “at a 3-6x multiple,” the FTC alleged.
“In reality, the highly touted AI technology and brand partnerships do not exist, and the promised earnings never materialize,” the FTC said in its complaint.
Amazon suspended or terminated about 95% of Click Profit’s stores after they violated Amazon’s seller policies, the FTC alleged. After accounting for Amazon’s fees, more than one-fifth of Click Profit’s stores on the platform earned no money at all, while another third earned less than $2,500 in gross lifetime sales, the FTC stated.
As a result, most consumers were unable to recoup their investments and “some are saddled with burdensome credit card debt and unsold products,” according to the FTC, which also said that Click Profit often refused to refund victims their investments and threatened them with legal action if they posted publicly about their experience.
One unnamed consumer mentioned in the lawsuit invested “his life’s savings” in Click Profit and was later terminated as a client “with nothing to show for his payments,” the complaint states. He posted a negative review online and was allegedly approached by Emslie’s attorney, who threatened to sue the consumer and “take everything he and his wife owned,” per the complaint.
The consumer took the reviews down, then asked Emslie whether he could receive a partial refund, according to the FTC.
“The attorney told the consumer that Emslie had responded, ‘F*** off,'” the FTC alleged.
Representatives for Emslie and Click Profit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FTC alleges Click Profit violated the FTC Act, the Consumer Review Fairness Act and the Business Opportunity Rule. It seeks to permanently prohibit Click Profit from doing business, as well as monetary relief for the victims.
People walk past an Amazon Fresh store in Washington, DC, on August 26, 2021.
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Amazon plans to close all of its Fresh supermarkets in the U.K., in the latest recalibration of its grocery strategy.
The company said in a Tuesday blog that it’s preparing to close all 19 of its Fresh U.K. stores, “following a thorough evaluation of business operations and the very substantial growth opportunities in online delivery.” Five of the Fresh locations are expected to be converted into Whole Foods stores, Amazon said.
Amazon opened its first Fresh location outside the U.S. in London in 2021, about a year after it debuted the store concept in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Fresh stores offer cheaper prices and more mass-market items compared to Whole Foods, the upscale supermarket chain Amazon acquired for $13.7 billion in 2017. Many of the stores also feature Amazon’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology.
The Fresh store pullback in the U.K. comes as Amazon has continued to adjust its grocery ambitions. The company has slowed expansion of its Fresh grocery chain and Go cashierless stores in the U.S. It still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.
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At the same time, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items like canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks.
Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.
The company on Tuesday also said that it plans to offer same-day delivery of groceries, including perishable items, in the U.K. beginning next year.
The Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD presents its models at the Open Space Area during the IAA Mobility in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, on September 12, 2025.
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BYD has a backup plan if it gets cut off from the Nvidia chips it currently uses in its cars, a top executive at the Chinese electric carmaker told CNBC on Tuesday.
Stella Li, executive vice president at BYD, said the company had not received any directive from the Chinese government to stop using Nvidia chips — but if it did, it has a plan B.
“Everybody has a backup. BYD has [a] backup,” Li told CNBC’s Dan Murphy.
Li declined to expand on what the plan is, but she pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic during which there was a global shortage of semiconductors which badly affected the auto sector. BYD had “no issue” at the time because it developed a lot of its technology in-house, he said, so it was able to source alternatives quickly.
Indeed, BYD has sought to have control over large parts of its supply chain, from manufacturing its own cars to developing its own batteries.
“We have a lot of strong … even deeper technology in-house, so we always have backup,” Li said.
Nvidia, whose chips underpin much of the world’s artificial intelligence development, has been caught in the crossfire amid U.S.-China tensions. The company’s H20 AI chip — designed specifically to comply with U.S. export restrictions to China — was first banned, then permitted to be sold in China this year after a revenue-share deal between Washington and Nvidia.
Nvidia designs an entirely different set of semiconductors for cars, however.
One of Nvidia’s systems, Nvidia Drive AGX Orin, is designed to enable cars to carry out some driving tasks autonomously. BYD is a customer of this product.
There is no indication so far that the Chinese government is looking to ban this Nvidia system.
Li said BYD had not been told to stop using any Nvidia products, adding it was unlikely that Beijing would ban the U.S. firm’s auto chips.
“I don’t think any country will do that, because this automatic will kill Nvidia,” Li said. “So Nvidia now is the highest market value company, so if they lose the big market from China … nobody wants to see this.”
Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission are squaring off in a long-awaited trial over whether the company duped users into paying for Prime memberships.
The lawsuit, filed by the FTC in June 2023 under the Biden administration, alleges that Amazon deceived tens of millions of customers into signing up for its Prime subscription program and sabotaged their attempts to cancel it. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing.
The trial is being held in a federal court in Seattle, Amazon’s backyard. Jury selection began Monday and opening arguments are slated for Tuesday, with the trial expected to last about a month.
Launched in 2005, Amazon’s Prime program has grown to become one of the most popular subscription services in the world, with more than 200 million members globally, and it has generated billions of dollars for the company. Membership costs $139 a year and includes perks like free shipping and access to streaming content. Data has shown that Prime members spend more and shop more often than non-Prime members.
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos famously said the company wanted Prime “to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member.”
Regulators argue that Amazon broke competition and consumer protection laws by tricking customers into subscribing to Prime. They pointed to examples like a button on its site that instructed users to complete their transaction and did not clearly state they were also agreeing to join Prime for a recurring subscription.
“Millions of consumers accidentally enrolled in Prime without knowledge or consent, but Amazon refused to fix this known problem, described internally by employees as an ‘unspoken cancer’ because clarity adjustments would lead to a drop in subscribers,” the agency wrote in a court filing last week.
The FTC says that the cancellation process is equally confusing, requiring users to navigate four webpages and choose from 15 options — a “labyrinthian mechanism” that the company referred to internally as “Iliad,” referencing Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War.
Amazon has argued that the Prime sign up and cancellation processes are “clear and simple,” adding that the company has “always been transparent about Prime’s terms.”
“Occasional customer frustrations and mistakes are inevitable — especially for a program as popular as Amazon Prime,” the company wrote in a recent court filing. “Evidence that a small percentage of customers misunderstood Prime enrollment or cancellation does not prove that Amazon violated the law.”
A crackdown on ‘dark patterns’
The FTC notched an early win in the case last week when U.S. District Court Judge John Chun ruled Amazon and two senior executives violated the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act by gathering Prime members’ billing information before disclosing the terms of the service.
Chun also said that the two senior Amazon executives would be individually liable if a jury sides with the FTC due to the level of oversight they maintained over the Prime enrollment and cancellation process.
Amazon’s Prime boss Jamil Ghani and Neil Lindsay, a senior vice president in its health division who previously oversaw Prime’s technology and business operations, are named defendants in the complaint.
Russell Grandinetti, Amazon senior vice president of international consumer, is also named in the suit, but Chun argued he had “less involvement in the operation of the Prime organization” compared to Ghani and Lindsay.
Chun also scolded attorneys for Amazon in July for withholding thousands of documents from the FTC and abusing a legal privilege to shield them from scrutiny. Among the documents was a 2020 email where Amazon’s retail chief Doug Herrington said “subscription driving” was a “shady” practice and referred to Bezos as the company’s “chief dark arts officer.”
Representatives from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon also faces a separate lawsuit brought by the FTC in 2023 accusing it of wielding an illegal monopoly. That case is set to go to trial in February 2027.
The Prime case is part of the FTC’s broader crackdown on so-called “dark patterns,” which it began examining in 2022. The phrase refers to deceptive design tactics meant to steer users toward buying products or services or giving up their privacy.
The agency brought a similar dark patterns lawsuit against Uber in April, accusing the ride-hailing and delivery company of deceptive billing and cancellation practices tied to its Uber One subscription service. Uber has disputed the FTC’s allegations.
Earlier this year, it reached settlements with online dating service Match and online education firm Chegg over claims that their subscription practices were deceptive or hard to cancel.