Amazon AI scammers blew millions on Lake Como wedding and cars, FTC alleges
Lake Como in northern Italy’s Lombardy region.
Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images
John and Roman Cresto made millions of dollars selling themselves as e-commerce “experts” who could teach regular consumers and investors the secret to selling success on Amazon and Walmart, for a price.
They splashed lavish vacations and high-end cars across their social media account, creating a multimillion-dollar image of success that federal regulators now say was fueled by falsehoods and deception.
The case is the latest example of the Federal Trade Commission cracking down on deceptive e-commerce consultancies that target consumers and fledgling online businesses. A robust industry of consultants and agencies, often referred to as “coaches” or “gurus,” have emerged as retailers increasingly move online and marketplaces on sites such as Amazon and Walmart flourish. These coaches often claim to have struck it rich in e-commerce and will pass along their expertise to users who pay for expensive courses with no guarantee of success.
The FTC on Tuesday asked a judge to bar the Cresto brothers from doing business temporarily, in connection with a lawsuit the agency filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
The Cresto brothers “promised to expertly manage the operations of automated online stores” on both Amazon and Walmart through their companies, including Empire Ecommerce, doing everything from finding products to fulfilling orders, the complaint says. They charged consumers anywhere from $10,000 to $125,000 for the initial investment, and $15,000 to $80,000 in additional funding as working capital, the FTC alleged.
The Cresto brothers also took 35% of any profits from their “partners'” e-commerce stores, the complaint says. By June 2022, less than 10% of Empire-managed stores generated sales, the FTC alleged. By October 2022, Amazon had either suspended or terminated most of those stores for violating its policies around intellectual property and a business method called dropshipping, where companies never actually have the inventory they’re selling, and instead order products through a manufacturer after a shopper makes a purchase, the complaint says. The majority of Empire’s storefronts on Walmart’s marketplace were either never activated or terminated for policy violations, according to the FTC.
Despite the suspensions, Empire for years continued to falsely promote the success of its Amazon businesses by recruiting affiliate marketers to post splashy videos online claiming they made “significant passive income” through Empire’s automation services. Empire was able to lure more than 60 new clients through this affiliate marketing scheme and netted over $1.5 million in commission fees, the FTC alleged.
“In truth, most of Empire’s clients lost money and virtually none made the advertised amounts,” the agency wrote in its complaint.
The suspensions left Empire’s clients deeply in debt, the FTC alleged, “because Empire typically had its clients pay for inventory on credit cards.” Empire refused to refund victims tens of thousands of dollars that victims had paid out to Empire or for goods sold, the FTC alleged.
The two brothers made more than $22 million from their clients, the FTC alleged.
The millions that the Crestos diverted for themselves were spent on high-end cars, vacations and even a luxury wedding in Italy, according to the FTC complaint and social media posts.
At the beginning of this year, after selling Empire, the Crestos spun up a new business called Automators AI, which claims to teach consumers how to use artificial intelligence to become online sellers making “over $10,000 per month in sales,” and use popular AI chatbot ChatGPT to create customer service scripts, the FTC alleged. The scheme is ongoing and defrauding consumers of tens of thousands of dollars, according to the FTC.
Amazon and Walmart did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
A fire sale exit
As the clock ran down on Empire’s alleged fraudulent behavior, the Cresto brothers attempted to pawn off their businesses to another operator, Daniel Cohen.
Cohen is now suing the Crestos, alleging that they deceived him about the true state of the business and used him to deflect blame from themselves.
In October 2022 — the same month the FTC alleged most of Empire’s working Amazon stores had been suspended — the Cresto brothers approached Cohen, a Florida businessman, about buying their empire. Roman Cresto showed projections that suggested his business was strong and highly profitable.
Cohen told CNBC in an interview that the Crestos first messaged him via Instagram and that they met over Zoom later that month. John Cresto assured Cohen in that Zoom meeting that Empire was not facing any litigation or major concerns, beyond a “couple” of unhappy clients.
“It was something I asked them, because I do know this industry,” Cohen told CNBC. The Crestos also offered him projections that claimed Empire collected up to 50% of profit from the thousands of stores they supposedly operated.
“I’m not sure where they got their projections from,” Cohen told CNBC. “Maybe at some point they did have a store that performed well, and maybe they just used that result for everybody, but I believe most of it was likely made up.”
Cohen agreed to buy the Crestos’ business Nov. 7, 2022, wiring them $100,000 the following day. Two days later, the Crestos revealed five ongoing “legal disputes” being handled by their defense firm, Stubbs Alderton & Markiles.
“I paid Roman 490k total for 6 stores … between LLC set-ups/fees, credit card feeding, virtual store fees, their software on several that they told me would push my stores to the top, etc, etc, they scammed me for well over $525k total,” one email from a client read, according to Cohen’s lawsuit.
Dozens more complaints were languishing in an inbox, detailing alleged negligence or “shady” dealings by the Cresto brothers.
“I paid you guys $65k for a experienced store. Since starting my store has done no where near the projections. Now my store has stopped having any sales at all. I need to know why this is and what happened. I am starting to feel like I was scammed and I need to get my lawyer involved,” read another email cited in Cohen’s lawsuit.
Cohen also told CNBC that Stubbs Alderton & Markiles agreed to serve as his law firm, before firing him as a client and telling Cohen that they would now represent the Cresto brothers.
“From a moral perspective. It just doesn’t smell right,” Cohen’s present attorney, Nima Tahmassebi, told CNBC.
Attorneys at Stubbs Alderton & Markiles did not respond to CNBC’s inquiries about their handling of the cases. The Cresto brothers did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Kremlin envoy proposes ‘Putin-Trump tunnel’ to link Russia and U.S.
Reuters
An investment envoy for Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday entreated Elon Musk and his tunneling business, the Boring Company, to commit to building an undersea rail tunnel through the Bering Strait to be partly funded by Moscow.
Kirill Dmitriev, who is head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, said in posts on Musk’s social media platform X that he envisioned “the Putin-Trump Tunnel – a 70-mile link symbolizing unity.”
A tunnel like this would traditionally cost an estimated $65 billion to build, Dmitriev said, adding that The Boring Company and its technology could potentially reduce those costs to $8 billion and complete the project within eight years.
“Let’s build a future together!” he wrote.
Dmitriev’s suggestion followed a call between Putin and President Donald Trump on Thursday, during which plans were made to discuss possible resolutions to the Ukraine War.
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other high-level advisors will meet next week with a Russian delegation before Trump and Putin meet in Budapest, Hungary, at a future date.
Musk did not respond to a request for comment about the proposal.
Construction of an undersea tunnel in the Bering Strait would require Musk’s Boring Company to work through below-freezing temperatures in a region without existing infrastructure and with deep and frequent earthquakes.
The Boring Company has no track record of working through such conditions.
Its previous tunneling efforts were completed in hot, dry locations with plenty of infrastructure and services nearby.
The Boring Company was recently fined and cited by environmental regulators in the state of Nevada for an “extraordinary number of violations,” ProPublica reported, citing public records. Those violations included: digging without approval, releasing untreated water onto city streets and spilling waste from trucks.
The Boring Company is now working on a 10-mile tunnel project from downtown Nashville, Tennessee, to its airport, dubbed the Music City Loop. Residents protested, in part, due to the lack of planning before The Boring Company project was authorized in the flood-prone city.
U.S. President Donald Trump (R) walks with Russian President Vladimir Putin as they arrives at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on August 15, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Musk’s automaker, Tesla, has supply chain ties to Russia, and the CEO has spoken with Putin about other matters in the past few years.
The EV maker has purchased millions of euros worth of aluminum from Rusal, a company founded by sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, CNBC previously reported.
Musk held secret talks with Putin in 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported in October 2024.
In one instance, Putin had pressured Musk to direct SpaceX to withold Starlink, its satellite internet communications service, from Taiwan as a favor to Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Journal reported, citing two people briefed on the request.
Beijing is a critical ally to the Kremlin.
The conversations between Musk and Putin, who once ran the KGB, reportedly occurred as Musk was in the midst of a leveraged buyout and takeover of Twitter, now known as X.
Working with NASA, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor, SpaceX, has also launched Russian cosmonauts to the International Space Station.
Technology
OpenAI stops Sora videos of Martin Luther King Jr. after users made ‘disrespectful’ deepfakes
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressing crowd of demonstrators outside the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images
OpenAI halted artificial intelligence-generated videos of Martin Luther King Jr. after users utilized its short-form video tool Sora to create “disrespectful depictions” of the civil rights leader.
“While there are strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures, OpenAI believes public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used,” OpenAI said in a post to social media platform X.
The ChatGPT maker said it will work to toughen “guardrails” for historical figures and that public figures or representatives can ask to not appear in Sora videos.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Other public figures have also called out the use of AI deepfakes.
Last week, Zelda Williams, the daughter of late comedian Robin Williams, asked that people stop sending her AI videos of her father.
Last year, actress Scarlett Johansson said the company used a voice that sounded “eerily similar” to her performance in the movie “Her” on ChatGPT. OpenAI later pulled the voice from its platform.
OpenAI launched Sora at the end of September. The tool allows users to create AI-generated short videos using a text prompt. In less than five days, Sora head Bill Peebles said the tool had amassed over 1 million downloads, hitting the milestone faster than ChatGPT.
Its ascent and the rise of AI-generated videos have also raised questions and concerns over the spread of misinformation, copyright infringement and the proliferation of AI slop, quickly produced videos that flood social feeds.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta on Friday announced new safety features that will allow parents to see and manage how their teenagers are interacting with artificial intelligence characters on the company’s platforms.
Parents will have the option to turn off one-on-one chats with AI characters completely, Meta said. They will also be able to block specific AI characters, get insight into the topics their children are discussing with them.
Meta is still building the controls, and the company said they will start to roll out early next year.
“Making updates that affect billions of users across Meta platforms is something we have to do with care, and we’ll have more to share soon,” Meta said in a blog post.
Meta has long faced criticism over its handling of child safety and mental health on its apps. The company’s new parental controls come after the Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry into several tech companies, including Meta, over how AI chatbots could potentially harm children and teenagers.
The agency said it wants to understand what steps these companies have taken to “evaluate the safety of these chatbots when acting as companions,” according to a release.
In August, Reuters reported that Meta allowed its chatbots to have romantic and sensual conversations with kids. Reuters found that a chatbot was able to have a romantic conversation with an eight-year-old, for instance.
Meta made changes to its AI chatbot policies following the report and now prevents its bots from discussing subjects like self-harm, suicide and eating disorders with teens. The AI is also supposed to avoid potentially inappropriate romantic conversations.
The company announced additional AI safety updates earlier this week. Meta said its AIs should not respond to teens with “age-inappropriate responses that would feel out of place in a PG-13 movie,” and it’s already releasing those changes across the U.S., the U.K., Australia and Canada.
Parents can already set time limits on app use and see if their teenagers are chatting with AI characters, Meta said. Teens can only interact with a select group of AI characters, the company added.
OpenAI, which is also named in the FTC inquiry, has made similar enhancements to its safety features for teens in recent weeks. The company officially rolled out its own parental controls late last month, and it’s developing a technology to better predict a user’s age.
Earlier this week, OpenAI announced a council of eight experts who will advise the company and provide insight into how AI affects users’ mental health, emotions and motivation.
If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.
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