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.

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.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority will stop selling and refilling those formerly-ubiquitous MetroCards by the end of the year in favor of the OMNY system, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber told Crain’s New York Business Wednesday.

MetroCards have been around since 1994, but now seem destined to go the way of the subway token, which stopped being used in 2003.

MTA officials previously said they planned to say goodbye to MetroCards in 2027, but now have provided an estimated date when they will stop selling and filling the cards, and that’s at the end of 2025.

OMNY’s popular tap-and-go system has been around since 2019 and the service includes the ability to tap your phone to pay to purchase an OMNY tap card that passengers can buy and reload.

Commuters will still be able to use their existing MetroCards with whatever funds they have on them until sometime in 2027.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang downplayed the negative impact from President Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying there won’t be any significant damage in the short run.

“We’ve got a lot of AI to build … AI is the foundation, the operating system of every industry going forward. … We are enthusiastic about building in America,” Huang said Wednesday in a CNBC “Squawk on the Street” interview. “Partners are working with us to bring manufacturing here. In the near term, the impact of tariffs won’t be meaningful.”

Trump has launched a new trade war by imposing tariffs against Washington’s three biggest trading partners, drawing immediate responses from Mexico, Canada and China. Recently, Trump said he would not change his mind about enacting sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” on other countries that put up trade barriers to U.S. goods. The White House said those tariffs are set to take effect April 2.

“We’re as enthusiastic about building in America as anybody,” Huang said. “We’ve been working with TSMC to get them ready for manufacturing chips here in the United States. We also have great partners like Foxconn and Wistron, who are working with us to bring manufacturing onshore, so long-term manufacturing onshore is going to be something very, very possible to do, and we’ll do it.”

Shares of Nvidia have fallen more than 20% from their record high reached in January. The stock suffered a massive sell-off earlier this year due to concerns sparked by Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek that companies could potentially get greater performance in AI on far-lower infrastructure costs. Huang has pushed back on that theory, saying DeepSeek popularized reasoning models that will need more chips.

Nvidia, which designs and manufactures graphics processing units that are essential to the AI boom, has been restricted from doing business in China due to export controls that were increased at the end of the Biden administration.

Huang previously said the company’s percentage of revenue in China has fallen by about half due to the export restrictions, adding that there are other competitive pressures in the country, including from Huawei.