A $45,000 Ticket to Nowhere

Since at least 2021, Click Profit and its constellation of eight corporate shells marketed one core product across Google, TikTok, social media, and business-listing sites: the fantasy of becoming a hands-off e-commerce millionaire. The pitch was built on three pillars: guaranteed income, exclusive brand partnerships with Nike and Disney, and a $5 million proprietary AI system developed over three years by sixteen engineers. Every single one of those pillars was false.

The minimum buy-in was $45,000 (enough to cover a year’s groceries for a family of four, plus their car payments, plus their phone bills, with money to spare). That “bronze” package came with a 65/35 profit split and a promise of $100,000 in sales within 52 weeks or a full refund. Consumers who paid $60,000 got 70/30, and those who paid $75,000 got 75/25. On top of those fees, buyers were required to fund their own inventory, typically several thousand dollars more, multiple times per year.

The FTC’s complaint, filed March 3, 2025, names eight corporate entities all operating under the Click Profit umbrella, along with four individual executives who ran and profited from the operation. The corporate web spans Florida, Delaware, Massachusetts, Wyoming, and Ohio, all of it connected through shared bank accounts, shared warehouses, shared addresses, and commingled funds.

The Men Behind the Machine

The Numbers They Buried in the Fine Print

Amazon’s own data, as cited in the FTC complaint, tells the story Click Profit’s advertising never would. As of mid-2024, approximately 14% of Click Profit’s 230 Amazon stores had earned zero in gross sales. Around a third earned less than $5,000 in gross lifetime sales (less than the cost of a used car). The median store earned about $14,000 (roughly three months of minimum-wage work) in gross lifetime sales, and after Amazon’s fees, that median dropped to $7,200 (about what someone working full-time at minimum wage earns in six weeks).

Defendants promised an average yearly revenue of $446,509 (enough to pay off a median American mortgage in about three years). Amazon’s data confirmed that not a single store in their entire portfolio came close to that number during its entire lifetime. The average store made sales for only about 6.7 months before going dark.

After Click Profit’s own additional fees, including a minimum $3 charge per shipment plus a 25% to 35% “profit split” cut of whatever thin revenue did materialize, nearly every buyer walked away with costs that exceeded their earnings. The company took money coming in, money going out, and the dream on the way down.

The Fake AI, the Fake Nike Deal, and the Random Paper Clips

Click Profit’s marketing was built on the claim that its “super computer,” developed by sixteen engineers over three years at a cost of nearly $5 million (enough to fully fund a small-town public library for a decade), used proprietary AI and machine learning to identify the most profitable products on Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok. McGeoghean told consumers the software had generated around $100 million in sales. Emslie called it an “AI-backed bot” analyzing “three and a half years of real-life e-commerce data.” The FTC says this technology did not exist in the form described.

The brand partnership claims were equally fabricated. Emslie personally claimed in promotional videos that Click Profit held “exclusive wholesale licenses” with companies including Colgate, 3M, Dove, Yeti, Nike, and Disney, and that building these relationships had taken “almost a decade.” The FTC states directly that no such affiliations, wholesale licenses, or partnership agreements existed. Click Profit’s website displayed the logos of major brands prominently, suggesting endorsement or affiliation where there was none.

What were consumers actually getting in their stores? The FTC’s complaint describes the inventory as “a seemingly random assortment of generic and off-brand consumer goods, such as makeup applicators, drying racks, stuffed animal ‘warmies,’ food storage bags, and paper clips.” The AI-curated premium product portfolio of tier-one branded goods turned out to be dollar-store merchandise.

Guaranteed Returns That Were Never Going to Materialize

The sales pitch promised something extremely specific: $100,000 in sales within 52 weeks, or a full refund. Emslie put this directly in social media ads: “We’ll do $100,000 in sales in 52 weeks or less, one year, or you get every single penny of your investment back.” The company also marketed a “$150,000 sales guarantee” prominently on its website, calling it a “unique approach.” Emslie claimed there was “a ZERO% chance you lose money” and described it as “legal protection” that the stock market and real estate could never offer.

The guarantee was fake in practice. When customers came back to collect on it, Click Profit stopped answering the phone. Representatives went silent on calls, texts, and voicemails. The company offered a parade of excuses for why stores weren’t generating sales, and when customers pushed for refunds, Click Profit generally refused. The only consumers who managed to get partial refunds were those who filed third-party complaints with organizations like the Better Business Bureau, hired attorneys, or threatened legal action.

The company also dangled a venture capital exit as a bonus incentive. Sales materials claimed Click Profit had “a network of VC firms” ready to “help you exit your store for a 3-6x multiple,” and cited one consumer who allegedly sold his store for $1.25 million (a life-changing sum that would cover a 30-year mortgage in many American cities). The FTC makes no finding that any such VC buyout network existed or that any consumer actually received that payout.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Measure

These consumers were sold a story about dignity and freedom. The marketing was explicit: Click Profit would give you enough “passive income” to step back from your day job, spend more time with your kids, retire your spouse, and stop worrying about money. One testimonial on Click Profit’s website featured a man saying he was going to “slowly step back from my day-to-day job” and have “less stress” and “less physical work” so he could be more present with his family. Another described being able to “replace his wife’s income and retire her” in less than two years. A third spoke of the “freedom” to “go about your day and not have to worry so much about your money.” These were real emotional needs being weaponized by people who knew their product could not deliver.

The most documented case in the FTC complaint is the story of a man who invested his life savings. Click Profit terminated him as a client with nothing to show for his payments. He did what any reasonable person would do: he left honest reviews online and filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. Emslie then hired an attorney to threaten him. The threat was specific, targeting not just his money but his home and his pension. The complaint notes that these threats “terrified the consumer’s wife, who cried herself to sleep for several nights.” The couple had invested everything and were now being told that speaking the truth about it could cost them what little remained.

Faced with the prospect of losing even more money in a lawsuit they couldn’t afford, the man removed his negative reviews. When he asked Emslie’s attorney about the possibility of a partial refund after complying, the attorney relayed Emslie’s response: “F*** off.” That is the documented, on-the-record response of this company to a victim who had just complied with their legal demands. The FTC preserved it in a federal complaint because it tells you everything you need to know about who these executives are and what they think of the people they harmed.

The non-disparagement clause buried in Click Profit’s nonnegotiable standard contract was the mechanism behind all of this. Customers had no ability to negotiate its terms. The clause mandated that “any issues or problems shall be discussed in a professional and private manner” and banned any “disparaging” information about Click Profit in any forum, “regardless of whether such comments could be deemed factually true.” In plain language: Click Profit made its customers contractually promise not to tell the truth. And when those customers broke that silence because they had no other recourse, the company threatened to destroy them financially. The FTC found that some consumers did take down their reviews as a result of these threats, meaning the silence was successfully purchased through fear. Every review that was removed was one fewer warning for the next person being pitched a $45,000 (three years’ worth of groceries for a family of four) dream that was already known to be a lie.

Legal Receipts: Straight from the Federal Complaint

“Defendants operate a business opportunity scheme called ‘Click Profit’ that promises to make consumers owners of fully operational, technologically sophisticated e-commerce stores, but in fact bilks them out of tens of thousands of dollars.”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 2

“The highly touted AI technology and brand partnerships do not exist, and the promised earnings never materialize… consumers lose most, if not all, of their payments, which typically exceed $50,000.”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 3-4

“An attorney hired by Defendant Emslie threatened to sue the consumer and take everything he and his wife owned, including their home and pensions. These threats terrified the consumer’s wife, who cried herself to sleep for several nights.”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 71

“It further prohibits consumers from sharing any ‘disparag[ing]’ information about Click Profit ‘in any online or offline forum or any other forum whatsoever, including but not limited to social media channels, regardless of whether such comments could be deemed factually true.'”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 70 (quoting Click Profit’s own contract)

“Defendants have told the BBB that a consumer’s complaint was fabricated by a ‘competitor who is slandering and attacking us online’ and that Defendants have no association with the person who filed the report; that ‘we do not have a product or service that we offer that costs $45k’; and that ‘we’re a marketing and consulting firm and do not have operations based around products or selling products.'”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 73

“Around 78% of Amazon stores associated with Click Profit were non-operational. In total, Amazon has blocked, suspended, or shut down around 95% of Click Profit’s stores at some point due to some misconduct by Defendants.”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 65

“While Defendants claim an average yearly sales revenue of $446,509.56, not a single store earned nearly that much revenue during its entire lifetime, much less per year.”

FTC Complaint, Paragraph 47

Societal Impact: Who Actually Pays When This Happens

Economic Inequality: Targeting People Who Can Least Afford to Lose

The “passive income” industry has exploded over the last decade precisely because wages have stagnated while the cost of housing, healthcare, and food have continued to climb. Millions of working Americans spend their evenings scrolling through ads that promise them a second income stream that runs while they sleep, because one job is no longer enough to build any kind of financial cushion. Click Profit did not accidentally end up in that lane. The company deliberately aimed its marketing at people who were ready to sacrifice a significant sum to change their financial reality.

The minimum entry price of $45,000 (roughly equivalent to what a full-time worker earning $15 an hour makes in an entire year before taxes) is not a small sum. It is a life-savings bet for most of the people being targeted by ads promising “ton[s] of money” and “19% returns in 60 days.” The FTC complaint notes that some consumers were saddled with burdensome credit card debt on top of their upfront payments, meaning the $45,000 door price was, for some buyers, actually the beginning of a debt spiral, not just a one-time loss.

Click Profit’s tiered package structure, charging $45,000, $60,000, or $75,000 depending on the profit split promised, operated as a regressive scam: those who could afford to pay more upfront were promised a better deal, while those at the entry level were given the worst terms. Meanwhile, the data shows essentially no one at any tier was generating real income. The company extracted maximum value from consumers at the highest price they could bear, delivered nothing, and then used legal threats to prevent those consumers from warning others. This is a wealth-transfer mechanism, not a business.

The BBB complaint suppression campaign compounded the economic damage. Every honest negative review that Click Profit succeeded in removing represented a warning sign erased from the marketplace. The next wave of buyers had no visible record of what happened to the people who came before them. Click Profit actively maintained the conditions necessary to keep finding new victims by silencing the ones it had already harmed. This is systemic economic predation, structured and deliberate, aimed at people who were already economically vulnerable enough to gamble their savings on a TikTok ad featuring a man fanning himself with cash.

Here is the most recent press release on this story from the FTC’s website dated late August 2025: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/08/ftc-case-against-e-commerce-business-opportunity-scheme-its-operators-results-permanent-ban-industry

This here is the press release from March 2025 about the Click Profit scam: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/03/ftc-acts-stop-click-profit-online-business-opportunity-has-cost-consumers-least-14-million

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