Corporate Greed Case Study: Lucas Lee-Tyson, Osmany Batte, and Jordan Marksberry

TL;DR: According to a sweeping legal complaint, a network of companies masterminded a sophisticated operation that stripped approximately $50 million from thousands of American consumers. The enterprise, fronted by charismatic young entrepreneurs flaunting extreme wealth, promised a guaranteed path to financial freedom through online business opportunities and credit repair services that rarely, if ever, delivered. Instead of profits, countless individuals were left with shattered dreams, depleted savings, and crippling debt, all while the company’s founders allegedly funneled millions into their own pockets and side ventures.

Read on to uncover the specific tactics used, the systemic failures that allowed them to flourish, and the devastating human cost of a business model built on broken promises.

I also do face reveals of the scammers and give commentary on the stuff they spent their ill gotten monies on lmao

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Introduction: The Illusion of a Push-Button Fortune

In the gleaming, fast-paced world of social media advertising, a promise emerged, tailored for a generation anxious for financial independence.

It was a vision of automated income, of cracking the code to online wealth, sold by self-proclaimed marketing gurus who appeared to have it all: mansions, Ferraris, and million-dollar watch collections. This was the world of Growth Cave, an enterprise that sold not just a product, but a dream—the dream of earning tens of thousands of dollars a month from home, with little risk and even less effort.

But behind the slick video testimonials and guarantees of success, a different story was unfolding. A federal lawsuit alleges this entire operation was an elaborate deception that has caused approximately $50 million in harm to thousands of consumers across the country.

The case paints a damning picture of a business model that systematically preyed on the financial aspirations of ordinary people, leaving a trail of high-interest loans, ruined credit, and profound betrayal. This is a case study in how the modern, deregulated digital marketplace can become a hunting ground, where the promise of prosperity is the most effective bait.

Inside the Allegations: A Multi-Layered Machine of Misconduct

The legal filings against Growth Cave and its affiliated companies and officers—Lucas Lee-Tyson, Osmany Batte, and Jordan Marksberry—detail a calculated, multi-pronged strategy to entice consumers and extract maximum value, often leaving them in a worse financial position than when they started. The operation allegedly relied on a series of interlinked programs, each designed to solve a problem the previous one created, ensnaring customers in a deepening cycle of spending.

The first lure was the “Knowledge Business Accelerator” (KBA) program, which cost consumers between $3,500 and $9,800.

Through ubiquitous online ads, Growth Cave promised to help customers create and sell their own digital education courses, generating “$20,000-$50,000 per month in passive income.” They assured potential buyers that it was “literally IMPOSSIBLE to fail,” backed by a “$10,000 Profit Guarantee” that led customers to believe their investment was secure.

In reality, the promised one-on-one coaching, “proven” YouTube marketing, and automated AI software allegedly fell drastically short.

When consumers inevitably struggled, unable to launch their courses or generate any income, Growth Cave capitalized on their desperation with a high-priced upsell: the “Digital Freedom Mastermind” (DFM) service. Costing an additional $30,000 to $50,000, DFM was marketed as a “done-for-you” solution where Growth Cave’s team would handle everything. Yet, purchasers reported that little was actually done for them, and they were still left to do the work with minimal success.

Running parallel to this was another business opportunity, the “Cashflow Consulting Academy” (CCA), which sold for between $4,800 and $6,800.

This program guaranteed a paid “placement” for graduates, who would supposedly earn thousands a month by making calls and sending texts for Growth Cave’s network of “wealthy business owners.” The reality, however, was that placements were scarce, and the “wealthy” clients were often just other struggling KBA purchasers with no sales to generate.

Perhaps most cynically, the scammers targeted the very financial distress it had allegedly caused. Recognizing that its customers were now deep in debt, Growth Cave launched “Buffalo Bridge,” a purported credit repair service that charged an upfront fee of $6,800. It promised to fix credit scores and secure 0% interest business funding, but instead instructed consumers to apply for multiple credit cards, causing their credit to worsen. This web of interconnected schemes demonstrates a pattern of monetizing the entire lifecycle of a customer’s financial struggle, from initial hope to ultimate desperation.

Timeline of an Alleged Scheme

Date Range	Event / Alleged Action	Financial Impact
Beginning 2021	Lucas Lee-Tyson’s “Productized Profits” program begins receiving complaints, leading to the creation of the Knowledge Business Accelerator (KBA).	Initial consumer investment in programs.
Early-to-Mid 2022	Osmany Batte and Jordan Marksberry join Lee-Tyson to aggressively sell the KBA and a new program, Cashflow Consulting Academy (CCA).	Consumers pay $3,500 to $9,800 for KBA and $4,800 to $6,800 for CCA.
December 2022	Growth Cave begins marketing the “Digital Freedom Mastermind” (DFM) as a high-cost upsell to struggling KBA purchasers.	Hundreds of consumers pay an additional $30,000 to $50,000 for DFM.
April 2023	At a DFM event in Austin, Texas, numerous attendees confront the company founders, stating they were not receiving the promised support or income.	Event reveals far more attendees (~100) than the advertised 25 exclusive slots.
November 2023	Growth Cave launches “Buffalo Bridge Capital,” a credit repair service targeting its own indebted customers from KBA and CCA.	Consumers pay an upfront fee of $6,800 for services that allegedly worsen their debt.
2021 – 2024	Over $7 million is allegedly transferred from Growth Cave’s consumer-funded bank accounts to Friendly Solar, Inc., a relief defendant.	Funds obtained from consumers are moved to an external entity.
March 2024	Several consumers begin filing federal lawsuits against the Growth Cave Defendants.	Legal challenges mount against the company.
April 2024	Osmany Batte forms a new company, Apex Mind, LLC, which begins selling a repackaged version of the CCA opportunity.	The enterprise allegedly rebrands to continue operations under a new name.
May-June 2024	Lucas Lee-Tyson begins promoting a “re-brand” and launches LLT Research, which sells “PassiveApps,” a business model strikingly similar to KBA.	The enterprise allegedly rebrands its other main program to continue operations.

Regulatory Loopholes: A System Designed for Exploitation

The unethical actions of Growth Cave and its affiliates were not committed in a vacuum. They flourished within a regulatory environment that often struggles to keep pace with the speed and sophistication of digital marketing, a hallmark of neoliberal economic policy that favors minimal government intervention. The lawsuit demonstrates how specific consumer protection laws, while well-intentioned, can be systematically sidestepped by determined operators.

The Federal Trade Commission’s “Business Opportunity Rule” is designed to prevent exactly this kind of deception. It requires sellers to provide prospective purchasers with a detailed disclosure document, including substantiated earnings claims and contact information for past buyers, at least seven days before any payment is made.

This cooling-off period is critical for due diligence. Growth Cave violated this rule entirely by failing to provide these disclosures, collecting payments during high-pressure sales calls and only sending a contract for signature after the money had already been taken.

Similarly, the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA) explicitly forbids companies from charging upfront fees for credit repair services before the work is fully completed. Growth Cave’s Buffalo Bridge program, however, required a $6,800 payment in advance, a direct contravention of a core tenet of the law designed to protect financially vulnerable consumers from paying for services never rendered.

These financial violations represent a fundamental disregard for the legal guardrails put in place to ensure a fair marketplace. This business model appears to have treated federal regulations not as mandates, but as obstacles to be ignored in the relentless pursuit of revenue.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs

At its core, the Growth Cave enterprise appears to be a textbook example of profit-maximization pursued with a single-minded, almost fanatical devotion that ignored the human consequences. Every facet of the alleged operation was seemingly engineered to increase revenue, regardless of the ethical or legal boundaries crossed.

This mindset is a natural outcome of a capitalist framework where success is measured primarily by financial returns, often incentivizing a disconnect between a company’s profits and its customers’ well-being.

The strategy of upselling is a standard business practice, but Growth Cave’s alleged application of it was particularly predatory. The company sold an initial product (KBA) that was allegedly designed to fail for many, creating a captive audience of desperate customers who were then vulnerable to a far more expensive “solution” (DFM).

This wasn’t just about offering a premium service; it was about allegedly creating the very problem that the premium service claimed to solve, a closed-loop system for extracting ever-larger sums of money.

Furthermore, the creation of the Buffalo Bridge credit repair scheme reveals a chilling logic. Instead of addressing the flood of complaints from customers who had lost their savings, the company allegedly saw their financial ruin as a new market to exploit.

This decision transformed consumer harm into a new revenue stream, perfectly illustrating a system where even the negative fallout of a business can be repackaged and sold back to its victims.

This profit-at-all-costs mentality was openly displayed by the individual defendants, who flaunted their lavish lifestyles on social media—a steep contrast to the debt and despair they were allegedly inflicting upon their customers.

The Devastating Economic Fallout

While the founders of Growth Cave were allegedly buying Ferraris and half-million-dollar watches, their customers were facing a grimly different economic reality.

The lawsuit claims that the company’s schemes caused approximately $50 million in consumer harm, a figure that represents thousands of individual financial disasters. For the people who bought into the dream, the fallout was not abstract; it was a daily struggle with depleted bank accounts, overwhelming credit card bills, and the crushing weight of high-interest loans.

Many consumers did not have thousands of dollars in savings to pay for programs like KBA or CCA. They were persuaded to take on significant debt based on promises of quick and substantial returns. When those returns never materialized, they were left with liabilities that would take years, if not decades, to resolve. The complaint is filled with reports from purchasers who were left financially devastated, their trust shattered and their economic futures compromised.

This represents a significant, albeit hidden, transfer of wealth. Money was moved from thousands of ordinary households, which might have used it for down payments, education, or retirement, and concentrated into the hands of a few individuals and their corporate entities.

The damage extends beyond the initial loss; the additional debt and damaged credit scores create long-term barriers to economic stability, making it harder for these victims to secure housing, transportation, or future loans. The economic fallout from this single enterprise demonstrates the profound and lasting harm that can occur when consumer protection is weak and the profit motive is unchecked.

Exploitation of the Workforce as a Marketing Tool

The allegations against Growth Cave extend to a unique form of worker exploitation, where employees were allegedly used as props in a deceptive marketing machine. In a system that prioritizes the appearance of success above all else, the lines between employee and endorser were deliberately blurred to mislead potential customers. This tactic reveals a culture where every asset, including the company’s own staff, is leveraged for the purpose of revenue generation.

The complaint specifically highlights how testimonials from four supposedly successful “clients” of the CCA program were, in fact, given by Growth Cave employees. These individuals—whose jobs were to sell the company’s programs—were presented to the public as ordinary customers who had achieved “incredible results,” such as earning “$23,000 in one month.” At no point was their true relationship to the company disclosed, a material omission that created a powerful but false impression of the program’s effectiveness.

This is a subtle but insidious form of exploitation. It places employees in a ethically compromised position, forcing them to participate in a deception that harms the very customers they are tasked with recruiting. It also weaponizes their employment status, turning their personal stories and images into marketing assets without transparency.

This practice underscores a corporate ethos where authenticity is manufactured and people are utilized as instruments to construct a profitable, but ultimately hollow, narrative.

The Undermining of a Digital Community

While Growth Cave did not displace a physical neighborhood, it caused profound harm to a specific and vulnerable community: the vast, dispersed population of aspiring online entrepreneurs.

This community is bound by a shared desire for financial autonomy and a belief in the democratizing promise of the internet. The company’s alleged actions targeted this group’s core identity, exploiting their hopes and turning their digital gathering places into predatory hunting grounds.

The legal complaint describes how Growth Cave actively curated its online presence to maintain its illusion of success. When dissatisfied customers posted complaints or negative comments on the company’s internal message boards, these posts were routinely deleted.

This censorship prevented new and prospective customers from seeing the widespread issues and denied the community the ability to warn one another, effectively isolating victims and allowing the alleged deception to continue unimpeded.

Furthermore, by placing CCA graduates with struggling KBA clients, the company pitted its victims against each other. One group, desperate for income, was tasked with selling for another group that had no customers to offer.

This created a closed ecosystem of failure, where the shared dream of building a successful online business was systematically undermined from within. The result was not just financial loss, but the erosion of trust within a community built on the idea of mutual support and digital opportunity.

A Masterclass in Corporate Spin and Deception

When faced with mounting evidence of failure and a rising tide of consumer complaints, Growth Cave and its leaders did not reform their practices. Instead, they allegedly engaged in a sophisticated campaign of public relations spin, denial, and strategic rebranding designed to neutralize criticism and ensure the continued flow of revenue. These tactics provide a clear window into how modern corporations can manipulate information to protect their profits, even in the face of widespread harm.

The company’s primary defense was to misrepresent its own guarantees. The “$10,000 Profit Guarantee” was a major selling point for the KBA program.

However, when customers who failed to make a profit demanded a refund based on this promise, the company pointed to fine print in a contract sent after payment, which stated the guarantee only meant they would “work with you” indefinitely until you made $10,000—a meaningless promise for a program that was not working. This is a classic bait-and-switch, using a powerful marketing claim that is later nullified by obscure contractual language.

Moreover, the use of undisclosed employee testimonials and a prominent client, Andrew Imbesi—who had a separate business relationship with Growth Cave to offer financing to its customers—was a calculated spin tactic. These endorsements were presented as the authentic experiences of impartial users, lending a powerful but false credibility to the programs.

When the business’s reputation became too toxic due to complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau and other agencies, the entire operation simply rebranded. Lucas Lee-Tyson launched LLT Research and “PassiveApps,” while Osmany Batte and Jordan Marksberry started Apex Mind, both selling nearly identical business opportunities under new names to a fresh audience, effectively erasing the public record of their past failures.

Corporate Greed and the Spectacle of Wealth

The story of Growth Cave is not just about alleged deceptive business practices; it is an alarming illustration of the deep and growing chasm of wealth disparity in America.

The narrative presented in the legal complaint juxtaposes the extreme, performative wealth of the company’s founders with the financial ruin they allegedly inflicted on their customers. This contrast is not incidental; the flaunting of wealth was a central component of the marketing strategy, a spectacle designed to make the dream of instant riches feel tantalizingly real.

Individual defendants plastered their social media with images of their extravagant lifestyles. They posted videos of themselves “buying $300,000 of watches,” purchasing a Ferrari for a 25th birthday, and living in a Los Angeles mansion. They implied that this level of success was attainable for anyone who purchased their programs. The tragic irony is that this lavish lifestyle was allegedly funded directly by the money paid by the very consumers who were being driven into debt.

The complaint also reveals where some of this money went. Over a three-year period, more than $7 million was transferred from Growth Cave to Friendly Solar, Inc., a “Relief Defendant” that allegedly provided no services in exchange for the funds. This suggests a deliberate effort to move money out of the primary enterprise, further concentrating the wealth extracted from customers.

This spectacle of greed, built on the backs of thousands of broken financial dreams, serves as a powerful indictment of a system that not only permits but often celebrates the accumulation of wealth without regard to the human cost.

Global Parallels: A Pattern of Predation

While the names Growth Cave, Apex Mind, and LLT Research are specific, the business model they allegedly employed is not an isolated anomaly.

It is a frighteningly common pattern of predation that has become a fixture of late-stage capitalism, thriving in the unregulated borderlands of the digital economy.

Across the globe, similar schemes targeting aspirational consumers have emerged, all sharing the same core components: charismatic gurus, promises of exorbitant income, high-priced coaching, and a trail of financially wounded customers.

This model specifically targets a sense of economic precarity, promising a way out of the 9-to-5 grind and into a life of freedom and wealth. It is a narrative perfectly tuned to a society where traditional paths to stability feel increasingly out of reach.

The Growth Cave case is a distressing reminder that this is not just a few bad actors, but a systemic issue, a predatory business formula that can be replicated across different platforms and products, turning hope itself into a global commodity.

Corporate Accountability Fails the Public

The fact that a federal agency had to step in and file a sweeping lawsuit to halt this enterprise highlights a fundamental failure in proactive corporate accountability.

According to the complaint, these companies were able to operate for years, allegedly causing $50 million in damages, while fielding hundreds of complaints directly from consumers and through the Better Business Bureau. This demonstrates a system that is overwhelmingly reactive, forced to intervene only after immense and often irreversible harm has already been done.

The defendants’ alleged strategy of rebranding is a direct tactic to evade accountability.

When the Growth Cave name became associated with consumer complaints and a BBB alert, the principals simply formed new entities—LLT Research and Apex Mind—to sell the same products to a new, unsuspecting audience. This corporate shell game makes it incredibly difficult for consumers to track bad actors and allows operators to shed their negative reputations, demonstrating how easily corporate structures can be manipulated to outrun consequences in a system that is slow to connect the dots.

Pathways for Reform & Consumer Advocacy

Preventing future cases like this requires more than just punishing the perpetrators; it demands systemic reform and heightened consumer vigilance. The violations of the Business Opportunity Rule and the Credit Repair Organizations Act suggest that the existing penalties are not a sufficient deterrent for highly profitable enterprises. Stronger enforcement, larger fines, and more agile regulatory mechanisms capable of tracking and responding to fast-moving digital schemes are essential.

For consumers, this case is a harrowing lesson in the importance of skepticism and due diligence. The promises of earning “job-replacing, life-changing amounts of income” with guarantees that make it “impossible to fail” should be immediate red flags.

Prospective buyers of any business opportunity must demand the legally required disclosure documents, verify earnings claims, and understand that testimonials can be easily faked or feature paid endorsers. True financial freedom is never achieved through a simple, push-button system, and the promise of it is often the most expensive trap of all.

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Commentary: How Capitalism Exploits a Flawed System

Legal Minimalism: Doing Just Enough to Seem Legitimate

The Growth Cave operation, as in the FTC’s legal complaint, is a masterclass in legal minimalism—the practice of adhering to the thinnest possible interpretation of the law to create a shield of plausible deniability. This is a hallmark of late-stage capitalism, where ethics are secondary to legal defensibility. The “$10,000 Profit Guarantee” is the quintessential example; it was a powerful marketing tool that, in practice, was rendered meaningless by fine print in a contract consumers only saw after they had paid.

This approach treats consumer protection laws not as a moral baseline, but as a strategic obstacle to be navigated.

By creating complex agreements and burying crucial caveats, companies can exploit the gap between what is technically written and what is reasonably understood by the average person. In this system, compliance becomes a performance, a box-ticking exercise that allows predatory behavior to continue under a veneer of legitimacy, rewarding those who are most adept at manipulating the rules for profit.

How Capitalism Exploits Delay: The Strategic Use of Time

In the world of high-pressure sales, time is money, but in the world of customer support for a flawed product, time is a weapon. The allegations against Growth Cave show how delay can be strategically employed to manage and ultimately defeat customer complaints. When KBA purchasers ran into problems, they were met with coaches who took days to respond and were frequently reassigned, forcing the customer to start over with someone new.

This constant, frustrating delay serves a dual purpose in a capitalist framework. First, it exhausts the customer, draining their will to fight for a refund until many simply give up. Second, and more importantly, it buys the company time to recruit new customers, ensuring that revenue continues to flow in even as past buyers are being slowly stonewalled.

The entire business model depended on the lag between a customer’s payment and their eventual realization that the promises were hollow; a slow, unresponsive support system was not a bug, but an essential, profit-protecting feature.

Monetizing Harm: When Victimization Becomes a Revenue Model

Perhaps the most damning aspect of the Growth Cave case is how it turned the suffering of its own customers into a new profit center. This is a company which created financial distress and then launched a new, high-priced product to profit from that very distress. This represents a perverse feedback loop that is emblematic of the most extractive forms of capitalism.

The creation of the Buffalo Bridge credit repair service was not an act of remediation.

It was a calculated business decision to target a captive market of KBA and CCA purchasers who were now drowning in debt, partly because of their dealings with Growth Cave. By charging them an additional $6,800 upfront fee for a service that only worsened their situation, the company found a way to monetize its own failure. This is the system taken to its logical extreme, where consumer harm is not a liability to be fixed, but an asset to be leveraged for another round of sales.

Profiting from Complexity: When Obscurity Shields Misconduct

Modern capitalism thrives on complexity, and corporate structures are often designed to be intentionally opaque, shielding owners from accountability.

The web of entities surrounding Growth Cave—including LLT Research, Apex Mind, and various “doing business as” names like Buffalo Bridge—served as a corporate maze that was difficult for consumers and even regulators to navigate. This intentional obscurity is not just negligent poor record-keeping; it’s a deliberate strategy to maximize profits.

When the Growth Cave brand became tarnished by BBB complaints and lawsuits, the operators could simply pivot to a new LLC.

The same people, selling the same financial schemes, could present a clean slate to the world, leaving the reputation of the old company behind.

This use of shell companies and rapid rebranding makes it nearly impossible for the market to regulate itself, as a company’s history of consumer harm can be effectively erased with a simple business filing. In this environment, a lack of transparency becomes a tool for perpetuating harm while diffusing responsibility.

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This Is the System Working as Intended

It is tempting to view the Growth Cave story as an aberration, a case of a few uniquely unethical individuals exploiting the system. But to do so would be to miss the more alarming truth: this is not a story about the system failing, but about it working exactly as it was designed to. In a neoliberal capitalist framework that lionizes wealth, prioritizes profit above all else, and maintains a hands-off approach to regulation, outcomes like this are not accidental. They are predictable.

When a company’s success is measured by its revenue and not its impact, there is a powerful incentive to make promises that cannot be kept.

When accountability is slow and penalties are treated as a mere cost of doing business, there is little to deter predatory behavior. And when society celebrates the spectacle of extreme wealth without questioning its origins, it creates the perfect environment for schemes that sell the illusion of that wealth back to the masses.

The Growth Cave case is a painful lesson that without a fundamental rebalancing of priorities toward consumer welfare and corporate responsibility, we are destined to see this story repeat, again and again, under different names but with the same devastating results.

Conclusion: A High Price for a Hollow Dream

The legal complaint against Growth Cave and its affiliates is more than just a list of alleged violations; it is a chronicle of broken trust and a testament to the human cost of unchecked corporate greed in the digital age. For a fee that ranged from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands, consumers were not sold a business opportunity, but a hollow dream.

They were promised a life of financial freedom and instead were allegedly shackled with debt, their aspirations turned against them by a sophisticated machine designed for one purpose: to extract wealth.

This case serves as a critical warning. It exposes the dark underbelly of the “get rich quick” culture that permeates online platforms and reveals the profound failure of a regulatory system that is consistently outpaced by those who seek to exploit it.

The $50 million in financial harm represents thousands of lives disrupted, futures altered, and a growing cynicism about the very possibility of achieving the American dream. Until there is meaningful accountability and systemic reform, the digital frontier will remain a dangerous place for the hopeful, where the next hollow dream is always just one click away.

Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?

This lawsuit is unequivocally serious. It has been brought by the Federal Trade Commission, the United States’ primary consumer protection agency, which acts only after a thorough investigation indicates significant and widespread violations of federal law.

The FTC’s legal complaint is not based on the grievances of a few individuals but alleges a pattern of misconduct affecting thousands of consumers across the nation, with financial damages estimated at approximately $50 million.

The lawsuit meticulously details how the defendants allegedly violated multiple federal statutes, including the FTC Act, the Business Opportunity Rule, the Credit Repair Organizations Act, and the Reviews and Testimonials Rule.

The sheer volume of evidence cited, the specificity of the claims, and the backing of a major federal agency place this case in the highest echelon of legitimacy. It is a significant legal action intended to halt a large-scale enterprise and secure redress for a vast class of injured consumers.

There is a press release on the FTC’s website that was posted a little bit over a month ago about this scandal: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/05/ftc-adds-defendants-case-against-growth-cave-scam

Here is a different press release from the FTC though: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/03/ftc-takes-action-stop-sprawling-growth-cave-business-opportunity-credit-repair-scam

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Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.

• 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
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• 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.