The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently settled its lawsuit against Roman Cresto, John Cresto and Andrew Chapman whose companies Automators AI, Empire Ecommerce and Onyx Distribution scammed people it sold phony online stores supposedly powered by AI.  As a result of the settlement, the defendants are permanently barred from selling business opportunities or coaching programs involved with ecommerce and must surrender the millions of dollars they took from their scam victims who bought the phony business opportunities.

Scammers not only use AI to make scams such as phishing emails more believable; they also use the reference to AI to lure victims into scams such as this when they falsely claim that they are using AI as a tool for a legitimate investment.

TIPS

The sale of business opportunities is regulated by the FTC’s Business Opportunity Rule which requires the sellers of business opportunities to provide a one-page disclosure document outlining important facts about the offering including informing you about any legal actions in which the sellers have been involved. The disclosure also has to provide you with details as to any refund policy and provide a list of references. Additionally, as is always the case with these types of scams, if they make claims about how much money you can earn through their scheme, they must provide you with an Earnings Claim Statement that indicates in detail the specifics of those claims and the opportunity to see written proof of the claims.

Before considering any kind of business opportunity, you should have a lawyer review these required disclosures and if the person offering you the business opportunity does not provide these documents, you should consider that a red flag that this is a scam. You also should investigate the people behind the offering as well as the particular type of business opportunity.

You also can do a Google or other search engine search of any company from which you are considering making a purchase in which you type in the company’s name along with the words “scam” or “complaints” and see what you come up with.

When more information becomes available in regard to the processing of the refunds to victims of this scam, I will let you know.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”

#businesscoachingscam #automatorsaiscam