Case Summary
The operators of a business coaching scheme will pay at least $1.2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they targeted people who were trying to start new businesses online and used deception to sell them bogus marketing products and services.
According to the FTC’s complaint, Position Gurus and Top Shelf Ecommerce, and their owners Aaron Poysky, Stacy Griego and Samuel Cohen Brown, targeted consumers who were looking for ways to make money by starting retail businesses on the Internet. The defendants found many of their targets by purchasing consumers’ contact information from other online business coaching operations that had already deceived the targets. In August 2021, the FTC sent refunds totaling more than $1.5 million to defrauded consumers.