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The FTC's AI Cases Carry $180 Million in Judgments. False Claims About AI Products Account for $6.1 Million.

Eleven orders on the FTC's own Artificial Intelligence page name $180.2 million in judgments. Most of it sits with business-opportunity schemes that sold AI as the way to earn, and claims about what an AI product does account for $6.1 million.

Published 13 October 2026 · 9 min read · FTC / enforcement / AI claims

Table 1 of a stipulated order filed on May 8, 2025, in the federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania lists what the defendants behind Ecommerce Empire Builders must surrender to a court-appointed receiver. The first entry is a rental property at 6 Constitution Ave., Doylestown, PA 18901. The second is "Four Rolex Watches." The third is a security deposit box, taken whole with one exception: "All Contents of Defendants' Security Deposit Box, except for coins valued at $10,000." The order tells the receiver to "commence the sale of the unliquidated assets identified in Table 1."

Ecommerce Empire Builders sold training programs costing up to almost $2,000 and "done for you" online stores costing tens of thousands of dollars. The Federal Trade Commission charged that it falsely promised buyers an "AI-powered Ecommerce Empire." The case is filed on the FTC's own web page for artificial intelligence, and in dollars it is typical of what that page holds.

The page lists the press releases the FTC tags "Artificial Intelligence." Read on September 27, 2026, it held 53 of them, from March 2023 to September 2026. Eleven of the cases those releases announce ended in orders that name money, and the judgments, penalties and payments in those orders add up to $180.2 million.

Most of it, $143.3 million or 79.5 percent, sits with six sellers of business opportunities whose pitch, as the FTC describes it, leaned on AI. Buy the program or the store, the pitch went, and the AI will make it earn for you. Another $30.8 million, 17.1 percent, comes from two privacy cases from 2023, against Amazon over children's Alexa voice recordings and against Ring over customers' videos. In both, the FTC said the data had been used to train algorithms.

The companies whose own AI product was the subject of the FTC's charges account for $6.1 million, or 3.4 percent. They are an anonymous-messaging app that promised "world class AI content moderation," a service sold as "the world's first robot lawyer," and a media company that said its AI-powered service could target ads from conversations captured by smart devices. Three more orders of that kind name no money at all.

Measured by the money attached to it, the FTC's AI enforcement is mostly about the business-opportunity pitch, with AI as its newest selling word. The cases about AI that does not do what its sellers say, which is what the phrase "AI enforcement" suggests, make up a thin column, and half of its orders carry no money.

The ledger

Every case on the page whose order names money. "Order" is the month the order was filed or made final.

The orders on the page that name no money are Rite Aid (facial recognition, December 2023), Evolv Technologies (AI weapons screening, November 2024), IntelliVision (facial recognition, December 2024), Workado (an AI content detector, August 2025) and Rytr (an AI review writer, December 2024, whose order was set aside in December 2025).

Six business opportunities, one pitch

In all six business-opportunity cases the FTC's charge was the promise of income. AI was what the promise came dressed in.

According to the FTC, DK Automation's pitch included a "#1 secret passive income crypto trading bot" that it said could "generate profits for you even while you sleep." Automators, according to the FTC, "claimed to use 'AI machine learning' to maximize revenues," and its order now bars the defendants from misrepresenting that their products "will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine-learning to maximize revenues." Ascend Ecom, the FTC alleged, claimed its "cutting edge" AI-powered tools would help buyers "quickly earn thousands of dollars a month in passive income by opening online storefronts." FBA Machine, the FTC alleged, promised guaranteed income through online storefronts "that utilized AI-powered software." According to the complaint, Air AI sold business coaching, a bundle of services called the "Air AI Access Card" and licences to resell them, and advertised its flagship feature as "conversational AI." The charges against it were the earnings claims and the refund guarantees.

The FTC describes the pattern in the same terms. Announcing its Operation AI Comply sweep in September 2024, it said that "firms have seized on the hype surrounding AI and are using it to lure consumers into bogus schemes, and are also providing AI powered tools that can turbocharge deception." When it sued Air AI in August 2025, Christopher Mufarrige, the director of its Bureau of Consumer Protection, said: "Companies that market AI-related tools with false promises of unrealistic investment returns and guaranteed refunds harm hardworking small business owners."

What the 79.5 percent is made of

The business-opportunity judgments are large by construction. Each of the six orders enters a judgment in the amount that the parties "stipulate only for purposes of this Section represents the consumer injury alleged in the Complaint." Then the orders take what the defendants have to give: bank balances and frozen accounts (at six institutions in FBA Machine's case), real estate in Seminole, Florida, Venice, California, and Pompano Beach, Florida, the rental in Doylestown, the watches, and in Air AI's case a payment of $50,000. Once those transfers are made, "the remainder of the judgment is suspended." It falls due again only if the defendants' sworn financial statements turn out to be false.

Our earlier piece on Air AI's $18 million judgment walks through that mechanism and why a suspended judgment is not a forgiven one. The point here is only what kind of number it is.

Two of the six orders name a fixed sum of cash. DK Automation's names $2.6 million that the defendants' lawyers held in escrow, and Air AI's names $50,000. Together that is $2.65 million, 1.8 percent of the column's judgments. Everything else depends on what the receivers get for the property. The one refund total on the page for any of the six is DK Automation's: $2.8 million, sent to 890 people in March 2024.

The other two columns hold a different kind of number. The FTC's releases for NGL, DoNotPay, Cox Media Group, Amazon and Ring give amounts the companies must pay, and none of them mentions a suspension. So the 79.5 percent is a share of judgments that the orders suspend beyond whatever the defendants can hand over. It is not a share of the cash that will change hands.

The column with the AI in it

NGL Labs ran an anonymous-messaging app. The FTC and the Los Angeles District Attorney's office said it "falsely claimed that its AI content moderation program filtered out cyberbullying and other harmful messages." They also said it marketed the app to children and teens and "sent fake messages that appeared to come from real people" to sell a paid subscription. The $5 million order covers all of that: $4.5 million for refunds and a $500,000 civil penalty to the District Attorney's office. The part of this column that is about AI is therefore, if anything, smaller than $6.1 million.

DoNotPay sold what it called "the world's first robot lawyer" and was ordered to pay $193,000. Cox Media Group sold small businesses a service called Active Listening, and the FTC's release says that "the marketing service wasn't based on voice data." CMG and the two marketing firms it worked with, MindSift and 1010 Digital Works, were ordered to pay $930,000 between them.

Evolv (AI weapons screening), IntelliVision (facial recognition) and Workado (an AI content detector) settled charges about what their products could do, and none of those orders names money. Rytr's order, over a tool that generated customer reviews, was set aside in December 2025, when the Commission said that "the order unduly burdens artificial intelligence (AI) innovation."

Before July 2024 this column held no money at all.

Where the count could move

The three kinds are my classification. The FTC's page lists all eleven under one heading, and the test I used is what the FTC said was false: a promise of income, a claim about what an AI product does, or a privacy practice.

A case counts here if a release on the page announces it. DK Automation is on the page only through its March 2024 refund notice, and its judgment dates from November 2022. Leave it out and the business-opportunity cases are 71.0 percent of the money, the privacy cases 24.2 and the AI-product claims 4.8.

Click Profit is not on the page, although the FTC's settlement release says it "falsely claimed to use advanced artificial intelligence." Its release and its case page carry no "Artificial Intelligence" tag, while FBA Machine's July 2025 release does. Adding Click Profit's $13.6 million judgment would take the business-opportunity cases to 80.9 percent and the AI-product claims to 3.2.

Count only the orders from July 2024 on and the privacy money drops out. The business-opportunity cases are then 91.8 percent and the AI-product claims 8.2.

Every case here settled. In each of the six business-opportunity orders the defendants "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint, except as specifically stated in this Order." What the ledger says they did is the FTC's allegation.

A judgment is not a collection. Apart from DK Automation's refunds, the page does not say what any of those six orders has returned to buyers, and this piece does not either.

Back to Table 1

The receiver in Pennsylvania has a rental property to sell, four watches and the contents of a security deposit box, all of it to go "using a commercially reasonable procedure." The order leaves out one thing: the coins, valued at $10,000.

Sources

The FTC's list and the orders: - FTC, Artificial Intelligence (the press releases tagged Artificial Intelligence, pages 1 to 6), read September 27, 2026. - FTC v. Empire Holdings Group LLC (Ecommerce Empire Builders), E.D. Pa. No. 2:24-cv-04949, Doc. 78, Final Stipulated Order, filed May 8, 2025. Table 1 is on page 10. - FTC v. Ascend Capventures Inc. (Ascend Ecom), C.D. Cal. No. 2:24-cv-07660, Doc. 111-1, stipulated order, filed June 23, 2025. - FTC v. FBA Machine / Passive Scaling, D.N.J., stipulated order (July 2025). - FTC v. Air Ai Technologies, Inc., D. Ariz. No. 2:25-cv-03068, Doc. 43-1, stipulated order, filed March 24, 2026. - FTC v. Automators LLC, et al., S.D. Cal. No. 3:23-cv-01444, Doc. 98, Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction and Monetary Judgment, filed February 26, 2024. - FTC v. DK Automation LLC, et al., S.D. Fla. No. 1:22-cv-23760, Doc. 4-1, Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment, and Other Relief, November 16, 2022. - FTC case pages: Amazon.com (Alexa) (order entered July 19, 2023) and Ring LLC (order filed June 16, 2023).

FTC press releases: - FTC Announces Crackdown on Deceptive AI Claims and Schemes (Operation AI Comply), September 2024. - FTC Sues to Stop Air AI from Using Deceptive Claims about Business Growth, Earnings Potential, and Refund Guarantees, August 2025, and the settlement, March 2026. - FTC Obtains Permanent Ban of E-Commerce Business Opportunity Scheme Operator (FBA Machine), July 2025. - FTC Action Ends Ecommerce Empire Builders' Online Business Opportunity Scam, May 2025, and the Ascend Ecom order, June 2025. - FTC Sends $2.8 Million in Refunds to Consumers Harmed by DK Automation's Phony Online Business and Crypto Moneymaking Schemes, March 2024. - FTC Action Stops Business Opportunity Scheme That Promised Its AI-Boosted Tools Would Power High Earnings Through Online Stores (Automators), August 2023. - FTC Order Will Ban NGL Labs and its Founders from Offering Anonymous Messaging Apps to Kids Under 18, July 2024. - FTC Finalizes Order with DoNotPay, February 2025. - FTC Finalizes Orders with Cox Media Group, Two Other Firms, August 2026. - FTC and DOJ Charge Amazon with Violating Children's Privacy Law, May 2023, and FTC Says Ring Employees Illegally Surveilled Customers, May 2023. - FTC Reopens and Sets Aside Rytr Final Order, December 2025. - The orders without money: Rite Aid, Evolv Technologies, IntelliVision, Workado and Rytr. - Not on the page: FTC Case Against E-Commerce Business Opportunity Scheme and its Operators Results in Permanent Ban from the Industry (Click Profit), August 2025.

How this was counted. A case is in the ledger if a press release on the FTC's Artificial Intelligence page announces it and its order names money. The amounts come from each order's monetary-judgment section, or, for NGL, DoNotPay, Cox Media Group, Amazon and Ring, from the FTC's release. A script published with this piece, figures_c7107.py, reads the saved text of every order and release, checks each amount and quotation against its source, tests which cases the page files (Click Profit is the negative case, and FBA Machine's release is the positive control for the tag), and recomputes every total and share. Its output is figures_c7107.out.txt.

pip install chain-of-consciousness
npm install chain-of-consciousness