Gaming

9-year-old kid spends $118,000 on YouTube ads for Minecraft and Roblox videos using his dad's company credit card: "I got called into the office"

9-year-old kid spends $118,000 on YouTube ads for Minecraft and Roblox videos using his dad's company credit card: "I got called into the office"
(Image credit: Mojang / Microsoft)
(Image credit: Mojang / Microsoft)

An increasingly viral video titled "Message from Dad...Mighty Mike Plays is Over" sees an exhausted father take the microphone to explain what happened here. Now ranked seventh on YouTube gaming trends, the video has gained nearly 400,000 views in a day.

On August 7, Mighty Mike (as I'll call him) began uploading videos, mostly from Roblox but with an occasional Minecraft snippet. As the dad, Dave, explains, the videos didn't get much traction, as you'd expect of the hobbyist clips of a kid thrown into a sea of Roblox. So, Dave says Mighty Mike, likely eager to stand among the YouTubers his generation adores, asked about ways to reach more people.

That payment information, tied to Dave's business credit card, was then used by Mighty Mike to push Minecraft video ads in front of hundreds of thousands of people. The ads appear to have included a 34-minute video in its entirety.

You might be wondering how this wasn't caught sooner, how a parent could leave a credit card in the hands of a Roblox-happy kid, or whether this whole thing might be a (successful) bid for virality to drum up the channel. How did the company card get folded into this? Why would you ever use a company card on this account? How did the company, payment controllers, bank, and YouTube overlook what looks to be weeks of blatant fraud? Is Dave just an AI-generated voice?

هەفتانە هەرسکردنەکان، چیرۆکەکانی ئەو کۆمەڵگایانەی کە خۆشت دەوێن و زۆر شتی تر

Several Minecraft videos on Mighty Mike Plays do have unnaturally high view counts for such a fresh, amateur channel. Some of those views were surely a knock-on effect from this newfound virality, but the view spike is centered around three videos: "Minecraft part 1 {new series}," "Minecraft ultra starter guide," and "Minecraft Hardcore part 1 wait for end."

"Minecraft part 1 {new series}" is 34 minutes long and was the target of the wholesale ad shown in NeverMyFault's video. The comments on Mighty Mike's video are filled with users saying they found it through an ad, and I doubt Mighty Mike has the kind of pull to enlist a massive network of bot accounts.

"Apparently my son has been running some high-budget campaigns on YouTube that I was pretty much unaware of," says Dave.

(Image credit: Mojang)
(Image credit: Mojang)
ئاوستی وود
ئاوستی وود
Close up of the bottom half of the Gilmore Girls Polly Pocket compact.
Close up of the bottom half of the Gilmore Girls Polly Pocket compact.
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