Ecom Genie

The same scheme, renamed each time it was caught

This is one operation that changed its name three times, and the sequence is the story.

Valiant Consultants Inc. sold online store business opportunities until 2020, when it and its owner Steven Mayer faced numerous consumer complaints and lawsuits over thousands of dollars lost. In 2022, with Valiant widely labelled a scam and in litigation, the company reorganized as Lunar Capital Ventures. Lunar’s public face was a man known as Boba Milic, but Mayer effectively ran it, as he later described, “behind the scenes.” Lunar sold virtually the same offering.

In 2023, facing another round of complaints and lawsuits, Lunar disappeared and Mayer began pitching Ecom Genie, with similar claims. The FTC says the scheme also appears to operate as Profitable Automation, which makes nearly identical pitches and funnels the vast majority of its income into Ecom Genie’s bank accounts.

The claims

Buyers were told they could generate sales of “$100K+ per month” and that their stores could become “million-dollar” operations. A Lunar sales representative told one prospect he could expect $60,000 to $70,000 in the first year, that “it’ll start doubling up from there,” and “the sky’s the limit.”

One promotional video featured a supposed client claiming “over $1.2 million in sales… in the last five months” and profits around $22,000 per month. That person was an Ecom Genie employee.

Buyers paid $30,000 to $35,000 for a store, sometimes cashing in savings and retirement accounts. Stores took months to open and the inventory they had paid thousands more for often never appeared.

The outcome

A federal court temporarily shut the operation down in October 2024, by which point the FTC said it had taken more than $12 million.

In March 2025 Trevor Duffy Young, Wessam Baiz and Baiz’s companies were permanently banned from any involvement in business opportunities, under judgments of $13,988,712 and $6,024,211, both largely suspended for inability to pay.

In July 2025 Mayer and Ecom Genie Consulting were banned under a judgment of nearly $14 million, partially suspended. They must turn over an interest in commercial real estate in Canada, other property worth more than $300,000, and roughly $1.7 million in cash. Profitable Automation and Lunar Capital Ventures were also banned, with Profitable Automation turning over roughly $73,000.

The FTC also charged that at every stage the operation failed to give buyers the disclosures the Business Opportunity Rule requires, which would have revealed the earlier versions of the scheme.

What is not established

Stipulated final orders resolve allegations without any admission or finding of wrongdoing.