Nine-year-old spends $118,000 on dad's corporate credit card promoting his YouTube channel

Facepalm: We've heard plenty of stories about kids who somehow get hold of their parents' credit cards and rack up massive bills on in-app purchases. But one nine-year-old has taken this to the next level: he used his dad's corporate credit card to spend $118,000 promoting his Roblox and Minecraft YouTube channel.

The Mighty Mike Plays YouTube channel posted a video two days ago explaining the "sad news" and that the channel may be coming to an end.

Mike passes the commentary over to his dad, Dave, who sounds quite somber – but for good reason.

Dave explains that his son has been running some high-budget campaigns on YouTube that the dad was "pretty much unaware of."

Dave then explains that he was called into a meeting with the company's corporate manager and employees from finance. He was then asked to explain why there was $118,000 missing from the company card assigned to him.

Dave didn't initially have an explanation, but once they saw where the money was being spent, the terrible realization dawned on him.

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But how could a 9-year-old child create a YouTube promotion paid for using his dad's corporate card? Dave said that Mike asked to buy some of Roblox's in-game Robux currency a while ago, which he did using the card in question.

A few weeks later, Mike complained to his dad that his channel wasn't getting many subscribers, so Dave put $20 into a small ad campaign using the same card details to attract more people, explaining the process to his son.

It seems Mike was paying more attention than Dave realized. Soon after that campaign ended, Mike ran several of his own, charging them to his dad's saved corporate card – except these came to a lot more than $20.

"When a nine-year old gets access to an ad account with no limits and a CC that just says 'approved' every single time no matter what, he does not think that what he's doing is wrong," Dave said.

Unsurprisingly, the marketing company Dave works for didn't find this very amusing. The case is being escalated to higher management, who will review the situation and decide what happens next.

Dave says he may have to pay some or all of the money back, and he may not even have a job once the investigation is complete.

While Dave repeatedly emphasizes that this was his fault and not that of his 9-year-old son, he does say he'll be punishing Mike, who will also have his iPad and PlayStation taken away.

"He'll be mowing lawns until he's 18," he said.

The video closes with Dave confirming the Mighty Mike channel may be on hold but could come back.

There are plenty of questions being asked here, especially why Dave was using a corporate card for personal purchases for his son – that sounds like a dangerous decision from the get-go. It seems unlikely that Dave was paying much attention to the channel to notice all the warning comments and signs, either.

There have been similar instances of kids spending their parents' money without them realizing. In 2023, a 13-year-old girl spent $64,000 of her parents' savings on mobile games, while previous cases have involved a teenager giving $20,000 to Twitch streamers and a six-year-old racking up more than $16,000 in Sonic Forces purchases. In another incident, an 11-year-old spent almost $6,000 on Roblox, believing she was using "Monopoly money." And yet the combined total of all those cases is still less than what Mike spent.