Growth Cave marketed itself as a business-coaching program that could teach ordinary consumers how to build profitable online businesses and repair damaged credit. According to a federal complaint, the operation regularly failed to deliver on those promises while costing consumers thousands of dollars each, and customers who tried to get help or a refund often found the company's staff impossible to reach.DOCUMENTED
The Federal Trade Commission sued Growth Cave in February 2025, naming co-CEOs Lucas Lee-Tyson and Osmany Batte, Operations Manager Jordan Marksberry, related corporate entities, and a relief defendant called Friendly Solar.DOCUMENTED A settlement resolving the case permanently bans the defendants from marketing or selling business opportunities and credit repair programs.DOCUMENTED
- The FTC sued Growth Cave in February 2025, alleging consumers were deceived by false promises of significant income.
- The amended complaint alleges the scheme cost consumers nearly $50 million.
- Named defendants include co-CEOs Lucas Lee-Tyson and Osmany Batte, and Operations Manager Jordan Marksberry.
- The settlement requires the co-CEOs to liquidate millions of dollars in assets, including a multimillion-dollar house.
- An earlier stipulated order settling charges against Marksberry alone was entered in August 2025.
- That earlier order included a judgment of $48,597,538, partially suspended upon payment of $35,000 to the Commission.
What the complaint alleges
The FTC's complaint against Growth Cave describes an operation that offered numerous business opportunities to consumers, marketed around the promise of significant income, that regularly failed to deliver the promised results while costing consumers thousands of dollars apiece.DOCUMENTED The amended complaint further alleges that consumers who tried to reach Growth Cave employees for customer support after signing up often could not get help.DOCUMENTED Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the resolution demonstrates that “the Commission is focused on protecting our markets from dishonest actors.”DOCUMENTED
Beyond the business-coaching claims, the complaint also folds in allegations about credit repair activities the operation engaged in or facilitated, a combination that shows up increasingly often in FTC business-opportunity cases: a program that markets itself as a path to income for the operator, while separately promising to fix the credit problems that same lack of income may have caused for the consumer.REVIEWED
A staged resolution
The Growth Cave case did not resolve all at once. In August 2025, the FTC settled separately with Marksberry, the operation's named Operations Manager, well before the broader settlement covering Lee-Tyson and Batte was finalized in January 2026.DOCUMENTED That earlier order permanently bars Marksberry from marketing or selling business opportunities, from engaging in credit repair activities, and from making misleading earning claims or assisting others in doing so.DOCUMENTED It also carries a judgment of more than $48.5 million, though that amount is largely suspended based on his payment of just $35,000 to the Commission — a structure that reflects his stated inability to pay the full judgment rather than any discount on the underlying allegations.DOCUMENTED
What the co-CEOs must give up
The later settlement covering Growth Cave's co-CEOs goes further on the asset side. As part of the resolution, Lee-Tyson and Batte are required to liquidate millions of dollars' worth of assets, explicitly including a multimillion-dollar house, to provide consumer redress.DOCUMENTED Requiring the physical liquidation of specific named assets, rather than simply entering a monetary judgment on paper, is a more aggressive collection posture than many FTC settlements take, and it signals that the agency identified concrete, traceable property early enough in the case to include it directly in the settlement terms.REVIEWED
The FTC alleges Growth Cave's scheme cost consumers nearly $50 million — while the operation's own staff was often unreachable when customers sought help or refunds.
Why the case matters
Growth Cave's case sits within a broader pattern of FTC business-opportunity enforcement that pairs two distinct promises — income potential and credit repair — that regulators have found tend to appeal to the same financially stressed consumers. A person struggling to make ends meet is a plausible audience for both a pitch about building a profitable online business and a pitch about fixing a damaged credit score, and operations that combine the two can cross-sell one promise to shore up interest in the other.REVIEWED For consumers evaluating similar coaching programs, the staged nature of the Growth Cave settlements — an individual manager settling separately and earlier than the company's top executives — is also a reminder that a case involving multiple named defendants can take well over a year to fully resolve, even after a federal complaint is filed and the underlying operation is no longer taking new customers.
How coaching programs structure the pitch
Business-coaching operations like the one described in the FTC's complaint typically follow a recognizable funnel: a low-cost introductory webinar or workshop designed to demonstrate value and build trust, followed by increasingly expensive upsells toward a flagship coaching package that can run into the thousands of dollars.REVIEWED The complaint's allegation that customer support was often unreachable once consumers had paid for the higher-tier package is a pattern regulators have flagged repeatedly in this style of enforcement action: the sales funnel is well staffed and responsive, while the support function that exists once a sale is made is comparatively thin, leaving paying customers with limited recourse once they discover the promised results are not materializing.
What happens to relief defendants like Friendly Solar
The inclusion of a relief defendant, Friendly Solar, in the case reflects a specific and commonly used FTC legal tool: naming an entity that received funds traceable to the alleged fraud, without necessarily alleging that entity participated in the underlying deceptive conduct itself.REVIEWED Relief defendants are typically required to surrender the specific funds they received, even absent a finding of independent wrongdoing, which allows the agency to recover assets that might otherwise sit outside the reach of a judgment against the primary defendants who actually operated the scheme.
What consumers can check before enrolling in a coaching program
For consumers considering a similar business-coaching or credit-repair program, the Growth Cave case underscores a few concrete checks worth making before paying an upfront fee: whether the company can provide independently verifiable testimonials from customers reachable outside the company's own marketing materials, whether refund terms are stated in plain writing rather than described only verbally during a sales call, and whether the company has any prior state or federal enforcement history that a basic search would reveal. None of these checks guarantees a program is legitimate, but their absence is itself a signal worth weighing carefully against the size of the fee being requested.
Sources behind this report
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