Father clueless when boss interrogates him over $118K spent on his company card. Then he finds the culprit – his 9yo son

A nine-year-old’s dream of becoming a YouTube star may well have cost his father his livelihood after the young boy used a company credit card to pay for ads on the video-sharing platform. Unfortunately for the father, his son got more than a little spend-happy, racking up over $100k in charges, resulting in his father’s company confronting him over the misspent money.

If you’ve heard of the Roblox YouTube channel, “Mighty Mike Plays,” it’s likely thanks to the extensive campaign, which saw the 9-year-old boy’s videos play as ads before many YouTube videos. What you may not have known at the time was that the ad campaign was being run by a nine-year-old child who had gotten hold of his father’s company credit card.

Most people online became aware of the situation after Mike posted a video titled “Message from Dad…Mighty Mike Plays is Over” to his channel on September 15. In the video, he told his viewers, “I have some sad news; it’s not gonna be me explaining, it’s gonna be my dad explaining, [I] think this might be the end of Mighty Mike Plays.” His dad then takes over and explains the situation.

Mike had been buying YouTube ads with his dad’s card

David Sarkisyan, Mike’s father, remained calm as he told viewers his son had spent $118,000 on his corporate credit card. “Today I got called into the office at work; I walk in, and we got the corporate manager, we got people from finance. They pull up a laptop, show me some tables on the screen, basically asking me to explain why there is $118,000 missing from the company card that was assigned to me.”

David was clueless at first, but once he saw where the money was going, he was able to piece together what had happened. The father admitted he hadn’t really been aware of what his son was doing. 

While they had used the company card to purchase $20 of a small ad campaign, he says the card details were not deleted. His son then continued to run ads, “turns out a 9-year-old gets access to an ad account with no limits. And the credit card, it just says approved every single time, no matter what. He does not think that what he’s doing is wrong.”

SocialBlade shows Mike’s channel gaining hundreds of subscribers a day in September, and viewership was steadily increasing, which is unusual for such a relatively new YouTube channel. The ads had certainly worked, but what it had cost was undoubtedly too high.

This could mean trouble

While David remained calm, even jokingly saying he was considering putting his son up for adoption, he admitted that the situation was serious. “You know, this is not like a ‘ha ha funny’ story, everything worked out fine kind of situation,” he said. “There’s a real genuine chance that I end up personally having to pay some of that, or all of that back, out of my pocket.” His job could also be at risk.

The situation went viral with the video of the dad explaining everything, receiving over two million views. Viewers commended the father, writing, “When you grow up, you’ll realize how kind your dad is.” Others suggested the father use the attention and set up a GoFundMe to help with the extensive debt repayments he’ll likely have to make.

So far there has been no update from Mike or his father, but David admitted he was struggling to think of a punishment for his son that suited the situation.