Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ad campaigns for his Minecraft channel using a company credit card — bill racked up in just three weeks was supposed to be one $20

Seems to me that this is a dual fail. The father should have monitored his kid more closely and not used his company card for this, but Google should have noticed the unusual spending pattern and flagged it somehow—I mean, it looks like something someone might do using a stolen card, in which case Google might never have gotten its money, if you need a self-interested reason why they should have been keeping a more careful eye on this.

Why would a $120k spend on a business card (entered by the cardholder on an advertising account under their name) be suspicious?

This doesn’t follow the pattern of a stolen card at all.

EDIT: Dad set up the YT brand account using his employer’s Google Workspace. He handed all his work emails and sensitive auth to the kid too. Dad is stupid as fuck.

$120K spent advertising a kid’s Minecraft channel is suspicious. The initial flag should just have been for “card not normally used suddenly spending a shit-ton of money—does this look legit?” After that, a ten-second check of what was being advertised would have shown that something was fishy.