Amway and affiliates agree to pay $225 million to settle lawsuit over alleged deception of workers

Amway and two affiliates, World Wide Group and Leadership Team Development, have agreed to pay $225 million to settle FTC claims they deceived workers with inflated income promises. The FTC's complaint says recruits, called ‘Independent Business Owners,’ were told they could earn more than $40,000 a year or replace a full-time income, when most who joined after 2020 spent more on products and training than they ever earned back.

Almost all of the settlement money is slated to go to those misled workers. The FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection director said Amway pressured recruits into buying products they could not realistically resell.

Going forward, the settlement requires IBOs to actually sell at least 70% of what they buy each month to someone other than themselves, a detail that says plenty about how the previous math worked. Amway, in its own statement, disputes the FTC's characterization and says it disagrees that its sales data was inaccurate, while agreeing to the settlement anyway.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.