Amway Agrees to Pay $225 Million Over How It Sold the Business Opportunity

The Federal Trade Commission and the State of Washington filed a joint complaint on 17 September 2026 against Amway Corp. and two of the recruiting organisations Amway calls Approved Providers, World Wide Group, L.L.C. and Leadership Team Development, Inc. The 83-page filing, No. 2:26-cv-03474 in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, alleges unfair and deceptive acts in marketing the Amway business opportunity, principally false earnings claims and instructions to record sales that never took place.

Filed with it was a stipulated order under which the three companies pay $225,000,000 and accept ten years of operating restrictions. It is not in force: it carries a blank judge's signature line and a blank date, and takes effect only when a district judge enters it.

The money resolves into four judgments. Amway Corp. owes $154,700,000. World Wide Group and Amway owe $39,780,000 jointly and severally. Leadership Team Development and Amway owe $26,520,000 jointly and severally. All three are payable to the Commission within seven days of entry. Washington gets a separate $4,000,000 for costs and attorney's fees within 30 days. The $221,000,000 owed to the Commission already sits in escrow at Kelley Drye and Warren LLP, held by the defendants' own stipulation for no purpose other than paying it.

The pitch and the payout

Count Two concerns what recruits were told they would make: that a participant was likely to earn substantial income, "such as earning $40,000 or more annually, replacing their full-time income, paying off debt, or retiring early".

Against that, the complaint alleges what the books showed. Median total bonuses before expenses in 2023 were $139. Fewer than 1,600 out of more than 241,000 participants, about 1 percent, took $40,000 or more. The 2022 median was $145. Fewer than 350 people cleared $100,000 in 2023, about one-tenth of 1 percent, and they, or the prior owners they inherited from, had joined Amway an average of 28 years earlier.

Of the more than 750,000 people who bought or sold an Amway product between January 2020 and March 2024, the complaint says 1.3 percent ever reached Founders Platinum, the level it says recruiting presentations are built around. More than 100,000 participants left each year from 2020 to 2023.

What the complaint says about the points

The mechanics, as the complaint describes them, are simple. Reselling a product earns a participant no points, and points are credited when the participant buys from Amway. So, the complaint alleges, leaders told people to generate points by buying the products themselves, often on a standing monthly order Amway calls a DITTO. Amway's own 2023 figures showed participants bought 77 percent of what it sold, against US revenue of about $1 billion a year.

The paperwork claims are sharper. The complaint alleges that Amway's Verified Customer Sales system, and a tool it calls Create a Receipt, were used to log sales that had not happened, and that Amway's current Vice President of Sales observed in 2020 that participants "will lie with receipts". A group leader from the Dayton, Ohio area is quoted explaining the rule: "Amway's not going to be like checking how you do this. They don't even care. It's just a rule that they have to have to have paperwork to show the FTC."

A Leadership Team Development leader above Platinum rank is quoted in the complaint telling a Dallas-area training in December 2023: "Eat something. Drink something. Take a supplement. And your mom happened to buy it from you if you're short some VCS. If you don't get the joke, good."

None of it is proven. The order records that the defendants "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint, except as specifically stated in this Order."

The complaint also quotes a 2020 script by the then chief executive of Amway's parent company, who is not named. It describes poor earnings for new participants, "high churn," and "a vicious cycle- of recruitment and self consumption". A 2019 internal document is quoted saying selling to customers is "not rewarded, not taught by leaders and difficult."

"Amway and its affiliates misled prospective workers with false earnings claims and then pressured them to buy Amway products they were unlikely to be able to sell."
Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection

The ten-year rulebook, and Amway's answer

If a judge enters the order, the terms run ten years. Participants must resell at least 70 percent of what they buy each month, enforced by a formula in Appendix A: a participant reselling 35 percent is credited with half their volume. Recruiters get substantially reduced compensation when recruits buy but do not resell. Every sale must be reported promptly at the actual price, with a receipt to the customer, and Amway must terminate participants who fake sales or teach others to. Approved Providers may not charge new participants for training in their first year, though the main packages run about $1,600 to $3,600 a year after that. An independent auditor, paid for by Amway, must be appointed within 120 days and report to both governments for ten years.

The complaint's alleged facts "will be taken as true, without further proof" in any later enforcement case, and Washington may seek civil penalties of up to $125,000 per violation for a breach.

Amway issued its own statement the same day. "We fundamentally disagree with the agencies' characterization of our business," it said. "As part of their contract with Amway, all Independent Business Owners (IBOs) must follow robust standards of conduct. Amway rejects the agencies' assertion that the company's sales data is not accurate. In fact, Amway and the FTC have agreed to rely on our sales data to continue tracking and substantiating IBO customer sales."

The company added that the settlement "like all settlements, required compromise" and that resolution "positions us to move forward and focus our energy where it belongs: on our customers, IBOs and employees". It does not dispute any specific earnings figure in the complaint.

What is not settled

No judge has entered the order. No individual is a defendant and no Amway executive is named in the complaint; the former parent-company chief executive and the Vice President of Sales quoted above are identified only by title.

The Commission says nearly all the money will go as redress to participants recruited by the two groups who lost money, with details to be published later. There is no figure per person, no count of who is eligible, and no date.

The Commission calls the $225,000,000 the largest monetary recovery it has obtained against a multilevel marketing company. It offers no comparison case, and that claim is all its use of the word historic rests on.

The vote to authorise the filing was 2-0 — the entire sitting Commission. The FTC has five seats, and only Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson and Commissioner Mark R. Meador are listed as serving, leaving three vacant. No separate statement, concurrence or dissent is on the case page.