The FTC Is on a Roll. Here Is What It Actually Means for Us.
The FTC has been on a roll this year, just a few years after its stunning courtroom loss to Neora. Before we talk about what it means for our future, look at what has actually happened in 2026.
The FTC's 2026 enforcement roll
The FTC put Forever Living under a stipulated order over deceptive earnings claims. Forever Living then dumped new U.S. recruiting from its MLM plan.
The same month, the FTC sued top field leader Stormy Wellington, not Total Life Changes or Farmasi themselves, over earnings claims she made while recruiting for both companies. Wellington agreed to a permanent order restricting future earnings representations, with years of compliance and recordkeeping obligations attached.
Also in April, it sued Steven and Gina Merritt, two of LifeWave's highest-ranking distributors, without suing LifeWave itself. The FTC alleged that the Merritts told recruits they could earn as much as $25,000 a week and generate income that continued whether they worked or not. The Merritts settled without a trial or financial penalty, but agreed to restrictions on future earnings and lifestyle claims and were required to notify their downline about the FTC action.
The FTC sued Amare Global Holdings, and three of its principals, Shawn Talbott, Patrick Hintze, and David Chung, alleging unsubstantiated health claims that supplements like Happy Juice and kids' products could treat depression, anxiety, and ADHD, and deceptive "brand partner" earnings pitches, including the $500-a-month kind. The complaint points to Amare's own income disclosure: a typical brand partner brought in about $25 a month. The case is pending. Allegations. Not findings. The Commission has also moved for contempt relief tied to Talbott's earlier Window Rock order.
The $225 million Amway settlement
Amway, World Wide Group and Leadership Team Development have agreed to a proposed $225 million settlement with the FTC and the State of Washington.
The government alleges that prospects were told they could make $40,000 or more, while most people joining the two organizations after 2020 spent more on training and Amway products than they earned.
Amway disputes the government's characterization of its business. But under the proposed settlement, the defendants will pay $225 million and make significant changes to their practices.
The FTC describes it as the largest settlement in an FTC case against a multilevel marketing company. Whoa. That sounds ominous. No doubt for these giant sales leaders, these figures are ominous.
Put that number in context
Good Jobs First keeps a Violation Tracker that ranks parent companies by cumulative U.S. penalties. Every offense type. Amway, under the Alticor parent, is not on the Top 100. Not even close. The company sitting at number 100 has about $1.55 billion in cumulative penalties. Amway's cumulative total? About $226.7 million. Across seven records.
In other words in the context of companies being fined for what the FTC and other agencies consider inappropriate behavior, the Amway fine is a footnote. By the way, how many of us do business every day with B of A, Wells Fargo, Chase Bank, Citibank or even good old Johnson and Johnson without giving it a thought?
Download the Amway vs. Violation Tracker Top 100 comparison and look at where Amway actually sits against the companies you do business with every day.
I do not mean to make light of the tens of millions Amway and these sales leaders are going to pay. I do not know anything about the evidence or the case. What I do know is this is as commonplace in big business as a corporate cold. If you go too fast you might run into speed bumps. Then you have to slow down after getting banged around a little bit. But then what do we all do? Speed up again. Too much speeding up again and you get a speeding ticket. You negotiate with the officer but in the end you get pinched for some pain. While you are getting pinched everyone else slows down to watch the show, thanking God it is not them. Then we all speed up again.
This is actually best practices for business growth in the US. Test the limits of the system to maximize your growth. Just look at the list. Look at how many times these companies that you and I do business with every day have been pinched. The news cycle is weeks at most. And then we all go about our business.
This fine is a nothing burger for our profession. Learn from it, focus on the future and let’s get back on the road.
They do it because they can
Congress gave the FTC authority to enforce federal competition and consumer-protection laws. That authority is not unique to direct selling. The FTC regulates advertising, business opportunities, privacy practices, financial services, health claims and dozens of other areas of commerce. Its reach extends from MyPillow to tobacco companies, banks, social-media platforms and, yes, MLM companies.
But what about free speech?
Doesn't a person have the right to tell their own story? Yes. But free speech is not a license to make false or unsubstantiated commercial claims. You can’t say whatever you want if it harms people just like you can even whisper “bomb” in the airport.
There is a huge difference between saying:
"This is what I earned after working my ass off for seven years."
and …
"You WILL make $5,000 a week, create passive income and become financially free without doing much work."
The first can be a truthful personal story, assuming it includes the context and Income Disclosure Statement necessary to keep it from being misleading. The second may be a lie.
And it is a version of the same lie our profession has been telling for years.
We earned this reputation
We have earned our reputation as untrustworthy. Not all of us. Not every company. Not every field leader. But enough of us. And unfortunately, some of the biggest money earners have also been among the biggest offenders which makes them the most visible targets.
We have failed as a profession on two fronts.
First, we as a profession too often have looked the other way when the most successful rising stars played fast and loose with their stories. And then we paraded them up on stage for being number one and flew them off to exotic islands to reward them for their recklessness. Best practices of the fastest growing leaders were less than compliant…far less. And companies are complicit on purpose in order to compete. Then we are shocked and dismayed when regulators and consumer watch dogs notice our lack of integrity and “self regulation”.
Second, we failed to build a united, adequately funded institution capable of representing this profession. We are a 34 Billion dollar a year industry just in the US. That equates to about 10 Billion in commissions to 5 Million Direct Sellers. There are another 450 companies and at least another 5 million distributors that are unaccounted for. They do not report their data to the DSA.
Only 48 companies participate in the Direct Selling Association , the only professional group that educates and advocates for our profession in Washington DC.
I was on The Hill today talking to regulators. I met a gentleman from the mobile home industry. They had a giant meeting room filled with congressional staffers educating them on the mobile home park industry so that regulations in the future could favor them. They had 3 mobile homes parked on the capital grounds as a display.
There are 9 million people in the US that live in mobile home parks. There are over 2000 companies that are members of their association.
For all the income we earn, all the sales we generate and all the voters connected to this channel, we are not "all for one and one for all."
We are fragmented. We are selfish. We are shortsighted. And we are cheap.
Our Political Action Committee fund raised $17,615.00 last year.
That is how much our entire profession coughed up to help elect representatives that understood, empathized and appreciated our 5 -10 million voter strong profession.
Here is what serious representation looks like
In 2025, mature industries spent real money making sure Washington understood them:
These organizations do not sit around hoping Washington will understand them. They educate lawmakers. They retain policy counsel. They conduct research. They mobilize their members. They participate in rulemaking. They challenge proposals that threaten their industries. They show up. And they keep showing up.
To be precise, lobbying expenditures and PAC fundraising are different categories. Lobbying money pays for policy advocacy. PAC money is raised and spent under federal campaign-finance rules to fund the campaigns of those representatives that we believe understand our agenda and treat it with at least empathy if not advocacy. The figures should not be presented as if they are identical. But they measure something closely related: How seriously does an industry take its own representation?
Not $17 million. Not $1.7 million. Not even $170,000. Seventeen thousand, six hundred and fifteen dollars.
Now it has to be acknowledged that the largest Direct Selling companies do advocate for themselves. They lobby. They fund campaigns. But their agenda is their company, their brand, not necessarily our profession.
The American direct-selling channel produces tens of billions of dollars in annual retail sales and involves millions of sellers and customers earning billions in commissions. Yet our federal PAC raised less money than the cost of a used Prius.
He who coughs up the gold makes the rules
And look who sits at the top of America's cumulative enforcement-penalty lists: banks, oil, pharma, autos. They get hit with billions. And they still show up in Washington with real money. We get hit, and we show up with pocket change.
Is your company a member of the DSA? If you don't know, find out. If it isn't, ask your company why. Ask them when. And hold them accountable.
IS MLM DOOMED? Hardly
Will every company abandon network marketing and become an affiliate program? No. Will you personally be fined $10 million because you made one careless social-media post? No.
We are going to be just fine.
Our profession has been sued, fined, shut down, investigated, criticized and bombarded with negative press for more than 50 years. And we keep persevering.
Why?
Because what we do even when we are speeding represents the very DNA of our nation. The solopreneur's journey, the ability to take your own dream, your family’s future and put it at risk, hang a shingle and pursue your own version of success is fundamental to the purpose of our nation. Most business ventures fail. Most network marketing companies fail. Most restaurants and barber shops fail. Most businesses funded with a million dollars fail. But with the right to fail comes the opportunity to succeed. And it is our fundamental right to have that opportunity to succeed.
It is not illegal to sell a product you love.
It is not illegal to recruit someone to help you sell it.
It is not illegal to recruit a lot of people to help you sell it
It is not even illegal to recruit a lot of people FAST to help you sell it.
It is not illegal for every customer to have the right to sell it creating a compounded growth opportunity of the sales force. ( This is the defining moment of the MLM aspect of the model)
And it is not illegal for a manufacturer to pay you based on legitimate sales generated by you and your entire sales organization.
And it should not be illegal for us to responsibly show a person what they COULD earn if they were successful. Could and IF.
“Legal” does not mean “anything goes.” We could make our future far easier if we would finally wise up.
We could wise up politically
We band together recognizing that a rising tide lifts all ships. We can still compete and we don't have to climb our mountains by throwing others under the bus. We could make a full court press to educate and inspire all Direct Selling companies to join the DSA. If we even had half of the active companies, 250 is five times the wallop of 48. That is potentially 5 times the lobbying, educating, monitoring and advocacy staff.
We have a new CEO in Dave Grimaldi. He has the vision. He has the experience. He has the courage. He definitely has the energy. He just needs US.
And we could channel a very small percentage of our profits both as sales leaders and companies into educating and supporting the campaigns of those representatives that are willing to come to our events, join our incentive trips, learn our heartfelt true stories and advocate for us. I am not suggesting it is practical, just possible.
What if just 1/10th of 1% of those billions in commissions went to campaigning for representatives that advocated for our profession? That's millions a year. That gets us a first class seat at the table.
We could wise up about our claims
We could also stop making the FTC's job so easy. We could meet, and exceed, the FTC's standards by teaching our sales forces how to tell truthful, compelling and compliant stories. It is not difficult. It is simply easier to promise the moon.
Every new distributor should be required to complete video-based compliance training and pass a test before receiving commissions.
You cannot legally drive a car without studying the rules and passing a test. Depending on the jurisdiction and activity, hunting, fishing and boating may also require safety education or licensing. You cannot sell insurance, securities or real estate without extensive education, testing and regulatory supervision. Texas, for example, requires 180 classroom hours before someone can qualify for a real-estate sales-agent license. California requires three college-level courses and a licensing examination.
And passing the test does not guarantee success. According to research from the Consumer Federation of America, approximately 49% of real-estate agents in the sample studied sold zero or only one home during the year studied.
Yet in network marketing, we often allow someone to enroll today, start making health and income claims tomorrow and broadcast those claims to the entire world before lunch. That is insane.
Every distributor should be required to learn how to market the company's products truthfully and powerfully. Every distributor should be required to learn how to discuss the income opportunity without deception. Every distributor should be tested. And every distributor should have to pass that test again every year.
Look at your last three posts. Would they pass? If you aren't sure, that is exactly the point.
We could tell better stories
Lastly, imagine if our profession built a library of compliant success stories. Real stories. Where does the person live? What was their occupation? Why do they love the products? Why did they join? How long did it take them to build? How many hours did they work? What did they spend? What did they earn? What setbacks did they overcome?
Imagine a library containing a hundred thousand truthful, compliant stories, searchable by occupation, city, state and congressional district. Stories from real people. Stories from real constituents. One hundred thousand examples that our profession is not a compensation-plan diagram. It is human beings building businesses, serving customers and changing their circumstances.
We could tell those stories to our teams. We could tell them to the media. We could tell them to lawmakers. We could build belief, not through exaggeration, but through evidence.
Our choice is simple
The FTC is not going away. Critics are not going away. Regulation is not going away. We can hope and wait for a sympathetic administration blame our plight on the liberals and see-saw back and forth every 4-8 years.
We can keep promising the moon, spending pennies on representation and complaining every time the government acts.
Or we can grow up. We can train our people. We can police our own bad actors. We can fund serious advocacy. We can show up. We can wise up.
Because if we ever become truly united, properly trained and professionally represented, we will not merely survive. We will thrive. Fifty years ago, franchising was right where we are. Actually far worse. They were on the brink of extinction as a model. Today that model produces almost a trillion a year in the US. Direct Selling? 5% of that.
United we stand. Divided we fall. Let’s GO!
P.S. My blogs are, for me, a conversation. I rant for a bit and then … if so inspired, you respond. Your comments close the loop of conversation. They let me know I was heard. They let me know I contributed something … or not. I encourage you to close the loop … or open a new one and say something.
So many solid and important points made here. I would advise reading it, let it marinate, then read it again and take notes. Write down how you can personally use this information to make the changes you must make to keep your business and your team on solid grounds.
RICHARD, I have nothing to say except FANTASTIC! Perfectly said. Like most problems, the solutions are inward. Blaming the FTC gets us nowhere. I’ll definitely share your article. Again, thank you.
Richard,
This is a well written and informative article. Thank you for sharing this.
Great article! Thank you!
Great Post Richard,
Too often in the recruiting process, sponsors forget their responsibility of personally training new team members,
and teaching them the Dos and Don’ts of our industry. Many often expect someone new to be able to know how
to do something they may never had done before. It is crucial to help people learn the Baby Steps in their business,
before expecting them to run and walk. Know The products, their benefits (which is what sells), their value, and
their costs. Then teaching them the Basics of Recruiting. The Who, What, When, Where, and How of talking to
a new propective partner. Because that is what they are. Your Parnter. Listen to Their Goals and Dreams, then
teach them what is required to achieve them, realistically. Pie in the Sky, never works.
Great Advice again, much appreciated.
Carl
All wealth in this global jobless gig economy post 2026 will be made in the ONLINE intellectual distribution of cutting edge products & services to the top 10% consumers who own nearly 90% of the Nation’s wealth !
From Mumbai !
#Thebusinessofthe21stcentury
😎
Solid and well said. True evolution start’s with the community coming together, and justing correctly.
Solid article I will be sharing.
Long ❤️ live the networking entrepreneur.
dom
Solid and well said. True evolution start’s with the community coming together, and adjusting correctly.
Solid article I will be sharing.
Long ❤️ live the networking entrepreneur.
dom
Thanks, Richard. As always, you stand up for us tear the bandaid off, and show us how to heal properly.
Richard,
Well written article, but perhaps you should do a little research into the background and claims the FTC has made against those individuals you cite.
The FTC picked on the wrong couple in Steve and Gina Merritt. Their leadership exemplifies the highest ethics and exudes integrity for LifeWave and the team and product they represent. The $25,000/week earnings statement is pulled right out of LifeWave’s comp plan. So free speech doesn’t allow one to quote from a comp plan!
How does one “settle” a lawsuit when there was no monetary claim made against them! No fine assessed or even threatened. Only a mandate to not stand in front of a nice home or sports car in any of their photos! A mandate to not tell folks the truth about the industry. A mandate to put tape over their mouths about sharing a company’s written legitimate compensation plan. I encourage you to pick up the phone and ask for a time to meet with the Merritts to discuss the actions they are taking to defend our industry against the FTC’s overreach in interpretation of the “laws” against us.
Perhaps your next book could tell the “rest of the story” on how a brave, ethical and passionate couple stand up to the FTC to change the government’s view of our industry and to clarify what we can and cannot voice as part of free speech. They did not sit idly by as your article states most do. They have mounted a legal campaign out of their own pockets to change the laws for the entire industry.
Thank you for some clarification on this case. I wish them well. You too.
Richard,
You elucidate this topic with wisdom, insight, and your signature dark humor. Spot on. Thanks for the contextualization.
Richard,
You elucidate this topic with wisdom, insight, and your signature dark humor. Spot on. Thanks for the contextualization.
Good exhortation, Richard. I am glad our company is doing as well as it is in this area and has provided training on compliance.