Amway
October 13, 2026
SEATTLE, Washington - October 13, 2026
A federal judge has signed and entered the $225 million settlement between Amway Corp., two of its largest recruiting affiliates, the Federal Trade Commission and the state of Washington, turning the proposed deal announced last month into a binding court order and starting the clock on payments, distributor notices and a sweeping rewrite of how the company's U.S. business opportunity works.
U.S. District Judge Jamal N. Whitehead of the Western District of Washington entered the stipulated order on October 13, 2026, in Federal Trade Commission and State of Washington v. Amway Corp., et al. (No. 2:26-cv-03474). The court docket shows the order and an accompanying judgment entered that day on the FTC's unopposed motion, which had been pending since the case was filed on September 17. The FTC added the entered order to its public case file on October 15.
The defendants are Amway Corp., which does business as Amway North America, and two of its "approved provider" training organizations, World Wide Group, L.L.C. (WWG) and Leadership Team Development, Inc. (LTD). The FTC and Washington alleged that the companies drew recruits with misleading promises of income, pressured Independent Business Owners (IBOs) to buy products they did not want and could not easily resell, and coached IBOs to report sales that never happened so the business would look retail-driven rather than recruitment-driven. Amway and its affiliates neither admit nor deny the allegations, and the company has said it disagrees with how regulators characterized its business.
Under the order, Amway owes the Commission $154.7 million, WWG owes $39.78 million and LTD owes $26.52 million, with Amway jointly liable for the affiliates' shares. That $221 million, which the defendants stipulated is already being held in escrow by their law firm, is due within seven days of entry. A separate $4 million goes to Washington within 30 days to cover the state's costs, fees and future consumer-protection enforcement. The combined $225 million is the largest monetary recovery the FTC has ever obtained from a multilevel marketing company.
The FTC has said nearly all of its share will go to IBOs recruited through WWG and LTD who lost money. No claims process exists yet. The agency has said details of its redress program will come later, and the order requires the defendants to turn over customer information needed for redress within 14 days of any written request. The FTC does not charge fees to people seeking refunds, and anyone asking for money to "process" an Amway refund should be treated as a scammer.
Current and former distributors should see something sooner. Within seven days of entry, Amway must email a court-approved notice to everyone in the United States who participated in its marketing plan at any time from January 1, 2021 through the date of the order. If an email bounces, Amway must send the same notice by first-class mail within 15 days. The order fixes the wording of that notice and bars Amway from adding anything to it. The notice summarizes the case and the coming rule changes; it is not a refund notice and does not say who will be paid.
The bigger long-term impact is on Amway's compensation plan. Starting nine months after entry, which puts the date in mid-July 2027, and running for ten years, IBOs must resell at least 70 percent of the products they buy from Amway each month to earn full credit toward certain bonuses, with credit scaled down when customer sales fall short. Uplines will not earn credit on a new recruit's unsold purchases during the recruit's first six full months. IBOs must report every customer sale at the actual price, Amway must send receipts to those customers, and IBOs who fake sales or teach others to do so must be terminated. Current and former IBOs also gain the right to return unopened or still-marketable products bought in the prior 12 months for a full refund, with Amway paying return shipping.
Training and recruiting rules tighten as well. All participants must complete Amway-run training within six months of the order, and new participants within three months of enrolling, before they can recruit. For ten years, Amway, WWG and LTD may not collect fees for training, tools or services from people during their first 12 months in the business. An independent auditor, chosen jointly by the FTC and Amway at Amway's expense, will review the company's sales data each year and report to regulators for a decade, starting with a report on the first 120 days after entry.
The government's complaint lays out why regulators pressed for those limits. It says the median IBO received $139 in total bonuses in 2023 before expenses, and fewer than 1,600 of more than 241,000 IBOs received $40,000 or more that year, even though recruits were told such incomes were likely. It also says membership, messaging-app fees and event tickets for a WWG participant could top $2,100 a year, and LTD's annual programs ran from more than $1,600 to more than $3,600.
Past FTC cases against direct sellers show refunds can take months or years to arrive once an order is entered. Herbalife's $200 million settlement in 2016 produced refund checks across several rounds through 2023, and AdvoCare's $150 million settlement led to payments in 2022, with a second round going out this month. Former Amway IBOs are being advised to keep receipts and bank records showing what they spent on products, training and events, and to watch the FTC's refunds page for the Amway program once it is announced.
Amway, founded in 1959 and headquartered in Ada, Michigan, remains one of the largest direct selling companies in the world. The order changes how its U.S. opportunity operates but does not shut down the business.