Here’s what happened when a Forever Living FBO asked her upline about deceptive income claims
We’ve covered MLMs, particularly Forever Living quite extensively over the past 10 years. And we’ve always wondered what happens when a recruit realises they’ve been ‘scammed’ (as we believe) and challenges their upline (the person above them in their team).
The reason we use the word ‘scammed’ is because often people are recruited to an MLM with the promise they will make money, but instead they end up losing money. Indeed, according to research shared by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), on average 99.6% of people who join an MLM will lose money once expenses are deducted.
We’ve always suspected that anyone who challenges an upline would receive a frosty reception, as the upline depends on the money generated by their downline (usually from personal purchases) to meet their own targets set by the MLM.
But this week we found out just how quickly and ruthlessly they can act to protect their place in the pyramid (we believe MLMs are pyramid schemes), when a former Forever Living FBO got in touch with us.
Before we share her story with you, and show you exactly what can happen when you ask reasonable questions based on well-sourced facts, we need to explain what this FBO learned, and why she questioned her upline.
Forever Living closed down their US MLM arm following an order by the FTC
The FBO told us that she’d recently discovered that Forever Living had closed their US MLM business. In April this year, the FTC issued an order to prohibit Forever Living and its operators from deceiving consumers about potential earnings.
The FTC claimed that Forever Living, including “its CEO Gregg Maughan, and its President Aidan O’Hare”, used “deceptive earnings claims to attract new participants called Forever Business Owners (FBOs), most of whom made no money or even lost money”.
The FTC pointed out that, according to Forever Living’s own company data, “in each of the last five years at least 77% of FBOs who purchased, sold or recruited during the year did not receive any compensation. Even after two full years as FBOs, more than 89% of new participants had not received enough income from Forever to recoup their initial $300-plus start-up cost”.
And the company was apparently aware of this: “Forever knew that nearly 90% of FBOs had received no income from Forever, and it had no basis for suggesting they were not trying to make money”.
The FTC made a number of stipulations Forever Living needed to abide by. But rather than do this, the company completely closed their US MLM business. We believe this is because if they were to tell potential recruits the truth, they’d never join.
Forever Living’s Country Sales Manager for India was arrested
The FBO also learned that the Country Sales Manager (CSM) at Forever Living Imports (India) Pvt Ltd had been arrested earlier this year for being “involved in a digital marketing scheme and allegedly cheated members of the public by drawing them into illegal business activities, collecting large sums of money through false promises and inducements to join the scheme and promote Forever Living products.”
The more the FBO started to read about MLMs and Forever Living, the more worried she became about the business model. She also had serious concerns about the ingredients in some of the products, and the lack of knowledge or training given about them (including contraindications), and what she believed to be breaches of GDPR when gathering, storing and using people’s data.
Here’s what happened when the FBO texted her upline with her concerns
The FBO decided to text her upline with what she’d learned, and share her concerns, as she wasn’t sure if her upline was aware. She also thought her team should know (especially considering some of them were vulnerable women) so they could make an informed decision about whether to keep investing in the business.
Here’s the text she sent:
What happened next surprised her. Rather than receiving a reply from her upline, she was immediately removed from the team’s WhatsApp group. Confused, the FBO then sent this text:
At this point, the FBO says she had not spoken to anyone else in the team. All she had done was ask her upline the questions you read in the first text. Nonetheless, this was the reason the upline gave for removing her in her reply:
“I also will not tolerate you going to members of my team that I have done nothing, but help and support on the journeys, to share false claims with as well.
“If you have genuine evidence for the claims you have made, you are welcome to provide it. I will look at the evidence and make my own informed decisions. What I won’t do is accept somebody else’s conclusions simply because they have been presented to me forcefully.”
And:
“As for removing you from the group, my reason is because I will not allow you to share the same information in there that you sent to myself.”
Still holding out hope her upline might change her mind once she saw the evidence, the FBO duly sent her upline links to the FTC’s complaint against Forever Living, and news articles about the Country Sales Manager’s Arrest in India.
In the same text, as you can read below, she resigns from the business and hopes the manger will do the right thing now she has the facts:
The FBO still held out hope that once her upline read the information she had sent, she too would realise the truth and do the right thing.
But this did not appear to be the case. Instead, it seemed business as usual. The very next day her upline made a presentation at the Forever Living experience evening to potential recruits, as if she had no idea making income claims was deceptive, and even banned in the USA:
You can see that even the Facebook post promoting the event claims that attendees will find out how people have built “flexible, income-replacing businesses” – something that the FTC say, and even Forever Living’s own data shows, is virtually impossible for someone joining the business.
When the FBO realised that her upline had gone ahead with her recruitment pitch that evening, despite being sent evidence that over 90% of people who signed up would probably lose money, the FBO was furious and disappointed. She sent her upline this text in anger:
It was at this point that her upline decided to respond publicly by taking the classic virtuous victim position to seemingly discredit the FBO and retain the trust of her downline. This is despite all correspondence so far being private, between just the two of them.
The upline claimed she was the victim of a “bully”, sharing edited sections of the FBO’s text on social media and claiming the UK’s “MD” (he’s actually the Director of Sales), Michael Vittoroulis, ‘had her back’:
Notice the upline’s explanation for the FBO’s anger: “…a very bitter person who can’t handle me achieving success, so chose to bully me and bring me down.”
As you can see from the text exchanges, this is not what occurred, and the upline is fully aware of this. The exchange was nothing to do with success – far from it. In fact the FBO has told us that this particular upline does not appear to be financially successful through Forever Living; she still needs to work and apparently cannot afford to fix or replace her car.
Forever Living compliance sent the FBO an email
Over the past week, the upline has shared a number of social media posts, and even a video, discussing the ‘bullying’. At no point does she honestly explain what happened, or what the interaction was about. Instead she simply claims it was “disgusting, vile behaviour” and that “Karma is a bitch”.
When prompted in the comments of one post that she should “name and shame any lowlife” she responds by sharing a photo of the FBO, saying: “This is is her…Vile!!”
In the meantime, the FBO received the following email from Forever Living’s compliance team (please note, the FBO did not post anything on social media about her upline):
I hope you are well.
I understand that you have concerns about your experience with Forever and that you have chosen to share on social media. Whilst everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I wanted to contact you regarding some of the communications and comments that have recently been directed towards other Forever Business Owners.
Forever has always been built on people working together respectfully, even when they hold different views. We would therefore ask that any interactions with other members remain courteous and professional, and that personal accusations or abusive comments are avoided. If you have concerns about the business, its products, policies, or your experience, we would encourage you to raise them directly with the Company.
As with any business activity, earning an income requires time, effort and commitment, and individual results will naturally vary. Many people who join Forever do so simply to access products at a preferred price, while others choose to pursue the business opportunity to differing degrees.
To help ensure that participation remains low risk, Forever has long-established safeguards in place, including a product buy-back policy for eligible inventory. These measures are designed to ensure that individuals are not left with significant financial risk if they decide that the business is not right for them.
We fully respect your right to express your opinions and share your experiences. We would simply ask that this is done in a way that is fair, respectful and considerate of other individuals who may have had a different experience.
Thank you for taking the time to read this message.
Kind regards,
Forever Living UK Compliance Team
As you can read, at no point does the compliance team actually address the issues raised by the FBO. Instead, they infer that people who fail to earn an income didn’t give the business the “time, effort and commitment” it needs, and even attempt to claim that many who join Forever, “do so simply to access products at a preferred price”.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, this seems to be a lie: “Forever knew that nearly 90% of FBOs had received no income from Forever, and it had no basis for suggesting they were not trying to make money”.
This FBO lost £5,156 with Forever Living
So what about this FBO’s own experience with the business? She said she joined Forever Living last October, but only really worked at it since February this year. So she was in for just under a year, and actively trying to make money for around eight months.
Before we spoke, she had never calculated her profits and losses. This isn’t typically something that MLMs encourage their recruits to do, as they’d quickly discover they were spending more money than they were making. (If you are in an MLM, we’ve created a free monthly accounting spreadsheet for you to use here.)
When we initially spoke, the FBO said she’d spent money on a gazebo and products, as well as stall fees for the fairs that she promoted Forever Living products at. She assumed she’d maybe made a loss of around £1,000, but when she finally did the maths the reality shocked her.
She says her total outgoings were £5,310.50, and her profit a tiny £154.48.
So her total loss as a Forever Living Business Owner was a staggering £5,156.02.
We have evidence Forever Living UK are still making deceptive income claims
Sadly the efforts of this FBO to get her upline to see the truth of Forever Living, and to help her team were in vain. As you can read above, rather than look at the facts that had been shared with her, including links to the Federal Trade Commission website, the upline instead removed the FBO from her team, labeled her a bully and continued to recruit.
And she apparently has the backing of Forever Living UK, including the Director of Sales. But this doesn’t surprise us. As we will share in a new article shortly, we’ve seen evidence that the top Forever Living manager in the UK is training recruits to use a sales presentation that includes deceptive income claims, and even shares how she gets around “compliance”.
The only plus side is that the MLM industry appears to be in decline, and hopefully businesses like Forever Living won’t be around in a few years’ time.
One final thing: We would like to commend the bravery of the woman who contacted us and shared her story. It takes a lot to stand up to the gaslighting, bullying and isolation tactics that MLMs often use when someone tries to leave or hold them to account.
She says that she is hopeful that by sharing her story and helping to expose what she sees as the deception that goes on at Forever Living, she can help other women from getting involved and losing money.
