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Over $149 million has been handed over to victims of the Advocare pyramid scheme, according to the FTC.
The FTC made the notice on May 5th. It comes after Advocare agreed to a $150 million settlement with the FTC in 2019.
The Federal Trade Commission is reimbursing AdvoCare distributors who lost money as a result of the AdvoCare pyramid scam more than $149 million.
More than 224,000 consumers who lost money to the AdvoCare pyramid scheme are receiving reimbursements from the Commission. Checks and PayPal are used to disburse the funds. Consumers who get PayPal payments should redeem them within 30 days, and those who receive checks should cash them within 90 days of the check’s expiration date.
Victims of advocacy began posting about receiving checks on social media earlier today. Advocare is still in operation, but its MLM operations have been discontinued as a result of the FTC settlement.
Distributors of Advocare can now only profit from personal sales to customers.
According to the FTC, the $150 million was returned to it as a result of Section 13(b) of the FTC Act.
In 2021, the United States Supreme Court determined that the Commission does not have the ability to seek monetary compensation in federal court under Section 13 (b). Consumers are getting money back today because of settlements reached before the Supreme Court’s judgment.
In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of con artists. The FTC was basically barred from pursuing monetary recovery under 13 because of the AMG ruling (b).
We’ve noticed a decrease in MLM litigation filed by the regulator since the Supreme Court judgment last year. The FTC’s existing MLM regulations have also developed into a tangle.
At the moment, scammers are losing court cases but not receiving any monetary judgments or penalties. In other words, FTC-targeted MLM scam victims are screwed.
MLM fraud isn’t the only source of harm. Facebook mentioned AMG lately in an attempt to avoid a $5 billion antitrust lawsuit filed against it.
Consumers will be screwed once more if Facebook wins.
These decisions further hinder the FTC’s capacity to promptly settle complaints. Targets of FTC investigations now routinely argue that they are immune from suit in federal court because they are no longer breaking the law, despite the possibility of recurrence, and they make these arguments even when they stopped breaking the law only after learning that the FTC was looking into them.
The Federal Trade Commission is striving to reclaim its capacity to prosecute MLM scammers, but progress is slow.
