Forever Living Products International, LLC
A forty-eight-year-old aloe grower with roughly 7,500 acres of its own plantation and its own processing plant, which closed its US income opportunity on 1 May 2026 - after publishing a year in which 69.3% of its US business owners were paid nothing at all and the median among those who were paid anything was $43.94.
You cannot join this. The Forever Business Owner opportunity ceased to be available to US residents on 1 May 2026 and the US compensation plan concludes on 31 December 2026 - so what is graded here is the opportunity that existed, in which the company’s own 2024 disclosure showed 69.3% of US business owners paid nothing at all and a median of $43.94 among the 30.7% who were paid anything.
Can you actually make money with Forever Living?
No, because you cannot. The Forever Business Owner opportunity closed to US residents on 1 May 2026 and the US compensation plan concludes on 31 December 2026. There is nothing to join, nothing to upgrade into and no decision in front of you. What is graded here is the offer that existed, kept up because roughly 23,000 people were inside it and the record of what it paid them is worth having in one place.
That record is the company's own 2024 income disclosure. 69.3% of US Forever Business Owners were paid nothing at all. Among the 30.7% who were paid anything, the median for the year was $43.94, which means the median across all US business owners was $0.00. The bottom half of the paid group, 3,662 people, averaged $6.91 for the year on a median of two cents. Roughly 95% of all compensation went to about 3.1% of participants.
The cost running against those figures was fixed and monthly. Staying eligible for any downline commission took 4 Active Case Credits a month, at least one of them bought from your own wallet, which is roughly $556 at distributor cost and $6,672 a year, on top of a $306 to $428 product pack to get in the door. The FTC, working from company data, alleged that 89.2% had not recouped a $300-plus startup cost after two years. Those are allegations in a complaint settled by stipulated order with no admission of liability, and they are stated that way here.
Several things about this company were genuinely good and the closure does not erase them. It grew and processed its own aloe across roughly 7,500 acres and controlled the product from plant to bottle. It ran forty-eight years with no collapse, no receivership and no missed payout. No regulator anywhere has ever found the plan to be a pyramid, and the FTC deliberately pleaded no Koscot count in April 2026. And the wind-down beat the norm: commissions ran on through 31 December 2026, the activity threshold was halved to 2 Case Credits and the personal-purchase requirement was removed.
a Start Your Journey Combo Pak - $306 in 2020, $347.92 by 2024 - or 2 Case Credits of product at roughly $428; then 4 Case Credits a month, at least one personally purchased, to stay commission-eligible
- It would have to exist again. The opportunity closed to US residents on 1 May 2026, the plan concludes on 31 December 2026, and no reopening has been announced anywhere in the public record.
- An activity requirement that does not compel personal purchase. Four Case Credits a month with at least one from your own wallet, roughly $6,672 a year, gated every downline commission, and the personal-purchase floor came off only during the wind-down.
- A downline that is property rather than a revocable privilege. A Manager missing Leadership Bonus qualification for twelve consecutive months permanently forfeited all downline Manager lines, with no cure period and no consideration, and the closure realized that risk for everybody at once.
- Advertising controls that actually operated. A blanket prior-approval regime existed on paper throughout, yet a watchdog audit in August 2022 found more than 3,500 deceptive earnings claims still live after 2,400 had been pulled, and a ten-year federal injunction followed in April 2026.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL, AND CLOSED IN THE US BY THE COMPANY’S OWN DECISION - not shut down, not found liable, and never found to be a pyramid scheme anywhere in the world in forty-eight years. The file must be read with precision. On or about 1 April 2026 Forever Living told its US field the opportunity would end; the company’s own US Company Policy effective 1 May 2026 states that "The Forever Business Owner opportunity and related incentives are not available to residents of the United States beginning on May 1, 2026." Twelve days after the announcement, on 13 April 2026, the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint in the US District Court for the District of Arizona - FTC v. Forever Living Products International, LLC, No. 2:26-cv-02526-CDB - naming both LLCs and, personally, CEO Gregg Maughan and President Aidan O’Hare. A stipulated order for permanent injunction was entered the next day, 14 April 2026, on a 2-0 Commission vote. The single count was deception under Section 5(a) of the FTC Act: unsubstantiated earnings claims. There was no Koscot count, no unfairness pyramid count, and no request to declare the compensation plan unlawful. The order runs ten years, bans unsubstantiated earnings representations, requires substantiation to be produced on demand to the FTC and to participants, and requires notice to US promoters back to January 2023. There was no monetary judgment, no consumer redress and no civil penalty, and the order records that "Defendants neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint." Correct stage label: settled by stipulated order, no admission, no monetary judgment, no pyramid finding. Elsewhere in the file: a 2004 Hungarian advertising fine of 60 million HUF, UK Advertising Standards Authority criticism in 2015 over claims including diabetes and Crohn’s disease, a California Proposition 65 lead suit dismissed as unfounded in October 2016, and - stage-labeled carefully - the 25 April 2026 arrest in Hyderabad of the country sales manager of the Indian affiliate under Indian pyramid-adjacent statutes, which is an allegation against an individual, not a corporate charge and not a finding against Forever Living Products International.
Confidence: Medium-High
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
It was an aloe vera and supplements MLM run out of Scottsdale, Arizona since 1978, selling through US independent distributors called Forever Business Owners on a breakaway plan denominated entirely in Case Credits. It is no longer open. The company’s own US Company Policy effective 1 May 2026 states that "The Forever Business Owner opportunity and related incentives are not available to residents of the United States beginning on May 1, 2026," sponsoring stopped that day, and the compensation plan concludes on 31 December 2026. A reader arriving from a search result should know that first: there is nothing here to join. What follows grades the opportunity that existed.
The company’s strengths are real and belong at the front. It owns roughly 7,500 acres of aloe plantation in Texas and the Dominican Republic, it owns its processing through Aloe Vera of America, and it has manufactured a consistent core line continuously for forty-eight years - plant to bottle, including gel stabilisation. That is genuine capital expenditure and genuine agricultural and operational risk, and it puts this company in a different class from the large share of this sector that white-labels a supplement and marks it up. There has never been a pyramid finding against it in any jurisdiction, in 160-plus countries, in forty-eight years. It published a US income disclosure voluntarily, containing genuinely unflattering figures. It has never collapsed, never entered receivership and has no recorded missed payout. Entry was a product pack, not a franchise fee. The D is earned by the participant economics and the marketing-conduct file - not because the business was fake.
The participant economics are where it fails, and the company published the evidence itself. The 2024 US income disclosure reports that 69.3% of FBOs received no payment at all; that among the 30.7% who received something the average was $1,823.88 and the median was $43.94; and that the bottom half of that paid group, 3,662 people, averaged $6.91 on a median of two cents. Reconstructed over the whole population of roughly 23,860 FBOs, the median annual earning was $0.00, and the 733 people in the top decile of paid FBOs - about 3.1% of the field - captured roughly $12.68 million of the roughly $13.36 million paid out. The FTC, working from company data, alleged a harsher set: 77% with no income, 90.9% of first-year participants failing to earn back a $300-plus entry, and 89.2% not recouped after two years. Those FTC figures are allegations in a complaint that was settled without any admission, and they should be read as allegations.
The cost side is what turns those figures into losses. One Case Credit equaled $214 at suggested retail. Staying "active" - the precondition for receiving any downline commission - required 4 Active Case Credits a month, "at least one of which is a Personal Case Credit." That is roughly $856 a month at retail, roughly $556 at distributor cost, roughly $6,672 a year, against $1,823.88 for the average FBO who was paid anything at all. The requirement was not "sell $856 of product"; it was "generate 4 Case Credits of activity, one of them from your own wallet." Reaching Manager, where the plan’s real money began, required 120 Case Credits - $25,680 of sales activity - inside one or two months. In the wind-down, after the FTC complaint, the company cut the requirement to 2 Case Credits and removed the personal-purchase floor entirely.
One correction, because it is the kind of thing this site exists for. Secondary coverage widely reports that the FTC shut Forever Living down, or that the settlement caused the closure. At the level of public events the order is inverted: the company told its US field on or about 1 April 2026, the FTC complaint was filed on 13 April 2026, and the stipulated order was entered on 14 April 2026. The announcement came first. It is highly likely the company knew the settlement was coming when it announced - that is a reasonable inference and it is recorded here as an inference - but the FTC order does not require any cessation of operations, and the company was not shut down by anyone. It closed one market, on its own initiative, and kept the other 160.
Where US Forever Business Owners sat in 2024
Forever Living’s own published US Income Disclosure Statement for 2024, the last one published before the opportunity closed. Percentages restated over the whole US population of roughly 23,860 FBOs; the company’s own bands are computed over the 30.7% who were paid. All figures pre-expense.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Start Your Journey Combo Pak (entry) The standard route in. It contained actual saleable manufactured goods rather than a bare license or a "position" - a materially cleaner entry structure than much of this sector, and one reason the FTC framed its case as deception rather than as a pyramid count. |
$306 (2020) → $347.92 (2024) one-time |
— |
| Alternative entry: 2 Case Credits of product The same 2 CC threshold that qualified an FBO for Assistant Supervisor also qualified a Preferred Customer for a 30% discount - so a "customer" buying 2 CC and a "distributor" buying 2 CC generated identical volume. The plan made retail demand and self-consumption structurally hard to tell apart. |
≈$428 one-time |
— |
| Monthly activity requirement - 4 Case Credits The precondition for receiving any downline commission, and the central structural defect: "at least one of which is a Personal Case Credit." Roughly $6,672 a year at distributor cost. Cut to 2 CC with the personal-purchase floor removed on 1 May 2026, in the wind-down, after the FTC complaint. |
≈$556/mo at cost (≈$856 SRP) recurring |
— |
| One Case Credit The plan’s atomic unit. Every requirement, rank and bonus was denominated in it, and this is the number a prospective participant was least likely to have in front of them when converting "4 Case Credits a month" into dollars. |
$214 suggested retail per unit |
— |
| Retail margin ladder 15% at Novus Customer, 30% Preferred Customer, 35% Assistant Supervisor, 38% Supervisor, 43% Assistant Manager, 48% Manager. The FTC complaint corroborates 35-48% on personal sales. This was a genuinely workable retail rate - the problem was never the margin. |
SRP, no discounting permitted per sale |
15% → 48% |
| Group / Volume Bonus Paid on downline Case Credit volume and scaling with qualified Manager legs: up to 6% at one leg, 9% at two to four, 12% at five to seven, 15% at nine, 17% at seventeen, 18% at twenty-five or more. |
— monthly |
up to 6-18% |
| Leadership Bonus Override on the first three downline Manager generations. Leadership Bonus Qualified status was the gate to everything above Manager - and failing it for twelve consecutive months permanently forfeited every downline Manager line. |
— monthly |
6% / 3% / 2% |
| FBO Support Fee Deducted from bonuses at Assistant Supervisor level and above, and charged only in months where a bonus was actually earned. Small, and structured fairly - noted because the fee schedule is a reasonable guide to how a relationship is built. |
$3/month (max $36/year) monthly, in bonus months only |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
This is a materially better founder profile than the sector norm and it should be said plainly. Maughan took a B.S. in accounting from Arizona State University in 1962, worked as an accountant, and spent thirteen years at a large listed Arizona construction and homebuilding company, rising to vice president, before founding Forever Living in Tempe in 1978. He arrived from a credentialed profession and a senior operating role, not from a collapsed prior direct-selling venture - the pattern that recurs constantly in this category and is one of the more reliable predictors of participant harm. No prior failed opportunity, no personal regulatory action and no fraud judgment against him could be located. He built a diversified enterprise around the core business, including a resorts operation founded in 1981, the Texas aloe processor Aloe Vera of America, and an ambulance company, and Forbes listed him as the 368th-richest American in 2002 at $600 million.
Per the FTC complaint, he wholly owns Forever Living Products International, LLC. He was named personally as a defendant in FTC v. Forever Living Products International, LLC, No. 2:26-cv-02526-CDB, and is personally bound by the ten-year injunction entered on 14 April 2026. The FTC’s press release attributes to him the recruiting line "We will be paying millions in bonuses next year. The only question is, whose name goes on that check?" He neither admitted nor denied the allegations, and nothing in the stipulated order constitutes a finding that he did what was alleged.
Responsible for day-to-day operations, and named personally as a defendant alongside the CEO. Individual liability under Section 5 requires that the person participated directly in the acts or had authority to control them, with knowledge or reckless indifference - the Commission does not name officers reflexively, and its decision to do so signals it believed the conduct ran to the top of the house. As with the CEO: neither admitted nor denied, no finding, ten-year personal injunction.
The company attributed the decision to "unforeseeable restrictions making it unmanageable for Forever Living Products to mitigate its risk worldwide," and to monitoring and structural requirements that made the US model impossible "without introducing broader regulatory risk." Decoded, that is the injunction’s compliance apparatus - ten years, annual reports, 14-day response windows, substantiation on demand, and the obligation to police tens of thousands of independent promoters on pain of contempt. The word doing the work is "worldwide": supervising a US field to injunction standard created contagion risk for a business that earns almost all its revenue elsewhere. That is a defensible governance decision. It is also a verdict on the US opportunity’s economics - a company does not walk away from a profitable distributor channel over paperwork.
Registered address
Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Wholly private, family-controlled, no outside institutional capital and no public reporting obligation, so there are no audited financial statements in the public domain and every revenue figure below is company-stated or trade-press estimated. Reported revenue peaked around 2020-21 and has declined roughly 26% since, from an estimated $2.31 billion in 2020 to an estimated $1.70 billion in 2025; a separate company-stated series puts 2021 at $4 billion against the trade estimate of $2.0 billion, and the two are irreconcilable with no audited figure to arbitrate. The scale of the US closure is the fact that explains it: roughly 23,000 US Forever Business Owners out of a network the company has described as 9.3 million distributors - about a quarter of one percent. The United States was the home market, the founder’s home state, the site of the headquarters and of the manufacturing base, and it was a rounding error in the distributor network. Closing it was commercially close to costless.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can you join this today? |
RED
No. The Forever Business Owner opportunity has not been available to US residents since 1 May 2026, per the company’s own US Company Policy, and the US compensation plan concludes on 31 December 2026. The MLM opportunity continues in 160-plus other countries.
|
| Who legally owned it? |
WATCH
Forever Living Products International, LLC (Nevada) and Forever Living.com, LLC (Arizona), privately held and family-controlled from Scottsdale, Arizona. Per the FTC complaint, Gregg Maughan wholly owns the international entity. No audited accounts exist in the public domain.
|
| What did it really cost? |
CONCERN
A $306-$347.92 product pack or 2 Case Credits at roughly $428 to enter, then 4 Case Credits a month - about $556 at distributor cost, $6,672 a year - with at least one Case Credit required to be personally purchased, plus a $3 monthly support fee in bonus months.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes, voluntarily, and the numbers were bad: 69.3% of US FBOs paid nothing in 2024, a $43.94 median among the 30.7% paid anything, and a $6.91 average on a two-cent median for the bottom half of that paid group. The FTC alleged the disclosure itself falsely implied participants were earning.
|
| What exactly did the FTC do? |
CONCERN
Filed a complaint on 13 April 2026 in D. Ariz. (No. 2:26-cv-02526-CDB) against both LLCs and the CEO and President personally, and entered a stipulated ten-year injunction on 14 April 2026. Section 5(a) deception only - no pyramid count. No monetary judgment, no redress, and "Defendants neither admit nor deny any of the allegations."
|
| Was it ever found to be a pyramid scheme? |
WATCH
No - not in the United States and not in any of the 160-plus countries it has operated in across forty-eight years. The FTC deliberately pleaded deception rather than Koscot. A 2026 arrest in India of a country-level executive under pyramid-adjacent statutes is an allegation against an individual and remains unresolved.
|
| Could you get your money back? |
WATCH
On paper, yes, and the clause was retained in the policy that closed the program: twelve months from purchase, unsold and salable, refunded at cost less bonuses personally received - at or better than the sector benchmark. Whether claims were actually honored during the wind-down could not be verified either way.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
CONCERN
Miner, decisively. The 35-48% retail ladder was a real merchant margin on real goods, but commission eligibility was gated on generating 4 Case Credits a month including at least one from your own purchase - and 7% of FBOs received any downline income at all in 2023.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Get in the door | $306-$428 Start Your Journey Combo Pak at $347.92 in 2024, or 2 Case Credits of product at roughly $428 |
| Stay commission-eligible for twelve months | ≈$6,672 4 Case Credits a month at roughly $556 distributor cost, at least one personally purchased |
| Cover that from retail margin alone | ≈$13,900 of retail sales at the 48% Manager rate; roughly $19,100 at the 35% Assistant Supervisor rate |
| Beat the first year’s outlay from commissions | ≈160x the median paid outcome $7,055.92 of outlay against a $43.94 median among the 30.7% who were paid anything |
Read this twice
The first-year arithmetic, using only the company’s own published figures and the FTC’s docketed ones. Outlay: $347.92 for the 2024 Combo Pak, $6,672 for twelve months of the 4 Case Credit activity requirement at distributor cost, and $36 of support fee - $7,055.92. Against it, the 2024 income disclosure gives a median of $43.94 for the 30.7% of FBOs who received any payment at all, and $0.00 for the population as a whole once the 69.3% who received nothing are counted. Take a participant who performed better than roughly 85% of the entire US field - the median of the top half of the paid group - and they grossed $206.29 against $7,055.92 of cost, for a net of about minus $6,850. Take the average of that same upper-half cohort, $3,640.35, and they are still down roughly $3,416. Only in the top decile of paid FBOs - 733 people, about 3.1% of the field, averaging $17,292.96 - does the arithmetic clear, at roughly plus $10,237 before samples, travel, events or tax. Three caveats, stated fairly. First, the $6,672 is an upper bound: Case Credits could be generated by downline and Preferred Customer purchases, so an FBO with genuine retail customers spent less, and the true average spend was never disclosed by the company. Second, the retail ladder of 35-48% was a real margin on real goods, and a participant with a customer base sat materially better than these medians. Third, the one-Personal-Case-Credit floor set a hard, non-zero minimum no amount of downline volume could remove - roughly $214 at suggested retail, about $139 at the Manager discount, every month, in perpetuity. And the FTC’s allegation, docketed and settled without admission, was that 90.9% of first-year participants never earned back a $300-plus entry and that 89.2% had not recouped it after two years.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
HISTORICAL - the US opportunity closed to new and existing participants on 1 May 2026 and the plan concludes on 31 December 2026, so this models what the deal was, not what you can join. 35% retail margin on a customer spending about $100/month. Cost is the 4 Case Credit monthly active requirement at $214 per Case Credit - about $6,672 a year - which included a mandatory Personal Case Credit. Published 2024 median among the 30.7% who were paid anything: $43.94 for the year. Your own subscription cost of $556/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
Forever Living’s US per-SKU retail pages were not reliably retrievable after the US channel change, so this comparison is run on the units the plan itself used - Case Credits at the $214 suggested retail price, and the plan’s own published requirements - against open-market bands for aloe drinking gel, aloe skincare and general supplements of comparable volume. Bands are given as bands deliberately: formulations differ, and the honest criticism is not that the products are bad but that a hard no-discounting rule kept the price where the operator set it while the open market moved.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Case Credit of product - $214 at suggested retail | Aloe drinking gel, aloe skincare and supplements of comparable volume, open market | ~$60-110 |
| Start Your Journey Combo Pak - $347.92 (2024) | A month of aloe gel, a multivitamin and a skincare item bought at retail | ~$60-120 |
| Monthly activity requirement, 4 CC - ~$556 at cost, ~$856 SRP | Buying aloe gel only in the months you actually drink it | $0-45/mo |
| Twelve months of activity - ~$6,672 at distributor cost | Twelve months of comparable aloe and supplement use | ~$300-600 |
| FBO Support Fee - $36/year | No fee | $0 |
| A hard SRP floor: advertising below suggested retail was prohibited | Open-market aloe is discounted, bundled and subscription-priced continuously | n/a |
| Manager qualification - 120 CC, $25,680 of sales activity in one or two months | No rank, no qualification window, no clock | $0 |
| Total as sold ~$7,056 in year one for an FBO with no customers |
Total, built yourself ~$300-600 of comparable aloe and supplements |
Price-to-value
Part of the premium is defensible and should be conceded. The company grew, harvested, processed and bottled its own aloe across roughly 7,500 acres and owned its processor outright - that is real vertical integration and it costs real money, and it is not what most of this sector is doing. A buyer who specifically wants stabilised aloe gel from a grower with a forty-eight-year manufacturing record is buying something. What is not defensible is the structure around it. The suggested-retail floor meant the participant could never compete on price, including against the company’s own storefront, while the open market discounted freely. And the arithmetic that decides the exercise is not per-bottle at all: it is that a participant with no customers spent roughly $7,056 in year one - entry, twelve months of activity and the support fee - to remain eligible for a commission stream whose median, among those who received anything, was $43.94.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Product-first FBO
joined mainly for the 35-48% discount, bought for own use, a handful of customers, never chased rank
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 12% | −$620 |
| 6 mo | 13% | −$1,050 |
| 1 yr | 14% | −$1,800 |
| 3 yr | 14% | −$4,600 |
| 5 yr | 13% | −$7,200 |
Part-time builder
10 hrs/wk, held the 4 Case Credit activity requirement every month, some sponsoring
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 5% | −$1,800 |
| 6 mo | 7% | −$3,400 |
| 1 yr | 9% | −$6,800 |
| 3 yr | 11% | −$19,000 |
| 5 yr | 11% | −$31,000 |
Full-time builder
30+ hrs/wk, chasing 120 Case Credits for Manager, events, travel, samples
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −$3,200 |
| 6 mo | 5% | −$6,100 |
| 1 yr | 8% | −$11,500 |
| 3 yr | 12% | −$31,000 |
| 5 yr | 13% | −$50,000 |
Methodology note. These describe the opportunity as it ran, not a live one - it closed to US residents on 1 May 2026. ANCHORED to Forever Living’s own 2024 US Income Disclosure Statement: 69.3% of FBOs paid nothing; a $1,823.88 average and $43.94 median among the 30.7% paid anything; $17,292.96 average and $3,524.83 median in the top decile of paid FBOs; $3,640.35 average and $206.29 median in the top half; $6.91 average and $0.02 median in the bottom half. Anchored also to the docketed FTC figures - 77% with no income, 90.9% of first-year participants below a $300-plus entry cost, 89.2% not recouped after two years, 7% receiving any downline income in 2023, and 1.9% earning $100 a month or more from downline on any consistent basis - which are allegations in a complaint settled without admission and are treated as such. And anchored to the published cost side: $306-$347.92 entry, $214 per Case Credit, the 4 CC monthly requirement at roughly $556 distributor cost, the $36 annual support fee, the 15-48% discount ladder and the 120 CC Manager threshold. MODELED by us: the cohort definitions, which the company never segmented; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit at each horizon; and everything on the expense side beyond the published items - samples, events, travel, marketing and the fronting of retail customer refunds, which the policy placed on the FBO with a chargeback of bonuses already paid. One calibration that cuts in the company’s favor: Case Credits could be met partly by customer and downline purchases, so an FBO with real customers sat above these medians. The medians describe the typical participant, and 69.3% of them were paid nothing at all.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151The activity requirement compelled personal purchase to stay eligible
269.3% of US business owners were paid nothing at all in 2024
3The bottom half of those who were paid averaged $6.91 for the year
4Roughly 95% of all compensation went to about 3.1% of participants
5The FTC alleged 89.2% had not recouped their startup cost after two years
6Federal notice in 2021, thousands of claims still live in 2022, enforcement in 2026
7The CEO and the President were named personally as FTC defendants
8The company’s own income disclosure was alleged to be part of the deception
9Downlines were permanently forfeitable, with no compensation
10The wind-down offered no severance and no way to realize downline value
11Stacked, all-or-nothing annual qualification at the top of the plan
12The buyback window ran from the date of purchase, not the date of termination
13A twelve-month non-solicit covering your own customers, plus perpetual gags
14The settlement returned nothing to the roughly 23,000 US participants
15A live criminal proceeding in India against a country-level executive
Green flags
101Genuine vertical integration and a real manufacturing base
2Forty-eight years of continuous operation with no collapse and no missed payout
3No pyramid finding in any jurisdiction, ever - and the FTC deliberately did not plead one
4Product-based entry with no franchise fee, license fee or bare buy-in
5A buyback obligation at or better than the industry benchmark - retained in the closing policy
6Voluntary publication of a US income disclosure with genuinely unflattering numbers
7An eight-month tapered commission run-off rather than an abrupt cut-off
8A fast and substantive response to the 2024 self-regulatory inquiry
9A founder with a legitimate non-MLM professional background and no prior regulatory history
10No securities-like features anywhere in the plan
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- For the record as it stands: publication of the wind-down execution data - how many buyback claims were submitted, how many were paid, at what value, and whether the "liberal application" language was honored - which is the largest single unknown in this file and the one thing that could still improve the closing chapter.
- For any reopening: commission eligibility gated on sales to non-participant customers rather than on 4 Case Credits including a mandatory Personal Case Credit, plus a published split of product sold to genuine retail customers against product bought by participants to qualify. That ratio was never disclosed and it is the number that settles the Koscot question empirically.
- For any reopening: an income disclosure computed over every enrolled participant rather than the paid subset, with expenses netted and startup cost amortised, alongside a buyback measured from the date of termination rather than the date of purchase, and ten years of clean conduct under the injunction.
Downward
- Evidence that buyback claims were refused, delayed or narrowed during the wind-down, or that run-off commissions promised through 31 December 2026 were not paid in full.
- A conviction or adjudicated pyramid finding out of the Indian proceeding, or any new pyramid count against the company or its officers in any jurisdiction - none exists today anywhere in the world.
- Any contempt proceeding under the ten-year injunction, or a reopening of a US opportunity under a structure with the same self-purchase gate and no published customer-versus-participant volume split.
Grade is D, and the opportunity is closed. US residents could not join from 1 May 2026, and the compensation plan concludes on 31 December 2026. This grades the record.
Start with what was real, because a great deal of it was. Forever Living grew, harvested, processed and bottled its own aloe across roughly 7,500 acres in Texas and the Dominican Republic, owned its processor outright, and manufactured a consistent core line continuously for forty-eight years. It never collapsed, never entered receivership, and there is no recorded missed payout in five decades. It was never found to be a pyramid scheme by any court or regulator anywhere in 160-plus countries - and when the FTC finally sued in April 2026 it deliberately pleaded deception rather than pyramid structure, seeking nothing against the compensation plan itself. Entry was a product pack, not a franchise fee. The retail ladder paid 35-48% on real goods. The founder was an accountant who spent thirteen years rising to vice president at a large listed homebuilder before starting this in 1978, with no wreckage behind him. And when the company closed the US market, it ran an eight-month tapered commission run-off, halved the activity requirement, removed the personal-purchase floor and kept its twelve-month buyback obligation in the very document that shut the program down. Almost none of that is typical of this sector.
The economics are why it grades D anyway, and the company published them. In 2024, 69.3% of US Forever Business Owners were paid nothing at all. Among the 30.7% who were paid anything, the median for the year was $43.94 and the average was $1,823.88; the bottom half of that paid group - 3,662 people - averaged $6.91 on a median of two cents; and the 733 people in the top decile, about 3.1% of the field, took roughly 95% of everything paid out. Against that sat one Case Credit at $214 and an activity requirement of 4 Case Credits a month, at least one of them personally purchased, which annualises to roughly $6,672 at distributor cost. The FTC, from company data, alleged that 90.9% of first-year participants never earned back a $300-plus entry and that 89.2% had not recouped it after two years - allegations in a complaint settled without any admission, and they should be read as allegations. But the company’s own figures need no such caveat, and they are enough on their own.
The third element is the conduct record and the correction that goes with it. The FTC issued a Notice of Penalty Offenses in October 2021. A watchdog audit in August 2022 found more than 3,500 deceptive earnings claims still live after 2,400 had been pulled, from 5,500-plus collected. A self-regulatory inquiry closed in November 2024. Then, in April 2026, a ten-year federal injunction naming the CEO and the President personally - over luxury cars, giant checks and "whose name goes on that check?" - settled with no admission, no monetary judgment and no pyramid count. And here is the correction, because secondary coverage almost universally gets it backwards: the company announced the US closure on or about 1 April 2026, the FTC complaint was filed on 13 April, and the stipulated order was entered on 14 April. The announcement came first. It is a reasonable inference that the company knew the settlement was coming, and it is recorded here as an inference - but the FTC did not shut Forever Living down, the order requires no cessation of operations, and the company remains a functioning aloe manufacturer selling in 160-plus countries today.
If you were an FBO: work the calendar to 31 December 2026, in this order
Earnings on existing downline purchasing ran under the pre-existing structure until the end of 2026, so the run-off money is real but finite. Check the buyback first, because it is the only clause with a hard clock: twelve months from the date of purchase, unsold and salable, proof of purchase required, literature excluded, refunded at your cost less bonuses you personally received. That window runs from when you bought, not from when the program ended, so anything on your shelf older than twelve months has no repurchase right at all. Inventory that ages past the window is worth nothing back. Submit in writing, keep the correspondence, and do it before the run-off closes.
Do not expect the downline to convert into anything, and price that in now
There is no public evidence of any severance, buyout, transfer or conversion offer for US organizational value. The policy always characterised the downline as a revocable, non-vested privilege - a terminating FBO "forfeits the current sales level and all downlines, including those in foreign countries," and a Manager failing Leadership Bonus qualification for twelve consecutive months permanently forfeits every downline Manager line. Whether US-held foreign downlines survived the market wind-down is genuinely unresolved and is listed in our unverified section, so if you hold one, get the answer in writing from the company rather than from your upline.
If you just want the aloe, buy the aloe
The product business continues in the United States - direct-to-consumer e-commerce at the company store was expressly preserved when the opportunity closed, so customers were not stranded. You are buying from a grower that owns roughly 7,500 acres of plantation and its own processing plant, which is a genuine thing to be buying. Two notes: the suggested-retail floor that stopped distributors discounting was a rule about the opportunity, not a law of nature, and comparable aloe drinking gels and supplements sell at a fraction of $214 a Case Credit in open retail. Compare on aloe content and price per millilitre, and ignore any health claim about diabetes or Crohn’s disease - a UK regulator criticized exactly those in 2015.
If you are researching another opportunity, take the two lessons this file teaches
First: ask what the monthly activity requirement costs in dollars, not in the operator’s own units. "4 Case Credits" sounds like nothing; $6,672 a year does not, and the conversion rate - $214 a Case Credit - was the number a prospective participant was least likely to have in front of them. Second: ask whether any share of the requirement must come from your own wallet. A plan that gates commissions on self-purchase is buying its own volume from the people it is paying. Both questions are answerable from published documents before you sign anything, and both were answerable here.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- FTC v. Forever Living Products International, LLC, et al., No. 2:26-cv-02526-CDB (D. Ariz.) - Complaint for Permanent Injunction and Other Relief, filed 13 April 2026 (PDF)
FTC v. Forever Living Products International, LLC, et al., No. 2:26-cv-02526-CDB (D. Ariz.) - Complaint filed 13 April 2026 (Section 5(a) deception; no Koscot count; 77% no income; 90.9% of first-year participants below a $300-plus entry; 89.2% not recouped after two years; 2023 downline figures across 22,238 FBOs; entry pack at $306 in 2020 and $347.92 in 2024; activity requirement priced at ≈$556 cost / ≈$856 SRP)
- FTC case page - Forever Living Products International, LLC, et al., FTC v. (case timeline and filings)
- FTC v. Forever Living Products International, LLC, et al. - Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction and Other Relief, entered 14 April 2026 (PDF)
FTC v. Forever Living - Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction and Other Relief, entered 14 April 2026 - ten-year term, prohibited misrepresentations including the "aren’t trying" representation, substantiation on demand to the Commission and to participants, notice to US promoters back to January 2023, 15-day website posting, no monetary judgment, and the operative sentence "Defendants neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint"
- Unopposed Motion for Entry of Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction and Other Relief, No. 2:26-cv-02526-CDB, dated 14 April 2026 (posted copy)
- FTC press release, 14 April 2026 - "FTC Order to Prohibit Forever Living and its Operators from Deceiving Consumers about Potential Earnings" (2-0 Commission vote; "whose name goes on that check?")
FTC press release and case page, 14 April 2026 - 2-0 Commission vote; luxury cars and giant checks; the "whose name goes on that check?" quotation; the allegation that the income disclosure statements themselves falsely implied participants were earning
- FTC case page - Forever Living Products International, LLC, et al., FTC v., timeline entry of 14 April 2026
- Forever Living.com, LLC - Company Policies and Procedures (United States Only), effective 1 May 2026 (PDF on the company's own CDN) - §1.01(b)-(c) closure language and "The Forever Business Owner opportunity and related incentives are not available to residents of the United States beginning on May 1, 2026"
Forever Living US Company Policies and Procedures, effective 1 May 2026 - the controlling instrument: "The Forever Business Owner opportunity and related incentives are not available to residents of the United States beginning on May 1, 2026"; run-off to 31 December 2026; 4 CC → 2 CC with the personal-purchase requirement removed; car plan, Chairman’s Bonus and Global Rally severed from US Case Credits; twelve-month buyback clause; termination and Leadership Bonus forfeiture clauses; liability cap; closed list of permitted transaction channels
- Forever Living US Company Policies and Procedures, effective 1 May 2026 (mirror copy posted by a consumer advocacy nonprofit)
- Forever Living Company Policies and Procedures and the Code of Professional Conduct - Forever Living.com, LLC / Forever Living Products Canada, Inc., effective 16 February 2023 (PDF on the company's own CDN) - Case Credit at $214 ($283 in Canada) SRP; "Active FBO" defined as 4 or more Active Case Credits including at least one Personal Case Credit; §16 Prohibited Activities
Forever Living North America Company Policies and Procedures, 1 July 2020 - "One Case Credit is awarded for each $214 ($283 in Canada) SRP of sales activity"; §4.01(a) and §4.01(d) rank thresholds; §4.03(b) 4 Active Case Credits including at least one Personal Case Credit; §16.02(l) twelve-month non-solicitation; §16.02(o) total prohibition on income representations; §16.02(r) suggested-retail price floor; §16.02(b) liberal buyback commitment on termination
Not established by this document: The specific 1 July 2020 North America edition could not be located on any Forever Living domain or in any archive reachable from this session; the company overwrites its policy PDF at the same CDN paths. The two editions cited bracket it: the January 2018 edition carries the §16.02(b)/(l)/(o)/(r) lettering the prose relies on, and the February 2023 edition carries the $214/$283 Case Credit definition and the 4-CC/one-Personal-Case-Credit Active FBO definition. The 4-CC personal-purchase clause was, per the FTC complaint at ¶21, not revised out of the policies until 1 July 2024.
- Forever Living Company Policies and Procedures and the Code of Professional Conduct - North America edition, posted 19 December 2017, effective 1 January 2018 (PDF on the company's own gallery domain) - the edition whose §16.02 lettering matches the sections cited (income-representation prohibition, twelve-month non-solicitation, SRP floor, liberal buy-back on termination)
- Forever Living U.S. FBO Income Disclosure Statement covering 2024 (PDF) - 69.3% paid nothing; 30.7% (7,325 FBOs) paid; $1,823.88 average and $43.94 median; top decile 733 FBOs at $17,292.96 average / $3,524.83 median; bottom half $6.91 average / $0.02 median
Forever Living 2024 US Income Disclosure Statement - 69.3% paid nothing; 30.7% (7,325 FBOs) paid something; $1,823.88 average and $43.94 median among the paid; top decile 733 FBOs at $17,292.96 average and $3,524.83 median; top half $3,640.35 average and $206.29 median; bottom half $6.91 average and $0.02 median; $3 monthly FBO Support Fee; all figures pre-expense
Not established by this document: The 2024 U.S. statement is served from an authenticated/JS-rendered page on foreverliving.com; the direct company-hosted PDF URL did not resolve to the fetcher, so the copy carrying the exact figures is the one posted by TINA.org. The $3 monthly FBO Support Fee is not stated on the retrieved copy of the disclosure.
- Forever Living U.S. Income Disclosure Statement page (foreverliving.com/usa) - the company's own landing page for the FBO Income Disclosure Statement, Company Policy and DOS & DON'TS documents
- Forever Living Income Disclosure Statement, global/ROM edition (PDF on the company's own CDN) - 88.6% of monthly buyers globally received no significant compensation; the pre-2024 disclosure format the FTC complaint attacks at ¶¶52-61
- FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities (October 2021) - the Notice itself (PDF)
FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities, October 2021, and recipient list; TINA.org, "Forever Living’s Neverending Deceptive Income Claims" - 5,500-plus claims collected, 2,400 removed and 3,500-plus still live at the August 2022 audit, formal FTC complaint filed December 2021
- List of October 2021 Recipients of the FTC's Notices of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities, updated 25 October 2021 (PDF)
- FTC enforcement page - Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities (underlying administrative decisions)
- TINA.org, "Forever Living's Neverending Deceptive Income Claims" (4 May 2022, updated through 14 April 2026) - 5,500-plus claims collected; December 2021/May 2022 complaint to the FTC
- TINA.org 2022 Forever Living Income Claims Database - 26 August 2022 audit: 2,400-plus claims removed, 3,500-plus still live (3,300 password-gated)
- BBB National Programs, Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council Case #180-2024: Monitoring Inquiry - Forever Living Products International, LLC, closed 11 November 2024
BBB National Programs DSSRC Case #180-2024, closed 11 November 2024 - thirteen social posts with earnings representations; all removed within one week; four additional compliance staff hired; training, internal policy and third-party monitoring deployed; closed for good-faith efforts with no FTC referral
- DSSRC Case #180-2024 decision (PDF copy) - thirteen social posts removed within a week; four additional compliance staff; third-party monitoring
- TINA.org, "Forever Living Ditching MLM Model" (13 April 2026, updated 14 April 2026)
TINA.org, "Forever Living Ditching MLM Model"; BehindMLM coverage of the US termination and of the injunction; Talented Ladies Club and Multilevel Marketing News (4 April 2026) on the announcement to the US field and the stated reason, "unforeseeable restrictions making it unmanageable for Forever Living Products to mitigate its risk worldwide"
- BehindMLM, "Forever Living terminates MLM opportunity in US" (3 April 2026, updated 15 April 2026 for the FTC injunction) - quotes §1.01(b) "unforeseeable restrictions making it unmanageable for Forever Living Products to mitigate its risk worldwide"
- Talented Ladies Club, "Why has Forever Living Products closed down its MLM business in the USA?" (14 April 2026)
- Talented Ladies Club, "Is this FTC complaint the reason why Forever Living closed down their US MLM business?" (7 May 2026)
- Multilevel Marketing News, "Forever Living's U.S. Shift Away from MLM" (4 April 2026)
- Direct Selling News, "Forever Living Pivots US-Based Business" (2 April 2026) - the company's stated reason in full: "unmanageable regulatory exposure … no longer feasible without introducing unacceptable risk to the company's global operations"
- Business For Home, "Forever Living Products Announces End to US Sponsorship and Recruitment Opportunity" (10 April 2026) - the company press release as distributed to the trade
- Wikipedia - Forever Living Products (1978 founding; 1997 Japan penalty tax and its 2015 sequel; 2004 Hungarian fine; 2015 UK Advertising Standards Authority criticism; 2011-2016 Proposition 65 litigation)
Company and background material: Forever Living "Our Aloe" and Forever Global HQ on roughly 7,500 acres of plantation in Texas and the Dominican Republic and on Aloe Vera of America; Wikipedia entries for Forever Living Products and Rex Maughan (1978 founding, thirteen years at a large listed construction and homebuilding company rising to vice president, 2002 Forbes ranking, 1997 Japan penalty tax and its 2015 sequel, 2004 Hungarian fine, 2015 UK Advertising Standards Authority criticism, 2016 dismissal of the Proposition 65 suit); Business For Home revenue estimates 2020-2025; Hyderabad Mail and Lokmat Times on the 25 April 2026 arrest in India
Not established by this document: The Forever Living "Our Aloe" / Forever Global HQ plantation pages and the separate Wikipedia entry for Rex Maughan were not retrieved in this session - the foreverliving.com marketing pages are JS-rendered and returned login-error shells to the fetcher. Lokmat Times' coverage of the 25 April 2026 arrest was likewise not located; the Hyderabad Mail and Telangana Today reports above carry the same facts.
- Business For Home company profile - Forever Living Products, estimated revenue series 2020-2025 ($2.31bn 2020 falling to $1.70bn 2025)
- Hyderabad Mail, "Hyderabad police arrest Forever Living India sales manager in ₹3 crore MLM fraud case" (26 April 2026) - arrest of Harish Kumar Singla, Country Sales Manager, Forever Living Imports (India) Pvt Ltd, on 25 April 2026, Crime No. 62/2026
- Telangana Today, "Haryana man held in Hyderabad MLM fraud, Rs 3 crore frozen" (26 April 2026) - DCP Charminar on ₹600 crore and roughly one lakh alleged victims
- BehindMLM, "Forever Living manager arrested in India, $317K frozen" (28 April 2026)
What we could not get
- Whether buybacks were actually honored during the US wind-down. This is the single most important open question in the file. The twelve-month obligation was retained in the 1 May 2026 policy rather than deleted, which is meaningful - but there is zero execution evidence either way: no claim volumes, no payment data, no complaint record, no regulator collecting it, no litigation generating discovery, and none of the three outlets that covered the closure most closely mentioned buybacks at all. We do not assume bad faith and we do not assume good faith.
- Whether Canada was included in the termination. The closure instrument is a US-scoped policy naming "residents of the United States," Canada runs a separate market with its own Case Credit valuation (CAD 283 against USD 214) and its own income disclosure page, and no Canadian regulator took parallel action on any public record. The strong inference is that Canada was not included - but it is an inference and it is not directly confirmed.
- The fate of US-held foreign downlines after 1 May 2026, and whether US residents could participate in foreign Forever markets at all. The general termination clause forfeits "all downlines, including those in foreign countries," but whether that clause was applied to a market-wide wind-down as opposed to individual or for-cause termination is not established.
- The existence, rate or qualification terms of any distinct "Gem Bonus." No primary Forever Living document retrieved in this research defines one. The gemstone names appear in the rank ladder - Sapphire, Diamond Sapphire, Diamond, Double Diamond, Triple Diamond - and a separate "Gem Bonus" is referenced in some secondary MLM compendia, but we do not assert that it existed in the US plan.
- Exact Case Credit thresholds for Supervisor and Assistant Manager. Assistant Supervisor at 2 CC and Manager at 120 CC (or 150 CC over three to four months) are confirmed from primary policy text; the two intermediate ranks are not, and the commonly circulated 25 CC and 75 CC figures could not be confirmed against a primary document.
- Average actual product spend per US FBO. The $6,672 a year activity figure is an upper bound that assumes no downline or Preferred Customer volume at all; the true average is lower, unknown, and was never disclosed by the company. The customer-versus-participant volume split - the decisive Koscot number - was also never published.
- Whether Forever Living Products or Aloe Vera of America has ever received an FDA warning letter, and whether any US state attorney general has ever taken action. Neither could be located. A 2019 FDA warning letter over aloe labeling that surfaces in searches was addressed to a different, unrelated Texas company and is expressly not attributed here.
- Audited revenue for any year, and the post-2026 US retail channel architecture. All revenue figures are company-stated or trade-press estimated, and the 2021 figures conflict irreconcilably ($4 billion against $2.0 billion) with no audited number to arbitrate. Direct-to-consumer e-commerce is confirmed to continue; whether any first-party marketplace storefront, wholesale distribution or residual referral program exists is not established.
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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Forever Living - frequently asked
QIs Forever Living still operating?
QWhat happened to Forever Living in the US, and did the FTC shut it down?
QDid the FTC find Forever Living was a pyramid scheme?
QHow much did Forever Business Owners actually earn?
QI was an FBO - what happens to my business, my downline and my inventory?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Forever Living’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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