Neora, LLC
The FTC sued this company as an illegal pyramid scheme, took it all the way to a bench trial, and lost on all five counts - a litigated judgment this file has to state plainly, and then grade the compensation plan and pricing hard on their own numbers.
A federal judge ruled for this company on every count after a full bench trial - and its own 2024 disclosure still shows 62.5% of Active Brand Partners earning nothing in cash.
Can you actually make money with Neora?
Yes, with conditions, and this file opens with something almost nothing else here has. The Federal Trade Commission sued this company as an illegal pyramid, took it to a full bench trial with expert testimony on both sides, and lost on all five counts. Judgment was entered for Neora on 28 September 2023 and no appeal was filed. On the trial record the court found roughly 75% to 80% of unit sales went to genuine Preferred Customers. That is adjudicated evidence, tested under cross-examination, not a company press release.
The conditions start with the disclosure, which the company has published for years and which most of this category does not offer at all. The 2024 edition covers 13,589 US Active Brand Partners, a denominator that already excludes everybody who enrolled and lapsed before ever becoming Active, and 62.5% of them earned no cash commission for the year. The average gross is $1,142. There is no median and no percentile ladder, and where two in three earn nothing an average tells a reader very little.
Staying commission-eligible costs money every month: 120 PQV or 80 SSV, roughly $120 to $150 of purchasing. Hold that for a year with no sales and no downline and it is $1,440 to $1,800 out of pocket, sitting inside the zero-cash cohort. The plan also pays real money on downline volume - a Lifestyle Bonus running from $150 a month at the lowest qualifying rank up to $100,000 at the top named rank - so recruitment-linked pay is a current feature of this plan, not only a historical allegation.
Two structural things cut the other way and deserve saying out loud. The 3UR Free mechanic pays a Brand Partner for cultivating three or more genuine Preferred Customers rather than for sponsoring anybody, and a Max Volume Rule caps how much of any single leg counts toward rank, forcing volume out of one stacked chain and into several real ones. The exit terms are decent too: 90% back on unsold resaleable inventory within twelve months, with a 60-day money-back guarantee on the customer side.
third-party MLM-review sites cite a $99–$500 starter-kit range depending on bundle, but Neora’s own site does not state a current 2026 figure; ongoing "Active" status also requires 120 PQV or 80 SSV a month, roughly $120–$150 in monthly purchasing.
- You can put the monthly volume through actual customers rather than through your own cupboard. The gate costs $120 to $150 a month whether or not anything is resold, and a year of it with no sales is $1,440 to $1,800 gone.
- You can defend the price to a customer's face. The flagship night cream works out at roughly $3.83 per millilitre where named drugstore retinoid creams sit between 33 and 85 cents, and anyone you sell to is able to look that up too.
- You read the disclosure as what it is. Sixty-two and a half percent of Active Brand Partners earned nothing in cash in 2024, and the $1,142 average is gross - the kit, the monthly volume, shipping and events are not taken out of it.
- You know the trial finding describes 2023 rather than today. The court's 75% to 80% retail figure was the record as it stood at trial, and nothing published since lets a reader confirm the ratio still holds.
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 - a litigated judgment for the defendant. In FTC v. Neora, LLC, No. 3:20-cv-01979-M (N.D. Tex.), before Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn, the FTC sued Neora as an illegal pyramid scheme, tried the case to a full bench trial with expert testimony on both sides, and lost: judgment was entered for Neora on all five counts on 28 September 2023, ordering that the FTC "take nothing on its claims." The FTC did not file a notice of appeal; its appeal window closed 27 November 2023 and the judgment is final. That is a stronger outcome than a settlement with no admission, stronger than a consent order, and stronger than an inquiry closed with no action - the FTC put its full case on, including live expert testimony, and lost on the merits. It does not mean the compensation plan as it stands in 2026 has been vindicated, and the plan is graded independently below. Separately, and unrelated to the pyramid count, the ingredient-science partners Signum Biosciences, Inc. and Signum Nutralogix were consent-enjoined by the FTC in November 2019 over EHT disease-related marketing claims, with no admission and no monetary penalty - a materially weaker outcome on the stage ladder than Neora’s own trial win, and directed at the science partners rather than at Neora itself.
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
A Texas skincare and wellness company, founded in 2011 as Nerium International, LLC by Jeff Olson, renamed Neora in January 2019, selling premium creams, serums and a coffee-derived nootropic supplement through independent US Brand Partners on a unilevel-style plan with a genuine retail-customer tier called Preferred Customers.
What this company did that almost none of its peers can claim needs to be said plainly and first. In FTC v. Neora, LLC, No. 3:20-cv-01979-M (N.D. Tex.), the Federal Trade Commission sued the company as an illegal pyramid scheme and took it all the way to a bench trial before Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn, with expert testimony on both sides. On 28 September 2023 the court entered judgment for Neora on all five counts, and the FTC did not appeal. A litigated judgment for the defendant is a stronger outcome than a settlement, stronger than a consent order, and much stronger than an inquiry closed with no action - the FTC put its full case on and a court rejected it after weighing the evidence, applying the Koscot/BurnLounge pyramid test and finding that roughly 75–80% of unit sales went to genuine Preferred Customers and around 90% of product was bought for personal consumption. By the time of trial, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2021 AMG Capital decision had already stripped the FTC of any ability to seek monetary relief in this case, so only an injunction restructuring or shutting down the plan remained at stake - and the company defeated even that.
None of that is the same question as whether the opportunity is a good deal in 2026, and the rest of this report grades that question on its own terms. The plan pays retail commission of 5–15% depending on volume, a first-order enrollment bonus of 20% to the direct enroller and 10% to the upline sponsor, and generational overrides across up to eight levels concentrated at a small number of senior ranks; a "3UR Free" mechanic rewards Brand Partners who cultivate real Preferred Customers, and a Max Volume Rule caps how much of any one downline leg counts toward rank.
The company publishes a US income disclosure statement - a real credit - and the 2024 edition covers 13,589 Active Brand Partners: 62.5% earned no cash commission at all, and the average gross cash figure for those who did was $1,142 a year, with no median published. Buyback on unsold inventory is 90% within twelve months, a genuine exit-term credit narrowed by commission clawbacks and shipping costs the Brand Partner pays both ways.
Pricing sits well above mainstream equivalents: the flagship Age IQ Night Cream runs roughly $3.83 per millilitre against drugstore retinoid creams and serums running $0.33–$0.85 per millilitre or gram, and the EHT Brain Formula, built on a Princeton-linked compound the company markets prominently, runs about three times a mainstream coffee-fruit-extract nootropic per capsule - a license for a compound is not an approval or an efficacy finding, and no independent clinical trial specific to the finished formulations could be located.
An illustrative allocation of the ~35% estimated commission pool
Built from the compensation plan’s own published mechanics and a third-party estimate of the payout ratio - not a Neora-disclosed breakdown, and labeled here as an allocation model rather than a company figure.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Age IQ Night Cream The flagship moisturizer, roughly $3.83/mL - no independently verified clinical trial specific to the finished formulation could be located. |
$115 one-time / $98 SmartShop (30 mL) per unit |
5–15% retail tier |
| Age IQ Day Cream About $3.23/mL, several multiples above named drugstore day-cream equivalents. |
$97 one-time / $84 SmartShop (30 mL) per unit |
5–15% retail tier |
| EHT Brain Formula A coffee-derived compound, eicosanoyl-5-hydroxytryptamide, marketed on a Princeton research pedigree - a licensing relationship, not an approval or efficacy finding. The science partner was consent-enjoined by the FTC in 2019 over disease-related claims for this ingredient. |
$78 one-time / $68 SmartShop (30 capsules) per unit |
5–15% retail tier |
| Neo-FILLER Lift + Fill Corrective Elixir Roughly $9.60/mL, the highest per-millilitre figure in the core line. |
$144 one-time / $125 SmartShop (15 mL) per unit |
5–15% retail tier |
| Firm Body Contour Cream About $0.52/mL - still several times a warehouse-club own-brand firming lotion at roughly $0.06/mL. |
$102 one-time / $89 SmartShop (198 mL) per unit |
5–15% retail tier |
| IllumaBoost Vitamin C Serum Against a named drugstore vitamin C serum at roughly $0.67/mL; a dermatologist-dispensed premium serum runs higher still, so Neora is not the top of this category. |
sold mainly in sets, est. $4–5/mL per unit |
5–15% retail tier |
| Starter enrollment The current flat kit price could not be located on Neora’s own site; ongoing Active status requires 120 PQV or 80 SSV a month, roughly $120–$150. |
historically $99–$500; no 2026 figure published one-time |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Has run the same operation continuously since 2011 across two brand names - Nerium International, then Neora - with no insolvency and no regulatory finding or criminal proceeding against him individually. Earlier in his career he was affiliated with an electronics-products MLM and is reported to have reached top-distributor status in a legacy 1980s venture; that specific attribution rests on a single AI-assisted wiki-style source and is unverified. In the mid-1990s he co-founded a personal-development training company; that venture later merged into a prepaid legal-services company. He was named individually as a co-defendant throughout the 2019–2023 FTC litigation and personally in the Nerium Skincare litigation described below.
Has held the senior marketing role since the company’s founding and was the public face of the January 2019 rebrand from Nerium to Neora. No independent regulatory or litigation history specific to her could be located.
Nerium Skincare, Inc. - a 30% equity owner of Nerium International and a subsidiary of the publicly traded Nerium Biotechnology, Inc. - sued Nerium International in Texas state court in August 2015, alleging breach of contract and unfair profit allocation over a competing product line launched without the licensed ingredient; Nerium International counterclaimed alleging overcharging and unpaid audit obligations. The dispute settled on 26 July 2018: Nerium International paid $10,000,000 total, Nerium Skincare sold out its entire equity stake, and Nerium International kept the disputed trademarks. Nerium Biotechnology and Nerium Skincare sued again in July 2019, alleging the just-renamed Neora reused old pre-split customer testimonials to market reformulated products; that suit was dismissed in September 2019 after Neora removed the disputed materials. The rebrand itself, completed in January 2019 after the buyout closed and roughly ten months before the FTC’s pyramid suit, was read by independent trade press at the time as an attempt to distance the company from its controversial past rather than a substantive business change - image management, in part, is a fair description of the sequence.
A further arbitration between Neora (as successor to Nerium International) and Nerium Biotechnology/Nerium Skincare produced a Final Award on 7 June 2021, confirmed by the Texas state court in November 2021 and again by final judgment in February 2022, with an unsuccessful motion to vacate. The underlying documents sit behind a paywall that returned an access error on every attempt, so neither the dollar amount nor the prevailing party could be retrieved. That is a retrieval failure, not a confirmed non-event, and it is recorded here as an open question rather than a settled fact in either direction.
Registered address
Farmers Branch / Addison, Texas, USA
Privately held throughout; no institutional private-equity or public-market ownership could be located, and no audited financial statements are public. A trade-press estimate - unaudited, third-party, not company-disclosed - puts revenue at roughly $300 million a year for 2022–2025, down from an estimated $395 million in 2021; the company’s own January 2026 release claims 47% year-over-year sales growth in 2025 without giving an absolute figure, so that trend cannot be independently reconciled against the estimate. Nothing about the company’s finances is auditable by a reader.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
WATCH
Neora, LLC (f/k/a Nerium International, LLC), privately held, founded and still run by Jeff Olson from Farmers Branch/Addison, Texas. No audited public financials; the ~$300 million revenue figure is a third-party trade-press estimate.
|
| Did the FTC find this company operates an illegal pyramid scheme? |
OK
No - the opposite. In FTC v. Neora, N.D. Tex., the court entered judgment for Neora on all five counts after a full bench trial, 28 September 2023, and the FTC did not appeal. The judgment is final.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes. The 2024 statement covers 13,589 Active US Brand Partners: 62.5% earned $0 in cash, and the average for the rest was $1,142 gross, with no median or percentile ladder published.
|
| What does it really cost? |
WATCH
A historical $99–$500 starter-kit range with no current 2026 figure published, plus 120 PQV or 80 SSV a month (roughly $120–$150) to remain commission-eligible.
|
| Is the flagship supplement’s science established? |
CONCERN
EHT is built on a compound with a Princeton research pedigree - a licensing arrangement, not an approval or efficacy finding. The underlying science partner was consent-enjoined by the FTC in 2019 over disease-related claims, with no admission and no money paid.
|
| How does the pricing compare to mainstream alternatives? |
WATCH
Roughly three to seven times named drugstore and pharmacy equivalents per millilitre for comparable claims, though not the very top of the category - some dermatologist-dispensed lines run higher still.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
OK
90% of net cost on unsold, resaleable inventory returned within 12 months - a genuine exit term, narrowed by commission clawbacks and two-way shipping paid by the Brand Partner.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
WATCH
Structurally closer to merchant than the sector norm - the trial record found roughly 75–80% of unit sales went to genuine retail customers - but the Lifestyle Bonus still concentrates large payouts at a small number of top ranks via downline volume.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Stay "Active" all year, no sales, no downline | $120–$150/month in personal purchases meets the 120 PQV / 80 SSV gate; annual cost of roughly $1,440–$1,800 with no commission earned - this Brand Partner sits inside the 62.5% zero-cash cohort |
| Clear the 15% commission tier through genuine retail | $3,000/month in real retail sales 15% = $450/month = $5,400/year commission, but only if the $2,990 in monthly retail revenue is actually collected from paying customers rather than self-purchased |
| Break even purely on one enrollment a month | 12 new sign-ups a year at a ~$150 order 20% first-order bonus = $30/enrollment = $360/year, against the enroller’s own $1,440–$1,800 stay-active cost - recruiting alone does not clear it |
| Run a small team of 5 minimum-volume Brand Partners plus $1,500/month own retail | roughly $18,000/year in real, collected retail revenue own commission plus a ~3% override on five legs totals about $2,034/year - the outcome swings from roughly -$9,700 to +$6,300 depending entirely on whether that volume is real customer revenue or self-purchased inventory |
Read this twice
This arithmetic is built from Neora’s own published compensation-plan mechanics and its own 2024 income disclosure, not from an outside estimate. The disclosure states that 62.5% of the 13,589 Active US Brand Partners earned no cash commission at all in 2024, and the plan requires 120 PQV or 80 SSV a month just to remain commission-eligible - a recurring cost before a single sale is made. The scenario that clears real profit, a Brand Partner selling $3,000 a month of genuine retail volume at the top 15% tier, is exactly the fact pattern the trial court found evidence for at roughly 75–80% of unit sales - but it depends entirely on the customer being real, and the plan does not by itself tell a Brand Partner which side of that line their own downline sits on. The small-team scenario makes the swing explicit: the same set of numbers produces a loss of nearly $10,000 or a profit of over $6,000 depending on whether the volume underneath it is real retail revenue or self-consumed, stocked inventory, and nothing in the file resolves that question for an individual participant in advance.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
The unit here is a Preferred Customer, and that is deliberate, because the retail share of this business is the one thing about it that a federal court has actually examined and found in its favor. The $4.90 is the entry personal-sale commission rate of 5% applied to a monthly Preferred Customer order of about $98 - the subscription price of the flagship night cream from the company’s own shop. The rate is banded rather than flat: 5% on $300 to $1,499 of personal retail volume a month, 10% from $1,500, and 15% only above $3,000, so a consultant with four customers is firmly in the bottom band and the slider reflects that. The first-order bonus of 20% on a new Preferred Customer’s opening order is excluded because it is paid once and would flatter a recurring model; the matching 20% and 10% bonuses on a new Brand Partner’s first order are excluded for a stronger reason, because they are paid for an enrollment rather than for anything sold. The one to eight generational commissions at roughly 2% to 5% each are excluded on the same principle. The cost line is the monthly 120 personal qualifying volume gate that keeps a Brand Partner active, modeled at approximately one dollar a point; the current starter-kit price could not be located on the company’s own site and is therefore not included, which understates the first-year cost. For calibration, the company’s own 2024 disclosure reports 13,589 active United States Brand Partners, of whom 62.5% earned no cash commission at all, and an average gross of $1,142 a year with no median published. Your own subscription cost of $120/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
Neora’s own published one-time retail prices against named open-market equivalents at real 2026 street pricing. Comparators are drugstore, warehouse-club and dermatologist-dispensed brands, chosen to represent the category rather than to flatter the arithmetic - the FDA-cleared standard retinoid is included, and so is a premium dermatologist-dispensed serum that costs more than Neora’s.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Age IQ Night Cream - $115 (30 mL) | RoC Retinol Correxion Deep Wrinkle Night Cream, 48 g | ~$24.99 |
| Age IQ Night Cream - $115 (30 mL) | Differin Gel 0.1% adapalene, FDA-cleared OTC retinoid, 45 g | ~$14.99 |
| Age IQ Day Cream - $97 (30 mL) | Olay Regenerist Micro-Sculpting Cream, 48 g | ~$28.99 |
| IllumaBoost Vitamin C Serum - est. $4–5/mL | CeraVe Vitamin C Serum, 30 mL | ~$19.99 |
| IllumaBoost Vitamin C Serum - est. $4–5/mL | SkinCeuticals C E Ferulic, dermatologist-dispensed, 30 mL | ~$182 |
| Firm Body Contour Cream - $102 (198 mL) | Warehouse-club own-brand firming lotion, ~470 mL combined | ~$30 |
| EHT Brain Formula - $78 (30 capsules) | Mainstream coffee-fruit-extract nootropic, 30 ct | ~$24.99 |
| ProLuxe Hair Care set - $70–$500 bundle | Drugstore or prestige-drugstore shampoo and conditioner pair | ~$20–$56 |
| Total as sold ~$627 for one of each item above at Neora’s one-time retail price |
Total, built yourself ~$135–$175 for the same functional categories at named open-market prices (excluding the premium dermatologist-dispensed comparator) |
Price-to-value
The open-market stack lands at roughly a fifth to a quarter of Neora’s basket price across these categories. That is not a store-brand comparison chosen to flatter the arithmetic: Differin is the FDA-cleared, dermatologist-recommended retinoid standard, and a dermatologist-dispensed premium vitamin C serum in the same category runs higher per millilitre than Neora’s - so Neora sits as a real multiple above the mass market, without sitting at the very top of its own category.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Discount-driven Brand Partner
joined mainly for the discount, buys the monthly minimum, few or no customers - the majority profile consistent with the 62.5% zero-cash cohort
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −$390 |
| 6 mo | 4% | −$780 |
| 1 yr | 5% | −$1,560 |
| 3 yr | 6% | −$4,680 |
| 5 yr | 6% | −$7,800 |
Genuine retail-focused seller
$3,000/month in real collected retail sales at the 15% tier - the fact pattern the trial court’s evidence emphasized
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 58% | +$4,470 |
| 6 mo | 62% | +$8,940 |
| 1 yr | 65% | +$17,880 |
| 3 yr | 68% | +$53,600 |
| 5 yr | 70% | +$89,400 |
Small-team builder
5 personally-enrolled Brand Partners at minimum volume plus $1,500/month own retail - outcome hinges on whether that volume is real or self-purchased
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 22% | −$2,400 |
| 6 mo | 24% | −$4,900 |
| 1 yr | 26% | −$9,700 |
| 3 yr | 28% | −$26,000 |
| 5 yr | 29% | −$42,000 |
Methodology note. ANCHORED to Neora’s own 2024 US income disclosure - that 62.5% of the 13,589 Active Brand Partners earned $0 in cash and the average gross for the rest was $1,142 - and to the published plan mechanics: the 120 PQV/80 SSV monthly volume gate, the 5–15% retail tiers, the 20%/10% first-order enrollment split, the 90%/12-month buyback, and the "3UR Free" and Max Volume Rule features described in the compensation-plan document. MODELED by us: the horizon-by-horizon dollar paths, the percentage of each cohort in cumulative profit at each horizon, and the cohort definitions themselves, none of which Neora publishes or segments. One calibration note that cuts in the company’s favor: the trial record found roughly 75–80% of unit sales went to genuine Preferred Customers and about 90% of product to personal consumption, which is why the "genuine retail-focused seller" profile is modeled as broadly profitable rather than uniformly loss-making - a Brand Partner with a real customer base sits in a materially different position from the discount-driven majority. The medians describe modeled outcomes, not claims, and are not a promise of what any individual will earn.
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
14162.5% of Active Brand Partners earned $0 in cash in 2024
2No median or percentile earnings ladder is published
3The average figure is gross, not net of costs
4The founder’s predecessor era included a multi-year fight with his own equity partner
5A second 2019 suit alleged reused marketing materials
6The January 2019 rebrand followed the buyout and preceded the FTC suit by ten months
7The FTC’s original complaint alleged health claims aimed at parents and coaches of young athletes
8The EHT science partner was consent-enjoined by the FTC in 2019
9No independent clinical trial for the finished flagship formulations could be located
10Pricing runs three to seven times named drugstore equivalents per millilitre
11The Lifestyle Bonus is extremely top-heavy
12A 2021 arbitration’s outcome could not be retrieved
13No current starter-kit price is published
14The monthly volume gate is a recurring cost of participation
Green flags
81A litigated federal-court trial victory against the FTC’s pyramid theory, final and unappealed
2The court found real retail demand, not just a recruitment vehicle
3Publishes a genuine income disclosure statement
4A real, verifiable buyback: 90% within 12 months
5A compensation mechanic that pays for real customers, not just recruits
6Documented compliance infrastructure the trial court praised
7Fourteen years of continuous operation under one identifiable founder
8An active, apparently good-standing Direct Selling Association member
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Publication of a median and a percentile earnings ladder alongside the existing average in the income disclosure.
- Independent, peer-reviewed clinical substantiation specific to the finished Age IQ Night Cream and EHT Brain Formula formulations, rather than underlying-ingredient or company-sponsored research.
- Disclosure of the 2021 arbitration’s outcome and a currently published, transparent starter-kit price.
Downward
- Any new FTC or state attorney-general action - the 2023 win is specific to this pyramid theory and this evidentiary record, not blanket protection going forward.
- A certified consumer class action, or a documented self-regulatory referral to the FTC.
- Evidence that the 62.5% zero-cash-commission share is rising, or that Lifestyle Bonus payouts are growing relative to Preferred-Customer-driven commissions.
Grade is C-. A federal court tried the FTC’s pyramid-scheme case against this company to a full verdict and ruled for the defendant on every count - and the company’s own 2024 disclosure still shows most of its field earning nothing.
Start with what actually happened in court, because it is rare and it is real. In FTC v. Neora, LLC, No. 3:20-cv-01979-M (N.D. Tex.), the FTC sued this company as an illegal pyramid scheme and took it all the way to a bench trial before Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn, with expert witnesses on both sides. On 28 September 2023 the court entered judgment for Neora on all five counts, applying the Koscot/BurnLounge test and finding that roughly 75–80% of unit sales went to genuine Preferred Customers and about 90% of product was bought for personal consumption - rejecting the FTC’s theory that Brand Partner purchases could never count as real retail demand. The FTC did not appeal; the judgment is final. That is a stronger outcome than a settlement, a consent order, or a case quietly closed with no action, and by the time of trial the 2021 AMG Capital ruling had already taken monetary relief off the table, so the fight was purely about whether an injunction would restructure or shut down the plan - and the company won that fight outright.
None of that answers whether joining is a good use of money, and the company’s own numbers answer that question less kindly. The 2024 income disclosure covers 13,589 Active US Brand Partners; 62.5% of them earned no cash commission at all, and the average for those who did earn something was $1,142 a year, gross, with no median and no percentile ladder published. Retail pricing runs three to seven times named drugstore equivalents per millilitre for comparable claims, and the flagship EHT supplement leans on a Princeton research pedigree that is a licensing arrangement, not an approval or an efficacy finding - its underlying science partner was separately consent-enjoined by the FTC in 2019 over disease-related claims, with no admission and no money paid.
The founder’s own history sits between these two stories. Jeff Olson has run the business continuously since 2011 with no insolvency and no regulatory finding against him personally, and chose to fight the FTC’s case to judgment rather than settle it - a real credit. But the predecessor era also included a multi-year, multi-million-dollar fight with his own 30%-owner ingredient supplier that took a $10,000,000 cash buyout to end, a rebrand that followed the buyout and preceded the FTC suit by ten months and that independent press read as image management, and a 2021 arbitration whose outcome this report could not retrieve. A litigated win on one legal theory does not erase that pattern, and the compensation numbers underneath it do not improve simply because the pyramid claim failed.
Separate the verdict from the pitch
A recruiter is entitled to say the company beat the FTC at trial - that is true and it is unusual. It is not entitled to say that means the typical Brand Partner makes money; the company’s own disclosure says the opposite for 62.5% of its Active field.
Price-check the flagship line before buying
The Age IQ Night Cream runs about $3.83/mL against named drugstore retinoid creams at $0.33–$0.85/mL or gram, and Differin - the FDA-cleared over-the-counter retinoid - is the cheapest, most-studied option in the comparison, not a store-brand also-ran.
Ask what "3UR Free" actually pays before counting on it
The mechanic that pays for real Preferred Customers is real, but it caps at a modest monthly credit and requires three or more customers meeting a volume threshold - model your own numbers against the disclosure’s $1,142 average, not against the top-rank Lifestyle Bonus figures used in recruiting materials.
Get the 2021 arbitration and the current starter-kit price in writing
Both are open gaps in the public record. A sponsor who cannot produce the arbitration outcome or a current kit price in writing is asking you to commit money on facts that could not be independently confirmed 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. Neora, LLC - Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, No. 3:20-cv-01979-M (N.D. Tex. 28 Sept. 2023) (Lynn, J.) (PDF)
FTC v. Neora, LLC opinion, U.S. District Court, N.D. Tex., No. 3:20-cv-01979-M - Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn, judgment for defendant on all five counts, 28 September 2023
- FTC v. Neora LLC - Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, ECF No. 347 (RECAP docket copy)
- FTC case page - Nerium International, LLC (Matter/File No. 162 3099; Civil Action No. 3:20-cv-01979-M), case status Closed
- Opinion and Order Denying Fees and Expenses under the Equal Access to Justice Act, FTC v. Neora (N.D. Tex. 29 May 2024) - FTC's position "substantially justified" (PDF)
- Final Judgment, FTC v. Neora LLC, No. 3:20-cv-01979-M, ECF No. 348 (N.D. Tex. 28 Sept. 2023) - "Plaintiff Federal Trade Commission take nothing on its claims" (PDF)
Final judgment, FTC v. Neora, N.D. Tex. - "the Federal Trade Commission take nothing on its claims"
- Federal Trade Commission v. Neora LLC, No. 3:20-cv-01979 (N.D. Tex.) - CourtListener docket 17390955 (filed 27 July 2020, terminated 28 Sept. 2023)
CourtListener docket 17390955, Federal Trade Commission v. Neora, LLC
- Federal Trade Commission v. Neora LLC et al, 3:2020cv01979 - docket summary (Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn; amicus curiae Direct Selling Association)
- Order on Defendants' Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings, FTC v. Neora LLC, ECF No. 82 (N.D. Tex. 2 Aug. 2021) - reported at 552 F. Supp. 3d 628; applies AMG Capital Management v. FTC to bar monetary relief while leaving injunctive relief available (PDF)
FTC v. Neora, LLC, 552 F. Supp. 3d 628 (N.D. Tex. 2021) - applying AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC to bar monetary relief, confirming injunctive relief remained available
- FTC press release, "FTC Sues Multi-Level Marketer Neora, formerly known as Nerium, Alleging it Operates as an Illegal Pyramid Scheme" (1 November 2019)
FTC press release, 1 November 2019, announcing the pyramid-scheme complaint against Neora
- Complaint for Permanent Injunction and Other Equitable Relief, FTC v. Neora, LLC f/k/a Nerium International, LLC, Signum Biosciences, Signum Nutralogix and Jeffrey Olson (D.N.J., filed 1 November 2019) (PDF)
- Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction as to Defendants Signum Biosciences, Inc. and Signum Nutralogix, as entered 19 November 2019 (PDF)
FTC stipulated order against Signum Biosciences, Inc. and Signum Nutralogix, filed 1 November 2019 - permanent injunction on EHT disease-related claims, no admission, no monetary penalty
- [Proposed] Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction as to Defendants Signum Biosciences, Inc. and Signum Nutralogix, filed 1 November 2019 (PDF)
- Neora Earnings Information / Income Disclosure Statement, calendar year 2024 - 13,589 Active US Brand Partners, 37.5% earned cash commissions, average annual gross cash earnings $1,142
Neora official US Earnings/Income Disclosure Statement, calendar year 2024
- Neora "Income and Product Disclosures 2024" support article - abbreviated and full general income disclosure statements for calendar year 2023 (comparative)
- Neora Returns & Cancellation Policy (US) - 60-day money-back guarantee; Brand Partner buyback at not less than 90% of original net cost within 12 months; 70% Rule exclusion
Neora official Returns and Cancellations policy page
- 2024 Neora Compensation Plan - United States (©2024 Neora, LLC, revision R0824) - full plan document, third-party hosted flipbook copy
Neora Compensation Plan - USA, official plan document
Not established by this document: No compensation-plan PDF served from neora.com itself was located; the plan document cited is the company's own 2024 United States Compensation Plan (R0824) as reproduced on a third-party flipbook host. The court's Findings of Fact (index 0) independently describe the plan's operative terms and are the tier-1 fallback.
- Neora United States Policies and Procedures Manual (PDF) - §3.01 sponsoring, §3.04 income claims, §8.01–8.06 payment of commissions, §10.06 termination returns
- Neora Policies & Procedures landing page (US)
- Neora, LLC f/k/a Nerium International, LLC v. Nerium Biotechnology, Inc. and Nerium Skincare, Inc., ICDR Case No. 01-19-0001-3561 - Final Award, 7 June 2021 (arbitrator Larry D. Carlson)
Nerium Biotechnology/Nerium Skincare litigation and settlement record, 2015–2022, including the 26 July 2018 settlement release and the confirmed 2021 arbitration Final Award
- Order Denying Motion to Vacate and Granting Motion to Confirm Arbitration Awards, 101st Judicial District Court, Dallas County, Texas, 3 November 2021 - $10,458,802.61 plus $161,684.88 to Neora as prevailing party
- Nerium Biotechnology, Inc. and Nerium Skincare, Inc. v. Neora, LLC f/k/a Nerium International, LLC, Jeff Olson and JO Products, LLC, No. 05-22-00234-CV - Memorandum Opinion affirming confirmation of the arbitration award (Tex. App. - Dallas, 7 February 2023) (PDF)
- Nerium SkinCare Inc v. Nerium International LLC, No. 3:16-cv-01217 (N.D. Tex.) - underlying 2016–2018 litigation docket, terminated 1 August 2018
- Nerium Biotechnology, Inc. press release, "Nerium Biotechnology Settles All Disputes with Nerium International and Other Parties" (27 July 2018) - US$10,000,000 settlement effective 26 July 2018
- Nerium Biotechnology, Inc. press release, "Nerium Biotechnology Arbitral Award and Change in Directorships" (6 August 2021) - total awards against the company of US$10,620,487.50
What we could not get
- The ranking’s working premise was that Neora won its FTC case in 2024; research confirms the win but corrects the date to 28 September 2023, with the appeal window closing 27 November 2023 - both figures published here side by side.
- The exact dollar amount and prevailing party in the June 2021 arbitration Final Award between Neora and its former ingredient supplier’s parent - the underlying documents sit behind a paywall that returned an access error on every attempt; this is a retrieval failure, not a confirmed non-event.
- The current, 2026 flat starter-kit enrollment price - not stated on Neora’s own site as retrieved; third-party sites cite a historical $99–$500 range.
- A full self-regulatory (DSSRC) case-decision database search for any Neora or Nerium International matter - site navigation limits prevented a complete query, so absence in the pages reached is not proof of absence in the full database.
- The Trustpilot rating and review count for neora.com - direct page access returned an error; a search-engine snippet suggests a rating in the "Bad" to "Poor" range, materially worse than the BBB’s A+ letter grade, but the primary figure could not be independently confirmed.
- Independent, peer-reviewed clinical substantiation specific to the finished Age IQ Night Cream and EHT Brain Formula products, as distinct from underlying-ingredient or company-sponsored research - not located.
- Jeff Olson’s exact personal equity or ownership percentage in Neora, LLC - not publicly disclosed anywhere located.
- The substantive resolution of a related ancillary federal case, Nerium International/Olson v. FTC (N.D. Ill.) - only a single procedural filing could be retrieved.
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
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Neora - frequently asked
QDid Neora actually beat the FTC, or did the case just get dropped?
QDoes winning the FTC case mean Neora is a good way to make money?
QWhat is EHT, and does the Princeton connection mean it is medically proven?
QIs Neora’s pricing reasonable compared to drugstore alternatives?
QWhat happened to Nerium, the brand Neora used to be?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Neora’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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