$200 Million Lawsuit Filed in Texas against Amway, Dexter Yager, Don Wilson, and others.

Twenty-nine high-level distributors, at the Emerald and Diamond level in the Amway business, have filed suit against Amway Corporation and members of its founding families and executives, and a number of Amway Motivational Organization leaders. These include Crown Ambassador Dexter Yager, Jodi Victor, Executive Diamonds Don Wilson and Randy and Valorie Haugen, and many others. They are seeking $200 Million in damages, as well as compensation for lost income, damages, costs, and legal fees. According to the court pleadings, "Plaintiffs are the only direct distributors at a high enough level to stand up to Defendants and stop their evil scheme."

The suit brings out several common AMO practices.

1. "Successful" distributors derive the majority of their incomes from the sale of non-Amway motivational materials such as tapes to persons in their downlines and from the money earned through motivational rallies and seminars;
2. The revenue from motivational tape sales and function ticket sales is so enormous that those named in the suit conspired "with one another and others concocted a scheme whereby all direct distributors in the Yager downline, including Plaintiffs, were forced to sell aggressively and literally "push" these tapes on their own downlines and Defendants coerced Plaintiffs through illegal means to require that as many of their downline distributors as possible bought tickets to the various rallies, seminars and functions operated by Defendants;
3. The Plaintiffs admit that the "dream" that is promised to new Amway recruits is, in fact, not attainable by all;
4. Additionally, "This motivational system controlled by Yager and the other Defendants is an illegal pyramid scheme which has cooped and corrupted the very basics of what has been a phenomenally successful Amway sales and marketing plan over the last thirty years";
5. and the practice, which has not been made public prior to this, of "creating" new pin achievements by the transfer of points from upline distributors to downline distributors, regardless of the actual level of achievement of those distributors.