Herbalife Payments, Folic Acid Recommendation: Health & Wellness Industry News Roundup

The Federal Trade Commission mails checks, some for more than $9,000, to nearly 350,000 people who lost money as independent distributors for direct seller Herbalife Ltd. six months after the firm agreed in a settlement to pay $200m and to "fundamentally restructure its business." FTC on Jan. 10 said it generally is providing partial refunds to people who ran a Herbalife business in the US between 2009 and 2015 and who paid at least $1,000 to the Los Angeles-based firm "but got little or nothing back from the company." The agency said it used Herbalife’s records to determine who would receive refunds and the amount of each check; most checks are between $100 and $500 and the largest exceed $9,000 in what "represents one of the largest redress distributions the agency has made in any consumer protection action to date."

FTC also announced publication of advice for direct sellers, or multilevel marketers, "Redress checks and compliance checks: Lessons from the FTC’s Herbalife and Vemma cases," which also provides guidance drawn from its recent enforcement against Vemma Nutrition Co.(Also see "Vemma's FTC Settlement Points Out Pyramid Scheme Charge" - HBW Insight, 16 December, 2016.) The agency's settlement with Herbalife came in July