Le-Vel (Thrive)

TINA.org investigated Le-Vel Brands, LLC, a Texas-based multilevel marketing company, and found that it used unsubstantiated health and disease-treatment claims to market its flagship product line of supplements, shakes, and patches, known collectively as the Thrive experience, as well as unsubstantiated and exaggerated income claims to recruit distributors.

Highlights

Filed complaint with the DSSRC
DSSRC issued report finding the company engaged in deceptive marketing

Timeline

2026

May 7

The DSSRC issues a third case decision finding that Le-Vel continues to use atypical earnings claims to market its business opportunity. According to the DSSRC, the company removed or modified 10 of the 11 identified problematic posts and closed its third investigation without referral to government regulators.

2023

April 13

The FTC sends Le-Vel a Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Substantiation putting the company on formal notice that it is unlawful to, among other things, make claims relating to the health benefits, safety, and effectiveness of products without competent and reliable scientific evidence to support them, and that disease-treatment claims must be substantiated by at least one randomized, controlled, and double-blinded human clinical trial of the product.

2022

January 5

The DSSRC issues a second case decision finding that Le-Vel has continued to use unsubstantiated disease-treatment claims to market its products and atypical earnings claims to market its business opportunity. According to the DSSRC, the company removed several of the posts at issue, prompting the DSSRC to close its second investigation without referral to government regulators.

2021

October 26

The FTC sends Le-Vel a Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities putting the company on formal notice that it is an unfair or deceptive trade practice to misrepresent that profits or earnings are the ordinary, typical or average profits or earnings made by participants, and to fail to disclose conditions affecting income, such as expenses borne by the participants, among other things.

June 30

TINA.org sends a letter, along with a list of more than 660 direct selling companies that includes Le-Vel, to the FTC urging it to implement a penalty offense program targeting the direct selling industry and its market-wide practice of using deceptive earnings representations and false health claims.

TINA.org Letter to FTC

List of Companies

2020

August 31

The DSSRC issues a case decision finding that Le-Vel and its distributors were making inappropriate health and income claims. The decision concludes by stating that “DSSRC will continue to monitor the messages disseminated by the Company’s promoters… and will take prompt and necessary steps… should it identify an ongoing proliferation of unsupported product or income claims…”