Lyoness topic's main category Ponzi scheme
Internet
On the Internet, various websites and blogs from all over the world have focused critical attention on Lyoness, accusing the company of illegal business practices (mainly of running pyramid and Ponzi schemes) and questioning the alleged partnerships between Lyoness and several multinational corporations, as well as the validity and relevance of the certificates granted to the Lyoness shopping community. In April 2013, it was reported that former (Austrian) participants of Lyoness had organised themselves and founded an organisation and website called Plattform Lyoness. Not much later, an international equivalent was established under the name Lyoness Complaint Centre.In the beginning of June 2013, it was reported that Lyoness filed legal complaints against the founders of Plattform Lyoness. The founders were forced to remove legal documents concerning Lyoness from their website. Plattform Lyoness has reported that a preliminary injunction in a subsequent court case forced Plattform Lyoness to change its domain name from www.plattform-lyoness.at to www.lyoness-geschaedigte-plattform.at, as the court found that domain names linking to negative content about Lyoness should carry a distinctive term to indicate that the domain is not hosted by Lyoness itself. Plattform Lyoness solved this by adding the term 'geschaedigte', which is the German word for 'victims'. Lyoness' other demands were not granted by the court.
In August 2015, two former employees were acquitted in Austria on charges of fraud and money laundering.