Stuart MacMillan, former president of hair and skincare company Monat, has filed a lawsuit against founders Luis and Rayner Urdaneta. MacMillan alleges the Urdanetas owe him millions in promised profits and has described the company's leadership as a "mafia family and unprincipled syndicate."

MacMillan joined Monat in 2014, following a controversial tenure as interim CEO at TelexFree, a multilevel marketing operation that later unraveled as a Ponzi scheme. He claims he was instrumental in scaling Monat from its inception into a business generating hundreds of millions in annual revenue, serving millions of customers and hundreds of thousands of market partners globally.

Upon joining as president, MacMillan states the Urdaneta brothers committed to a profit-sharing agreement. This deal, he asserts, entitled him to three percent of Monat's profits, payable during his employment and for a specified period afterward. He also held a board seat, which he characterizes as largely ceremonial.

The board's function was minimal. It convened only three times during MacMillan's nine years of directorship. The company failed to hold annual meetings consistently, only doing so when MacMillan insisted. Official minutes were not kept, and a board secretary was absent for six of those nine years. MacMillan also lacked voting authority despite his board position.

Tensions surfaced by 2019. The Urdanetas reportedly threatened MacMillan's termination unless he signed a noncompete and non-solicit agreement. MacMillan's lawsuit contends the founders perceived his strong rapport with employees and independent contractors as a threat. He eventually signed a revised agreement in October 2019, which included the profit-sharing terms alongside the new restrictive covenants. The Urdanetas' own legal counsel drafted this document.

MacMillan resigned in June 2023. The dispute intensified when payments became due in March 2024. The Urdanetas imposed a new stipulation: MacMillan would have no contact with approximately 3,000 Monat employees and contractors. They declared that without this complete severance, they would withhold the post-employment compensation stipulated in the profit-sharing agreement.

MacMillan disputes this demand as baseless, noting the contract makes no mention of prohibiting contact with staff or partners. He argues this condition is a pretext designed to avoid fulfilling their contractual obligations.

The lawsuit centers on whether the Urdanetas breached their agreement with MacMillan and whether they violated fiduciary duties by allegedly failing to prioritize maximizing company profits. MacMillan seeks recovery of the millions he claims are owed to him under the terms of their signed agreement.