Olivia Plath (née Meggs) is sharing new details about how her mother-in-law, Kim Plath, allegedly committed credit card fraud against her husband, Ethan Plath.
During the August 2022 season 4 finale of TLC’s Welcome to Plathville, Olivia, 25, accused Kim, 51, of previously using Ethan’s credit card without his permission. “When Ethan was about 16, 17, his mom signed him up to be on her down line for an MLM she was a part of called Young Living,” Olivia detailed in a lengthy TikTok on Wednesday, September 20. “And at this time in Ethan’s life, he was not allowed on the computer, not allowed to have any passwords, so that sets the tone for this story.”
According to Olivia, Ethan was not allowed to purchase toiletries from a drug store or grocery store but rather received a monthly box of products from the company. A few months into the subscription, Olivia said Kim began making “really large purchases” on Ethan’s account to help herself earn more bonuses. “She made a ‘business arrangement’ with her son that whatever the order was that she placed, she would pay him back half of that,” she explained.
Upon tying the knot with Ethan in 2018, Olivia asked her husband whether he wanted to continue receiving his monthly product boxes, to which he told her no. The couple, however, couldn’t cancel the subscription because Ethan did not know the password to his account.
“I asked him about it and he explained this business deal, to which I said, ‘So you’re paying anywhere from $100 to $300 a month that you’re not being reimbursed for and you’re not keeping the product either? ‘Cause that seems like stealing,’” Olivia said. “And a lightbulb went off for him.”
She proceeded to change the account’s password after getting it from Kim, after which she noticed Kim had redeemed free products Ethan had earned in his account for herself. Olivia went on to claim that Kim and her then-husband, Barry Plath, attempted to “bully” her into sharing the new password, which she refused. (Kim and Barry announced their separation in June 2022.)
As a result, she and Ethan composed an invoice of the money Kim owed for each product and gave her 45 days to pay it. “Instead of paying this invoice for the money she owed her son, they started going around the small town we lived in, telling everyone I was suing them for trying to help their kids out,” Olivia claimed.
With the show in between filming seasons 1 and 2 at the time, Olivia said show executives reached out asking her to be the bigger person. “I was not about to be bullied into that, so I said, ‘Absolutely not,’ stood my ground, and after 44 days of this talk around town — and everyone in the town being privy to the fact that I was ‘suing’ them — Ethan’s parents called him up and said, ‘We’ll pay you but you have to come to our house to get your check,’” she said.
Olivia continued: “And when Ethan showed up, his dad handed the check for the full amount and looked him dead in the eye and said, ‘Have a nice life living in bondage.’”
Four of Ethan’s siblings — Micah, 22, Moriah, 21, Lydia, 19, and Isaac, 17 — previously addressed the credit card fraud scandal in an August 2022 Instagram statement. “What Olivia said about our mom using Ethan’s credit card was not the full story,” the message read. “Mom and Ethan had a business agreement in which Ethan earned a good bit of money. And both parties were aware of any transactions that we made. Our mom should have had the opportunity to defend herself and tell her side of the story.”
Kim, for her part, has not publicly addressed Olivia’s claims.
