Kevin Trudeau Back in Hot Water
September 14th, 2009
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You may remember that we’ve been over Kevin Trudeau here a few times. He’s the convicted felon (paroled several years ago) who pushes his books on late night infomercials, claiming that they contain seceret cures for cancer, ways of eliminating debt, getting free money and any other scam you can think of. Kevin Trudeau has made some pretty outlandish claims in the past, including that you can eat anything you want and stay thin, as long as it doesn’t have those nasty “chemical additives,” or that you can avoid ever getting sick or needing pharmaceuticals if you use the magic potions he gives out in his books (you have to buy them to find out.)
Trudeau has managed to keep up his fraudulent enterprise by sticking to book sales. In the past he’s sold various quack products and elixirs, but the Federal Trade Commission managed to stop that and get an injunction to prevent Trudeau from pushing his snake-oil any further. However, in the US, a long tradition of freedom of speech means that getting someone to stop distributing information or literature is damn near impossible. Still, Trudeau does have some exposure based on the fact that he is selling something, book or otherwise, which does not contain the information or do the things he said it does. Simply put, his books don’t have a single cure in them – only a combination of obvious good advice (like recommending people exercise) and complete nonsense.
Sadly, the American people have been gullible enough to elevate this liar onto the best seller list on several occasions.
However, the FTC is once again taking Trudeau to court over his activities.
Ex-felon-turned-author Kevin Trudeau has fine-tuned the infomercial sales pitch into a big-time moneymaker. But now he says he’s not making any money.
The Federal Trade Commission has branded him a dangerous huckster, and it obtained a court order that drastically restricts his business activities. Trudeau calls himself a consumer advocate and whistle-blower whom corrupt bureaucrats are determined to silence.
All sides agree on this: Trudeau sells books — millions of books for millions of dollars.
In fact, just one of his books brought in more than $46 million in revenue, according to FTC estimates. And that’s the starting point for a looming showdown in federal court in Chicago over just how much Trudeau has made and whether he should pay a $37.6 million penalty after a judge found that he misled would-be dieters in an infomercial.
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U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman didn’t think so. By repeatedly touting the diet as “easy,” Trudeau violated the consent decree, the judge ruled. Then the case took an unusual turn.
At first, Gettleman imposed a $5.2 million fine. The FTC petitioned for a modest increase, and without a detailed explanation the judge jacked it up to $37.6 million, the regulator’s estimate of how much the book took in through infomercials.
Although the court record is massive, it establishes very little about Trudeau’s finances or the book’s performance, and the author is pleading poverty.
“I’ve been pretty much wiped out,” he said in an interview last week. “Their intent is to bury me.”
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The FTC calculated revenue from the diet book at $46 million, which includes infomercial sales, plus another $9 million through bookstores, mass merchants and Web sites. Profits were $12 million, the agency said.Trudeau’s lawyer, Kimball Anderson at Chicago’s Winston & Strawn, said he doesn’t buy those numbers. “Guesstimates,” he calls them.
The author, meanwhile, said the book generated a much smaller profit margin than the FTC assumes. And besides, he received no money from it at all, he said.
Trudeau sold his interest in the infomercials to a Massachusetts company that never paid him, he said, and all proceeds from non-infomercial sales went to a Chicago-area publisher. Though the court record states that he received royalties, Trudeau said that’s not the case.
So he got no money?
“No,” he insisted.
Then why write the book and appear in the infomercials?
Altruism, Trudeau replied. “I just did it as a service to the public.”
This has been one of Trudeau’s claims all along. It never ceases to amaze me how these people can tell such ridiculous and transparent lies without even flinching. Trudeau has managed to get enough followers to keep the cash flowing. Some actually buy into this crap and believe his repeated prosecutions are simply more evidence that the big conspiracies are afraid of this little guy with the information that would ruin them. (I also have a feeling he got that money.)
The problem isn’t getting Trudeau to pay for his lies. His bank account has been wiped out on a few occasions by various judgments. The issue is that every time they manage to slap him with fines he manages to bounce back and come up with a new scheme to replenish his bank account and get back on easy street. The nature of the offenses is generally civil and thus assures that Trudeau will not serve any hard time. The relentlessness of this scam artist seems to be unshaped by any number of losses in the legal system.
In the end, there’s really no way to shut someone like this up, nor do I think that could ever really be an effective answer. Trudeau is the kind of criminal who will defraud the public as long as he is free. Even if he were locked up for life, which is very unlikely, he’d continue to do so from behind bars. If there was a legal way to ban him from authoring more books, he would do so through a proxy or someone else would take on this scheme.
In the end the problem is that there is a market for this garbage and there are people who are desperate or gullible enough to buy into his lies. The only way to stop people like Trudeau is to dry up that market, or to at least reduce it by a large enough factor that the marketing campaigns no longer can generate a significant profit.
This is, of course, a very difficult thing to do, but it is up to those of us who know better to make sure that the truth about Trudeau is made as widely known as possible and this his message is neutralized by the real facts. Getting a society to reject the lies of a successful con-artist like Trudeau may seem like an impossibly lofty goal, but each individual who does not buy into his lies and purchase one of his books because the message reached them is a victory.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Misc, Obfuscation, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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September 14th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
I both agree and disagree. I think it is important that he be punished severely, with enough of a sting to make it not with his while to scam people, because that is the just thing to do. If someone kills somebody then they need to be punished and held accountable, even if they would never kill another person. That does not matter, safety of society is only one reason for locking these people up. The other is that we can’t condone anyone prospering from doing wrong.
I don’t see the free speech argument here. I generally support freedom of speech and expression of your views, but this seems to go beyond that. Freedom of speech is not freedom to lie and make money off of it. He says he will sell you a book which will cure disease. You pay the money, you don’t get a book that has cures for disease. You get a pile of bull****. Someone said it, I think maybe here. Lying about a product is not speech. It is theft. It is theft by deception, but it is theft none the less.
What I do agree with is that locking him up or even banning his books won’t stop the problem. Even if you get rid of him, it doesn’t matter. There’s a market. There is money to be made. People will buy it. Any time there is a market someone will sell to it. Take this guy out of the equation and someone else or multiple others will fill it. He is not the only one who pulls this either. he may be the biggest, but if he’s gone the rest will fill the gap.
I am not optimistic that we will be able to completely destroy this market by simply informing people of the facts. You are right though that every time someone is reached that’s a victory. We should not forget that.
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September 14th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Gordon said:
I tend to agree that a line is crossed when one makes money from what you are telling the public. If someone feels they want to say or print this sort of tripe and give it away – hands off – the instant they are selling it the give up their right to free speech, because it’s not free any more, they’re charging for it. (I know that’s sophistry, I just couldn’t help it)
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September 14th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Oh I believe he should be punished. Courts have repeatedly ruled that freedom of speech does not extend to protect descriptive advertisements or product sales, let alone outright lies.
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September 14th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Tammy Faye Mesner (sp?) was one of the big spokespersons of Trudeau, or at least she was on his infomercials. She is that southern preacher’s wife with the extreme amounts of mascara that run down her face when she cries, which seemed to be often.
She died of cancer. Amazing, when you consider the “cures” he was hocking were supposed to make you live just about forever. When she actually did get cancer, she used radiation and chemo which managed to buy her quite a bit of time (I think she actually was in remission for a couple of years).
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September 15th, 2009 at 3:47 am
Another nonsense attack on a man who gets nothing but trouble for trying to get out the truth. He won’t stop no matter how much the government and big pharma try to stop him. It is common sense that all the chemicals that they put in our food and water are bad for us and he is trying to get it out so that we can live clean and better and government paid sites like this one will just try to do all they can to stop him. He does not care what you do to him because he is doing this for God and goodness. I am sure my comment will be deleted but maybe someone will see it first. This site is very clearly a sham and bought and paid with money from big corporations and government. Look at all the other pages it has and they are all against natural and healthy living.
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September 15th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Looks like we’ve got a life one. Either we’ve got real true wacko or this is a joke or sock puppet. It is so damn hard to tell with a subject like this. You know, as crazy as MaryJane1 sounds, there are real people out there who believe even crazier things.
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September 15th, 2009 at 4:51 am
MaryJane1 said:
Yep, science and logic, those damn shams they tried to get into your head while you were still at school, thems sneaky devils!
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September 15th, 2009 at 10:08 am
MaryJane1 said:
Dear MaryJane1, since it is very obvious you are Trudeau in disguise… go put a sock in it.
/Michael
P.S: the post above may contain traces of sarcasm/irony.
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September 15th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
MaryJane1 said:
Water is a chemical. I suggest you stop drinking it. After all, chemicals are bad for you, right? Like citric acid (an acid! and a horrible chemical) or tocopherol!
Chemicals are bad, it’s just common sense!
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September 16th, 2009 at 1:17 am
After reading your post about how great the Shah and the Gulf War were, it’s rich to read you complain about profiteering scams that aren’t even (directly) lethal. You want to end the market for irrationality? Stop participating in one of its biggest pedagogical forms: rah-rah jingoism. On the other hand, if it’s OK to blow off steam by saying that the killing of foreign babies with firebombs is great, and that people who don’t like you should be vaporized rather than talked to, then do be quiet when other people want to blow off steam by fantasizing about miracle cures. You’re all speaking the same language.
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September 16th, 2009 at 8:59 am
I didn’t say that the Shah was great or that I like the idea of killing babies, ever. I do not apologize for actions within the greater context of the difficult tasks of having to contain the power of the Soviet Union and attempt to act in ones best interests. I do not have a problem with vaporizing militant islamists or Al Queda members. You can “talk to” Bin Lanin all you want. It will do nothing.
I’m not about to take an attack like 9/11 lying down and then turn around and say how sorry I am for everything in the past 100 years that the US has done, independent of the historical context and that we need to “talk to” the people who believe that flying an aircraft into an office building is an acceptable way of making a political statement.
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September 16th, 2009 at 11:13 am
I suggest that everyone ignore JK’s comment and continue the discussion as if it is not there. This is a clear attempt to hijack this and move the subject to a political subject that Buzz0 closed the discussion on because he didn’t want to turn things into a politics argument. DOn’t fee the troll.
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September 16th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Biff Henderson said:
Agreed
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September 16th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
By any chance are you going to get to Gary Null any time soon? I have a friend that thinks Null and Trudeau are great. It is very tiresome to listen to her going on about such obvious charlatans.
H.L. Mencken had some things to say about such people. He said that some people actually prefer nonsense to sense and it is hardly worthwhile to disabuse such people of their notions, since they will be drinking a different and possibly more toxic brand of snake oil within a matter of days.
While it is unfortunate that such people are allowed to vote, they do have their uses. On any ballot item where you are in doubt, you can always ask them who they are going to vote for and then cast your ballot for the opponent in confidence that you have selected the lesser of two evils.
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September 17th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Joel Upchurch said:
I didn’t reconize the name but a quick Google search found his site and I do think I may have seen this guy before, now that my memory is jarred. Boy, he’s got everything, doesn’t he? AIDS conspiracy, vaccines, Gulf War Syndrom and Depleted Uranium, Autism and chemicals etc etc.
Joel Upchurch said:
I’m not so sure about that. For one thing, the people reached by this can be reached and made to see the light. There are people who bought his book and gave it horrible reviews for being full of crap. There are people who have come around. I don’t know how large a proportion will, but at least some.
Also, I’m not so sure that a more toxic brand would come in. The thing about most alternative medicine is that it is harmless in and of itself. It’s harmful in that it displaces real medicine, gets people thinking entirely wrong about how to take care of themselves and also scams their money, but nearly all of it is not directly harmful. If a product actually kills people or causes severe harm, that is about the only thing that will get authorities to step in and pull it. Also, it gets noticed and gets a lot of negative attention.
These snakeoil salesmen know how far to push things. Killing your clientele is not a good buisiness model, and murder is a lot easier to prosecute than deceptive advertising.
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September 18th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I would have thought that you had heard of Gary Null before. James Randi mentions him in this article: http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/Articles/randi/science_pseudoscience.htm
Sorry, I didn’t mean snake oil in the literal sense. Mencken also applied the term to people like Huey Long and Mary Baker Eddy. A more current example of a more toxic form of snake oil in this case might be Jim Jones or David Koresh.
BTW, you might want to read this blog entry by Olivia Judson at the NY Times.
http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/cracking-the-spine-of-libel/?ref=science
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September 18th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
I think I have seen this guy before. I couldn’t place the name at first, but after looking him up, I’m pretty sure I have.
There so goddamned many of them these days
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September 19th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
God I hate that guy. I think the one thing that makes me hate him so much is knowing that people are stupid enough to buy his book. Every time I see him I just think “Wow I’m in a society so stupid that people like this can make money saying the crap that he does. I’m so ashamed to be part of the US in the 2009″
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September 24th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I would rather have the retards pay than give up the iron clad freedom of the American press.
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September 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
anon said:
I disagree. I don’t see this as a freedom of the press issue. Freedom of the press and of speech and expression is about expressing views and information, but it is not a free pass on fraud and deceptive advertising.
This is a well established area. Selling one thing as something else is fraud. You can’t use deception to sell a product. Therefore, it I sell a product that goes on your fuel line and I say it will save you fuel, that is fraud and illegal. I also can’t sell a tool that is supposed jack up a four ton load when it can only support a half a ton. Again, this is deception and fraud.
We live in a day and age where there is no doubt that information is every bit as much a viable product as any kind of physical item. There’s no doubt about information being a tool in and of itself. Hence, I can’t sell you a product by lying about what it does or what it is even if it is only information.
For example: lets say I sell a compact disk for $100 and I advertise it as being a software product that enables you to create dynamic webpages or to consolidate financial data or something and the software does not do what I say it would, it is still fraud. The fact that I am selling only ones and zeros in a pattern on a disc does not change the fact that it is a tool that enables you to do something.
What Kevin Trudeau does is sell information. In his case it’s not software binaries or stock video footage or blueprints for a steam turbine, it’s text on paper in a book. He makes the following claim: if you have an illness you can be cured. The information contained within the book will enable you to cure the disease. The book is thus a tool which enables you to do something. This is a LIE. The book contains no such information that would enable anyone to cure an ailment.
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September 25th, 2009 at 4:15 am
Sticking it to people for selling lies it perfectly consistent with freedom of speech/expression. Freedom of speech only means that you cannot stop anyone from expressing themselves (with some very select exceptions, such as blabbering about state secrets).
However… once they have expressed themselves, it’s quite allright drag them to court over it.
/Michael
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October 26th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
Kevin Trudeau is a sociopath without a shred of remorse for his past and present crimes. He tries to downplay the fraud convictions by saying something like ’so what! I also **** my pants in the third grade.’ Kevin if you were still soiling your pants in the third grade you must have taken the short bus to school! The FTC needs to go after this vermin with everything they have, seize his assets and put him in prison where he could write a new book, ‘Do It Yourself Proctology Secrets ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.’ Con men like Trudeau need to be removed from society forever.
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November 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 pm
Personally I would like to see Trudeau dumped in the middle of a maximum security prison wearing a little pink dress. It probably wouldn’t stop him–he would probably come out with a new book “Prison Sex Techniques “They” Don’t Want You to Know About”
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November 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 am
J. Davis, of course if he gets AIDS in prison he can just go to the unnamed doctor who in the book has a cure for it.
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