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On October 23, 2010, I wrote to warn the gullible about Kevin Trudeau on another website I own. At that time he was hiding behind his belief that everything he said was protected by the First Amendment. It took some years, but he has finally been brought to justice in a Federal court.

On March 17th, Trudeau was sentenced to prison. You may recognize Kevin Trudeau as the smooth talking, “Free Money,” “Easy Diet,” and “Cancer Cure” con man from infomercials.

Moments after Trudeau’s plea for leniency in front of  U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman, a visibly irritated Guzman sentenced the best-selling author to 10 years behind bars, citing Trudeau’s decades-long history of fraud and calling him “deceitful to the core.”

The following is a reprint of my article:

Kevin Trudeau has found the secret to creating wealth. He has combined the three essentials for the perfect product to make himself rich. Going from selling actual products that didn’t work and being shut down by the government, Kevin Trudeau moved to publishing books containing “information.”  Feeling protected by The Constitution guaranteeing free speech, he promises people everything that doesn’t work, to his hearts content.

His perfect book:

1) Is cheap to create because all of the resources are public domain.

2) Is a system or a secret you “discovered” that “they” don’t want you to know.

3) Is sold with little profit, but has a hook that generates repeat income.

And what a hook he has. In his latest television commercial selling his “Free Money” book, he tells people that government money is just waiting for you to apply for it and it doesn’t have to be paid back. Of course, he doesn’t mention that most everyone will not qualify for the money. He also fails to mention that calling the phone number to order the book will have a salesman running up your bill to monthly subscriptions and making repeated offers for more products for you to purchase.

ConsumerAffairs.com has numerous complaints about the Trudeau marketing people. Consumers reporting overbilling, recurring charges not being canceled, refunds not given, and books not delivered abound on the site.

How can people be so stupid and gullible to believe what most think is a scam artist. Because the man is good at what he does, he knows people are desperate, and he has learned from past mistakes that found him doing prison time when he was younger.

In 1990, Trudeau posed as a doctor in order to deposit $80,000 in false checks, and in 1991 he pleaded guilty to larceny. Trudeau had used the credit cards of eleven customers of a mega memory product to fraudulently charge approximately $122,735.68. He spent two years in federal prison because of this conviction.

The FTC has sued him repeatedly and keeps an extensive record of its conflicts with him. A court order currently restricts his ability to promote and sell any product or service; however, he is permitted to promote books and other publications due to free-speech protection under the First Amendment as long as they are not used to promote or sell products or services and do not contain misrepresentations.

In September 2004, Trudeau agreed to pay $2 million ($500,000 in cash plus transfer of residential property located in Ojai, California, and a luxury vehicle) to settle charges that he falsely claimed that a coral calcium product can cure cancer and other serious diseases and that a purported analgesic called Biotape can permanently cure or relieve severe pain. He also agreed to a lifetime ban on promoting products using infomercials (books not included).

On November 19, 2007, a court found Trudeau in contempt of that court order for making what they consider deceptive claims about his book The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About. In August 2008, he was fined more than $5 million and banned from infomercials for three years for continuing to make fraudulent claims pertaining to the book. The amount of the monetary damages was later increased to $37 million.

His answer to that was to create a new product. This one, “Free Money,” seems to be targeting those desperate people that think there is such a thing and Trudeau’s low advertised price of between $19.95 and $29.95 for the book makes people think it is worth the risk, for a chance at getting government money. Little do they realize the additional expense they will find, as previously discussed, when they make that phone call.