The US vs. Kevin Trudeau

[Coito ergo sum]

Kevin Trudeau has been battling the Federales for 25 years now. I just noticed in the news that he's being jailed for failing to pay a $37 million fine.

I was interested in finding out what they say he did, because the articles are very thin. They say he committed fraud, but I wondered what did he lie about. What were the specific factual underpinnings of the charges.

The first one I dug up was a 2007 allegation by the FTC that he was "deceptively claiming in his infomercials that the book being advertised establishes a weight-loss protocol that is 'easy' to follow." They say that he said his diet was easy, but really when you bought the book, you found out it was really hard. I'm like... uhhh.... that's worth fines and jail? Isn't whether something is "easy" a matter of opinion?

In 2005 he actually sued the New York State consumer protection department because they were contacting television stations urging the stations not to air his commercials about his book "Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know About." He won. He got an injunction against New York State.

He was at one point found guilty of making representations that some calcium supplement cured cancer.

He was more recently fined like $37 million. I'm not quite clear on what he was fined for. Seems excessive, and like a big waste of government resources to persecute a nonviolent offender whose only crime is making exaggerated statements to sell stuff.

[klr]

A snake oil merchant par excellence from what I've heard and seen of him.

That New York case is still in progress apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trud ... tion_Board

[mistermack]

A snake oil merchant par excellence from what I've heard and seen of him.

A great loss to climate science. What a waste.

[Coito ergo sum]

Did he have a book called, "Global Warming that 'THEY' Don't Want You to Know About.?"

[Forty Two]

Canada in a tizzy because he accidentally bumped a female member of parliament. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wir ... r-39226818

So, Golden Boy is in a bit of a pickle.

The NDP leader says "there is not a parallel in contemporary Canadian history..."

They're after him now. Mr. Feminst PM, elbowing women and engaging in physical altercations in Parliament! Well, at least he treats women like equals.

Those Canadians are too violent up there. They start swinging over votes on time limits for voting on bills! At least in the US, our Congressional fistfights are over slavery....

[Forty Two]

well, this was weird -- I just searched for an existing thread about Trudeau, and posted in this one... lol. wrong Trudeau!

[Svartalf]

yeah, the Trudeaus are a political dynasty in Canada, but there's this one in the US, plus, of course, Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury fame, who's also 100% Merkin

[Forty Two]

The Canadian ones are tough cookies. Those Canadian feminists elbow women in the tits up there!

[Animavore]

It's Trudeau.

[Hermit]

I was interested in finding out what they say he did, because the articles are very thin. They say he committed fraud, but I wondered what did he lie about. What were the specific factual underpinnings of the charges.

Really difficult, this googling stuff, isn't it?

I never heard of Kevin Trudeau before just now, so I typed in "Kevin Trudeau" (not bothering with the quote marks), and the first result sent me to the Wikipedia. Once there, I clicked on the link in the contents section marked Legal proceedings. It contains a neat summary of a whole series of, erm, legal proceedings against him, starting with this one: "1990–1991: Larceny and credit card fraud. In 1990, Trudeau posed as a doctor in order to deposit $80,000 in false checks, and in 1991 he pleaded guilty to larceny. That same year, Trudeau faced federal charges of credit card fraud after he stole the names and Social Security numbers[11] of eleven customers of a mega memory product and charged $122,735.68 on their credit cards.[63] He spent two years in federal prison because of this conviction. That item also includes his defense of it, as he formulated it in an interview. Apparently the $80,000 fraud was no more than a youthful indiscretion of a 27 year old, and anyway, the defrauded party is to blame, at least in part, for what he did.

Nine other items follow.