Kevin Trudeau’s ups and downs
You may have seen an infomercial for any number of Kevin Trudeau products. He has hawked several books, including “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”
Kevin Trudeau’s books have made it onto the best-sellers list as consumers seeking help hit up payday lenders so they could buy the books as soon as possible. Unfortunately for Kevin Trudeau, a couple of his books have also been labeled fraud by consumer agencies, and he has been fined tens of millions of dollars for violating an agreement to refrain from being in any way involved with more infomercials.
Kevin Trudeau history
Let’s take a look at the beginning of Kevin Trudeau’s career. In 1991 Kevin Trudeau was convicted of credit card fraud. Christopher Pascale of suite101.com reports that after Kevin Trudeau completed his sentence, he and his former cell mate “started an illegal pyramid scheme based around the concept of multi-level marketing, selling vitamins.”
This began Kevin Trudeau’s stint in selling “health care” products.
The many products of Kevin Trudeau
In thousands of hours of infomercials, Kevin Trudeau sold products to cure hair loss and to cure addiction. He advertised books on improving your memory and released best-selling “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.’ That’s when Trudeau’s Troubles Part II began.
Long story short, in 2004, Kevin Trudeau was ordered by a federal judge “to pay more than $5 million and banned him, for three years, from producing or publishing infomercials for products in which he has an interest,” according to the FTC web site. Basically, this was the result of misrepresenting his book and making false claims about other health-related products.
Violating court orders
In 2005 he released the book “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.” Once again, he hawked his wares on late-night infomercials, violating his court order. Now he owes $37 million, thanks to a court decision from January.
According to MSNBC, consumers who purchased the book felt duped, saying it didn’t contain any actual information and only promoted his web site, NaturalCures.com. In fact, they felt so duped the started contacting consumer protection boards. Ironically, the lawsuit spurred sales for the book. Ironically, while the lawsuit was pending, sales of the book skyrocketed because of the publicity generated by the trial. Kevin Trudeau also released a second edition called “More Natural ‘Cures’ Revealed.”
Into the financial sector
Kevin Trudeau’s latest book, “Debt Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,” seems to be veering more toward the truthful side of things. It does contain some good information and advice about getting out of debt.
However, “Debt Cures” has been heavily criticized for only containing information that is easily accessible by anyone with an internet connection or a basic understanding of finance. I haven’t seen any legal action pending regarding this book, but I do know that in the United States it is not illegal to charge people money for something they could get for free somewhere else. I’ve seen it happen frequently.
So, what do you think of Kevin Trudeau? Savvy salesman? Saint? Or Fraud? Leave your comments here.
