Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Greatest Con Man In TV History - The Don Lapre story
Sun, 09 Feb 2025
This is the story of Don Lapre and his late night infomercials
Chapter 1: Who was Don Lapre and how did he start his career?
If you've ever watched TV late at night in the 90s, you might remember seeing this guy, Don. Our goal is to educate over 200 million... Well, one day, Don was suddenly found unalived. Why? So back when Don had nothing, his whole goal was to do whatever it takes to get rich. So he goes and he starts a dating service. But it quickly fails, and two months later, he files for bankruptcy.
Chapter 2: What business schemes did Don Lapre attempt?
Then he sets up a little credit repair company, and he charges people to help repair their credit. The problem with that is it's a scam. When people sign up with Don's company, he doesn't repair their credit. He only gives them information on how to sign up for new high-interest credit cards. Which would potentially put them right back into debt. So his customers get pissed. Because this is fraud.
So the state sues him, a judge orders him to pay his victims back, and his credit repair business is ultimately shut down. Oh, but that doesn't stop Don. He is determined to get rich. So he starts another grift, and that fails. Then he starts yet another where he's selling 1-900 numbers. Psychic hotlines and sh** like that. So he starts advertising these 900 numbers in the newspaper.
Chapter 3: What led to Don Lapre's rise in the infomercial industry?
And this is where he learns that advertising whatever grift he's doing is gonna be the key to make him rich. So he does this and he really starts pulling in big numbers. Allegedly over $50,000 a week. So he's finally getting rich. But for some reason, this just isn't enough for Don. And he wants to take it further and make more. And that is when he gets into the world of late night infomercials.
And in these infomercials, Don always makes himself the star and he starts off by selling those same 1-900 numbers.
Chapter 4: How did Don Lapre's get-rich-quick schemes work?
Another way to make unheard of amounts of money is by getting your own 1-900 line.
But then he starts branching out into selling other garbage. But where he really gets traction is when he starts peddling people bullshit advice on how to get rich. Basically, he's selling get rich quick schemes. And this grift is definitely shady, but it's technically not illegal. So it really works for him.
And he starts running these late night infomercials all the time, like every night of the week. And soon he's selling his get rich quick schemes to hundreds of thousands of people. And suddenly, just like that, he and his business are allegedly worth over $40 million. Dude is killing it. And by this point, he's a household name. He even gets parodied on SNL, played by a young David Spade.
Chapter 5: What challenges did Don Lapre face as his business declined?
Hi, I'm Don LaPree, and I have a question for you. And this success continues for years. And Don just keeps spending money and he keeps trying to expand his businesses. But over time, it slowly stops working like it used to. It seems like people are getting tired of his get-rich-quick schemes. And so his profit margin starts to fall.
And at one point, his company's losing half a million dollars a week. And he owes a bunch of money on back taxes. And he loses really big on a real estate deal in Mexico. And then one day, womp womp, Poor Don has lost so much money, he has to get up in front of all his employees and break the news to them. All his companies that were once worth over $40 million have now gone bankrupt.
But as we saw before, bankruptcy is not gonna stop Don. He is gonna grift whoever he can to get rich again. So a year later, he comes up with his biggest scam yet. And he partners up with this guy, Doug Grant. And Doug Grant is a whole other shady character with a whole other backstory. But Don and Doug Grant, they get together and they decide to set up a company selling, of all things, vitamins.
And they call it the greatest vitamin in the world. But despite its name, it's basically just a standard multivitamin. But that doesn't matter. Don knows he can get on TV and he can sell it. And that's exactly what he does. He goes right back to making those late night TV infomercials, starring himself selling these vitamins.
Our goal is to educate over 200 million people.
But here's where the whole thing gets shady. Don's not just slanging these standard multivitamins. He's making all kinds of claims about exactly what they're able to do. Like he claims these vitamins can cure diabetes and they can cure heart disease and that they prevent cancer. Spoiler alert, they don't.
And not only are they making false claims, but Don and Doug Grant turn the whole thing into a pyramid scheme because they start recruiting people to resell the vitamins for them, promising them huge commissions and that they'll all be rich and they can own their own business and all they have to do is pay several hundred dollars upfront to get started. Classic MLM nonsense.
But over time, the pyramid in their pyramid scheme actually gets huge. From their infomercials, they recruit over 220,000 people to help resell these bullshit multivitamins. And this goes on for several years. And allegedly, Don and Doug Grant's company brings in over $52 million from doing this. So all this success and all this attention, this ends up going great for them.
Until eventually the FDA catches on to the claims that Don and Doug Grant are making about these vitamins and they don't like it. So they issue them several formal warnings to stop saying your vitamins do all this stuff that they don't really do. But Don and Doug Grant, they don't stop. They just keep on running these infomercials and they keep selling.
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