Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story
Tue, 04 Feb 2025
This is the story of Kevin Trudeau and his many late tv infomercial scams.
Chapter 1: Who is Kevin Trudeau and what did he do?
So this guy, his name's Kevin, and Kevin swears he's going to be rich one day. And somehow he ends up conning his way into $39 million. So one day, back in the day, Kevin decides the way to get rich is to travel around the country giving seminars on how to improve your memory and selling memory courses. But I guess this doesn't end up making him big money fast enough.
Chapter 2: What illegal activities did Kevin engage in?
So he starts posing as a doctor and passing fraudulent checks. $80,000 worth of fraudulent checks. And he gets busted and gets 21 days in jail. That same year, Kevin is caught stealing the names and social security numbers of his customers who had bought his memory courses. And he had charged over $122,000 on their credit cards.
I guess he didn't have a good enough memory to remember that that is very illegal. So then bam, he gets thrown into prison for two years. Once he gets out, he partners with a company called Nutrition for Life that sells vitamins, homeopathic remedies, whatever. It's an illegal pyramid scheme. And again, Kevin gets busted. But this time he gets hit with $185,000 fine. So that business fails too.
Chapter 3: How did Kevin's memory courses evolve into a scam?
Oh, but Kevin's not going to give up yet. He is determined to be rich. So he decides to go back to selling courses on how to improve your memory. But this time, instead of traveling around the country giving seminars, he decides to sell those courses on TV via late night infomercials. And so he gets on TV and he promises everyone, if you buy his course, you too can have a photographic memory.
Knowledge is power, but only if you can remember it.
Chapter 4: What products did Kevin sell through infomercials?
But this time, this scam actually works and the money starts pouring in. And not only does he sell these memory courses, he starts selling all kinds of useless bullshit through late night infomercials. Hair loss remedies, a cure for addictions, a speed reading course, as well as all kinds of health and wellness nonsense. And allegedly, he markets more than 50 different products on TV.
And he makes some very bold claims about how well these products actually work. Like he claims his speed reading course taught a girl with brain damage to read at the speed of 600 words a minute. And he claims that with his addiction course, you can learn to curb your addictions by tapping on your chest in a certain pattern. It's absolute bulls**t.
Chapter 5: What were the consequences of Kevin's fraudulent claims?
But whatever, Kevin doesn't care because he sells a lot and he is finally making decent money. Until suddenly one day, boom, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, catches Kevin and they fine him and his company a half a million dollars for making false or misleading claims about the products he's selling in his infomercials. And he's ordered to no longer make those misleading claims.
Oh, but that doesn't stop Kevin, because five years later, he is back in court again for making more misleading claims. And poor Kevin, he gets fined $2 million for this, and he's banned from selling products through infomercials for life.
Chapter 6: How did Kevin find a loophole to sell books on TV?
And crazy enough, at this time, he is the only person ever to get banned by the FTC from selling products on TV, which I gotta say, that is quite an accomplishment. But this still... isn't gonna stop Kevin. He is gonna get rich one way or another.
So less than a year later he writes a book called Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know About and he goes right back on TV making infomercials trying to sell it. Now how does his shady ass get away with selling products on TV again after he had just got banned? Well, lucky for Kevin, books are not technically considered a product.
Chapter 7: What controversial claims are found in Kevin's book?
They're technically considered free speech, which means they're protected by the First Amendment. So Kevin found a loophole, and he can sell books on TV. Although the court orders that he's not allowed to misrepresent the content of those books, and that is gonna be important later.
Now, of course, in his Natural Cures book, Kevin claims a bunch of wild sh**, like, the sun does not cause cancer, it's actually sunblock that causes cancer. Which, it doesn't. In fact, he claims that the home remedies in his book can cure all kinds of things.
Buy the book. It's unconditionally guaranteed. If you have cancer, heart disease, acid reflux, asthma, arthritis, depression, attention deficit disorder, you name the disease, it's covered in here.
All right, I got to pick you up for this. So not only that, Kevin claims that there are natural cures out there for nearly like every illness. But he says that the U.S. government is deliberately hiding and suppressing this information and keeping it from you.
and that only he knows the real truth and that he wants to get this information to you, but of course you have to buy it from him in the form of his book. Oh, but it gets worse. Once you buy the book, the book talks about these alleged natural cures in a broad sense.
But if you want the real specific information, like the specific names of the natural products he recommends, the real cures, the book tells you that you have to subscribe to Kevin's website, which of course costs a monthly fee. It's a subscription service.
So to sum up the scam, government bad, therefore you should pay money for Kevin's book, which will then tell you to pay money every month for Kevin's website. It's just so scammy. And of course, because life isn't fair, Kevin's book is a hit and big money starts flowing directly into Kevin's pockets. And his Natural Cures book spends 25 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
So dude is just raking it in. And so he's like, hey, cool, that worked. And he quickly writes a bunch of other books to sell. Free money that they don't want you to know about. The weight loss cure that they don't want you to know about. Debt cures that they don't want you to know about. And debt cures too that they really don't want you to know about.
the hell is they anyway you get the idea but despite that it's his book the weight loss cures they don't want you to know about that really ends up screwing him over because in that book he claims all kinds of crazy stuff about this weird diet plan he's pushing it's a 500 calorie a day diet with regular colon and liver cleanses and he wants you to avoid air conditioning and avoid fluorescent lights for some reason what the hell do fluorescent lights have to do with weight loss
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