Kevin Trudeau is his name — at least his TV stage name — 🌌and if you’re unfamiliar with his name, fame and game you likely don’t watch much after-hours TV or daytime channel-surf toward the ꦰtriple-digit stations.
Or you don’t watch TV.
Trudeau, 51, until very recently, was an infomercial host. And he’s a str💫ong bet to return as one — at the conclusion of his latest prison term for fraud.
Trudeau is a career TV scam artist, having frequently been cited and/or convicted of promoting anything and everything suckers need to get started, including one-capsule-fits-all health remedies and ge🉐t-rich-quick investment books.
Apparently his wealth books have more nutritional val🔴ue — fiber — than his health pills. And only Trudeau has profited from his wealth book promises.
But, bless his heart and his luxury vil💧la in Zurich, as a long-running TV act, he’s up there with “The Simpsons,” “Gunsmoke” and Jimmy Swaggart.
Anyway, last month a Chicago jury deliberated for less than an ho♏ur before convicting Trudeau of criminal contempt, for bogus infomercial claims he pitched to peddle one of his best-selling diet books. He also was ordered to pay a $37.6 million fin𓃲e — that amount reflecting total book sales.
Trudeau claims to be broke.
But this was 🍸merely the latest caper in a TV career dedicated to bilking the public. Trudeau had previously paid $2.5 million in Federal Trade Commission settlements for bogus infomercial claims, and in the early 🌄1990s spent two years in a federal penitentiary for two fraud convictions.
Yep, he’s an inveღterate, big-time, TV-delivered crook; a k a, a bad guy.
But the rest of the story💧 shows that his steadiest cohorts, enablers and underwriters hav🧸e never suffered even a slight or slap from aiding and abetting Trudeau’s crimes.
Trudeau owes so much of his care🀅er to TV people, to local station and network execs and ad salespersons who didn’t, at any time, give a rat’s toenail whether Tru𒈔deau was out to rip off their viewers and/or whether Trudeau came to them with an extensive “As-seen-on-TV!” criminal past.
All that mattered to scores of TV execs — for years, up until Trudeau again was sent away — was that his checks cleared. It was fine that Trudeau fleeced the station’s or network’s viewers — as long as he paid for the privilege.
TV execs — men and wꦍomen who had to know better or could easily ask or find out on their own — didn’t care. They didn’t care that Trudeau sold their viewers bogus promises of health, wealth and happiness.
All the TV folks 𓄧cared about — here, there and everywhe🍨re, and for years and years — was their cut. It’s the old drug-addicted hooker credo: “Do whatever you like to me, Mister, as long as you pay me.”
And as long as TV (and, increasingly, radio) escape prosecution for aiding and abetting such scam artists, for not minimally spending two minute💞s of due diligence to learn who they’re selling their name, time and viewers to, those scam artists always will find silent partners for their crimes.
Those pre-infomercial disclaimers, after all, don’t cut it. For the network or station to declare that its “not responsible for the claims or representations” about to be seen and/or heard, seems to be one part self-defense, one part self-indictme🔯nt.
After all, the truth, the who꧒le truth and nothing but the truth would look and sound like this:
“This station is not responsible for the clai๊ms and representations about to be heard and seen. However, we’ve accepted payment for the claims and representations you’re about to see and hear.”
Or cut to the plain tru💞th: “Hey, don’t blame us; we only get paid to put this junk on.”
Without TV’s help — its dirty money profit-sharing, and over🌠 many years — Kevin Trudeau might’ve been just a smalltime crook. Plenty more where he comes from.