Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

This is the story of Kevin Trudeau and his many late tv infomercial scams.

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So this guy, his name's Kevin, and Kevin swears he's gonna 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. So he starts posing as a doctor and passing through 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 remedy, 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. 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 every one of you buy his course, you too can have a photographic memory. Knowledge is power, but only if you can remember it. 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 speech, 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 bullshit

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 find him and his company and 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. 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. 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. They're technically considered free speech, which means they're protected by the First Amendment. So Kevin found a loophole. 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 going to be important later.

Now, of course, in his Natural Cures book, Kevin claims a bunch of wild shit. 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. By 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 fucking 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.

Who 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? Regardless, Kevin gets on TV and he does his infomercials and he tells people about this super easy weight loss solution. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost more weight faster than anything else on the planet. And to be fair, he is legitimate. a good salesman. So this book totally blows the fuck up and it sells more than 850,000 copies and makes Kevin an estimated $39 million. And so Kevin is finally the

rich man he's always wanted to be. Until again. So a lot of people have been watching Kevin's late-night infomercials watching him make these misleading diet claims. But you want to know who else has been watching his late night infomercials, the Federal Trade Commission. And while Kevin is allowed to sell his books on TV, because it's protected free speech, he's not allowed to misrepresent the content of those books, which he is absolutely doing. So then eventually, bam, they arrest Kevin. And I don't have a mugshot, but here's a photo of him in real life. And he ends up going to trial, he's found guilty, and he gets 10 years in prison, and he's ordered to pay back $37.6 million.

And then he spends eight years in prison and he's out now. And since he's been out, he's kept going and he started a podcast. And it seems like even today, oh, Kevin, he's right back to grifting, making episodes with titles such as energy creates wealth. Become a crypto king. Marketing secrets that will make you millions. Jeez, you got to keep the grift going, I guess.