Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The TV Con Man Who Scammed $39,000,000 - The Kevin Trudea story
04 Feb 2025
This is the story of Kevin Trudeau and his many late tv infomercial scams.
Full Episode
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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