mikepage said:
The fraud he says he committed because he paid a bill late, which led
to American Express giving him a bad credit rating, which just wasn't
right. After that, no one would give him a credit card, which was
"insane," so he had little choice but to apply for cards with fake
Social Security numbers.
******* continued in a reply post
continuation of Washngton Post article on Trudeau....
According to officials at the time, Trudeau also misappropriated for
his own use credit card numbers belonging to customers who'd signed up
for his memory improvement courses. The man formerly known as "Mr. Mega
Memory" says he doesn't think he did that, but adds that was a "very
blurry time in my history with all the stress."
He calls that prosecution "outrageous" and says American Express and
the prosecutor had it in for him, rather like he believes the federal
government has it in for him now.
"It was a sad day because I remember walking into the courtroom and
above the courtroom it says these words which are completely untrue:
'Hall of Justice,' " Trudeau says, relaxing in the hotel suite with
fresh fruit and magnetic water nearby. "And I thought, 'This is not the
Hall of Justice because this is not justice. This should say 'Hall of
the Technicalities of the Law.' Where's the justice? Where's King
Solomon? But I said, 'Y'know, I've been focused on making money and
what I did was wrong -- even though it wasn't a heinous crime and I
could justify it nine different ways.' "
In any case, in prison "everything got reprioritized," and Trudeau says
he decided to stop focusing on money. He became buddies with a visiting
Lubavitch rabbi. He decided to try out being Jewish (he'd gone to
Catholic schools) and found out about "corruption in the Department of
Justice" when he had difficulty getting kosher food.
He decided his new mission was to help people. (The Jewish thing didn't
last.)
'One of the Best Salespeople'
In prison on the West Coast, Trudeau hooked up with a fellow inmate
named Jules Leib, who was in for attempted distribution of cocaine. He
gave Leib some self-help books. When they got out, they went into
business together, making infomercials and selling health products as
distributors for an Amway-type multilevel marketing company called
Nutrition for Life. Right away the trouble started.
David Bertrand, the former president of Nutrition for Life, remembers
Trudeau listening to motivational tapes "incessantly." He says Trudeau
was "brilliant" and "one of the best salespeople I've ever known," and
recalls that in 1996 the company nearly tripled its sales in large part
because of Trudeau. The man could sell because he seemed to really
believe in what he was saying, Bertrand says, but he repeatedly took it
too far.
Bertrand says he became concerned that Trudeau was making overly
optimistic promises to potential distributors about how much profit
they could make. "We had a number of conferences where we asked him to
cool it," Bertrand says. "It scared us."
At one point, Bertrand says, he learned that Trudeau had promised free
trips to entice people to sign up as distributors. The trips never
materialized, there were complaints, and Nutrition for Life had to step
in, says Bertrand, and fund a weekend cruise for thousands of people.
"At the time he made the promise he fully intended to comply," Bertrand
says. "He always intends to but he kind of gets carried away in his
exuberance."
In 1996, the state of Illinois sued Trudeau and Leib, accusing them of
operating an illegal pyramid scheme. The men wound up settling with
Illinois and seven other states after agreeing to change their tactics.
Trudeau and Leib split up, though Leib still speaks fondly of the
former "life coach" who introduced him to the magic of multilevel
marketing.
"He's probably one of the brightest guys you'll ever meet," says Leib.
"He gave me Anthony Robbins's 'Awaken the Giant Within.' " (Later, Leib
encourages a reporter to try supplements. "I'm on this great liquid,"
he says.)
In 1998, Trudeau paid half a million dollars to settle a Federal Trade
Commission complaint that several infomercials he helped create were
false and misleading. The products included a "hair farming system"
that -- according to the infomercial -- was supposed to "finally end
baldness in the human race," and "a breakthrough that in 60 seconds can
eliminate" addictions, purportedly discovered when a certain "Dr.
Callahan" was "studying quantum physics."
In 2003, the FTC came after Trudeau again. The complaint and a separate
contempt action centered on two products, one of which, Coral Calcium
Supreme, was being billed as a cure for cancer, according to the FTC.
Trudeau's guest on the infomercial, a man named Robert Barefoot, went
so far as to claim that in cultures that consume a lot of calcium,
people are so healthy "they don't even have children until they're in
their seventies when they're mature enough to handle kids."
This time, said FTC attorney Heather Hippsley, the settlement was
"unprecedented" in its scope. In addition to paying $2 million (in part
by handing over his $180,000 Mercedes Benz), Trudeau agreed not to do
any more infomercials selling products or services. The only thing he
would be permitted to sell on-air was "informational publications," and
he has greater leeway with what he can say in those because of his
right to free speech.
Hence, the book.
Trudeau points out that his settlements were not admissions of
wrongdoing. His attorney, David Bradford, suggests that the terms of
the most recent settlement weren't terribly punitive -- indeed, this
was a direction Trudeau wanted to take anyway.
"Trudeau had made an independent decision that he really wanted to
focus on being an author and consumer advocate," Bradford says.
Still, in his book, Trudeau claims repeatedly that he's the victim of
censorship. He likens the government to the Gestapo. He compares
himself to Rosa Parks and Gandhi. He says because of "this FTC
suppression" he can't recommend specific products to cure his readers'
illnesses.
However, he says, readers can join his Web site. For just $9.99 a month
or $499 for a lifetime, they can gain access to the special
members-only section, and there they can e-mail him and he'll reveal
his secrets.
'They Know That I Know'
Trudeau says he has considerable proof of the conspiracy working
against the health of the citizens of this nation, but the nation will
have to take it on faith. He says there are "government agencies" and
"entire industries" that are spending "billions of dollars" to keep
people sick so they can continue to make money. He says he has Nobel
Prize winners as informants.
"I can't mention their names," he says. "There's a lot of insiders that
I know, that are friends of mine, but I can't mention their names
because one of the reasons why I was capable of writing this book was I
have so many insiders that give me the information. . . . And this is
why everyone in Washington is frightened to death, and that's why the
government is trying to shut me up. Because they know that I know. They
know I've been in the meetings. You know what it's like? It's kind of
like I've got the black book with everyone's names. And they know: This
guy starts naming names, it's going to be out of control."
Readers will have to trust that Trudeau knows of a doctor who found a
cure for AIDS, and that another doctor "discovered a serum that
virtually made cancer tumors vanish in 90 minutes" but "was completely
shut down by the FDA." Trudeau never names these doctors. He says
"researchers have concluded that speaking the correct form of words and
thinking the correct thoughts actually changes a person's DNA," but he
never reveals who these researchers are.
Readers will have to take it on faith that Trudeau will soon be putting
proceeds from the book and the Web site into nonprofit groups dedicated
to teaching natural remedies and suing the government. They'll have to
trust that they don't really need medications their doctors have
prescribed and that the supplements they're ordering over the Internet
will work.
They'll also have to ignore the places where Trudeau stretches the
truth: What appears to be a back cover endorsement from a former FDA
commissioner is actually a 35-year-old quote. Quotes inside are
purportedly from Bill Gates in a television interview, but Trudeau puts
more words in Gates's mouth. ("I paraphrased," Trudeau says.)
Trudeau's book appeals to a nation that has been disillusioned by
managed health care, by rushed and impersonal doctors, by diseases that
didn't use to be diseases except these days everything has a name and a
pill to go with it. Ask your doctor if it's right for you.
Those who report success with Trudeau's book say they're discovering
that they've been overmedicated. They've cut down on this or that drug
for this or that minor problem and discovered they never needed it.
They've tried the book's most conservative recommendations -- eating
organic foods, taking supplements, cutting out sodas -- and write in to
say they've lost weight. Few appear to be curing their muscular
dystrophy, or reporting success with magnetic toe rings.
Some people post angry reviews on Amazon.com, saying they feel "ripped
off" and "gullible" for buying "Natural Cures."
Some vacillate.
"It's a scary step to take," says Joyce Nuuhiwa, 61, who lives in
Honolulu and has Type 2 diabetes. Nuuhiwa has read Trudeau's book, and
she's considering quitting both her medications and trying a
combination of herbs that Trudeau advises. (He writes in the book that
this diabetes "cure" was discovered at the University of Calgary, but
officials there say they've never discovered any such thing.)
Nuuhiwa is disappointed by what her doctor said -- that the disease is
progressive, that eventually she'll have to be on insulin. She wants to
believe the diabetes is reversible, and frankly, she doesn't trust
everything doctors tell her. She suspects, for example, that there's
already a cure for cancer, that Trudeau is right about the conspiracy.
But she's not sure if he's right about her diabetes.
She says there's something "slick" about him that makes her uneasy.
"If I could be assured that he's totally honest I would be diving into
this, but this is my life I'm talking about," she says.
He is slick, but somehow likable, too. He curses and does voice
imitations. He is attractive, if not handsome, and people say he's
popular with the ladies. He says he has a girlfriend who's almost 20
years younger; she's a student and part-time model.
He says he lives out his healthy living convictions. He says he
recently got back from an ashram. He says he carries a shower filter
with him wherever he goes, to eliminate the fluoride and chlorine he
considers poisonous. After a few hours with Trudeau, you think maybe
it's not all just a show. Maybe he really believes he's offering cures.
Then he says this about that funny-looking necklace he wears, the
electromagnetic chaos eliminator:
"If it doesn't work, what's the harm?"
He reveals that when he was young he used to perform magic tricks at
kids' birthday parties.
Watch the hands.
"Kevin wouldn't allow us to have Equal in the office," says Janine
Contursi, who briefly dated Trudeau in the 1980s and then worked for
him in the '90s. She remembers that once, when she worked for him, she
threw out her back, and Trudeau spent "thousands of dollars" to send
her to an alternative health clinic. There, she was offered tips on
positive thinking.
Her back did get better, she says. But it could have been because of
the chiropractors.
I feel sorry for any other patients who went to them with problems.
