The Crimes They Don't Want You to Know: Kevin Trudeau

Kevin Trudeau was a born salesman...and an excellent con man. He knew exactly how to rope people in with promises of wealth, health, and all around better lives. But as we all know, if something sounds too good to be true, it is. And it's probably a brainchild of ol' Kev.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio Zarin.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Elizabeth. Hello, how are you doing. Let's start talking like this.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
I think it hurts too long.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, then don't do that.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
I won't do that.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
If it hurts when you do that, don't do that.
Thank you, doctor, Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This great advice. Cayse closed. You know it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Oh my goodness, do I Elizabeth tell me friend of
the show, Sammy Hagar. Do you know how he got
famous other than like the obvious, like, oh, he played music?
Do you know like how that came to be?

Speaker 4 (00:28):
No?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
I do not, well, Aliens, Well, okay, well that makes
perfect sense.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
It was written in the stars of Elizabeth. It really was.
Go back to nineteen seventy now, just in your mind,
and Sammy Hagar returned to Fontana, California with his wife
God bless a new baby. He decided to pursue a
career in music full time. You say, I'm going full home.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
The new baby.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, totally the time to do Sammy Hagar style. So
he's in Fontana and that's where he gets visited by
quote a ship, but two creatures inside of the ship.
So well, he was by the way, not like in
the field, not like driving his car on a backcountry road.
He was in bed.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
Oh, and it came like did the ship come in
the bedroom?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
And they were connected me, tapped into my mind through
some kind of mysterious wireless connection. I was kind of
waking up, and they said in their communication to each other,
no words spoke, Oh, he's waking up. We got to go,
and they fired off a numerical code, but it was
not like our numerical system. All of a sudden poo
connection instantly broke. So then he wakes up and then,

(01:27):
in true Sammy Hagar style, he's like, what do I
do with this information? How do I make sense of this?
Should I talk to my wife, the mother of my
new baby, about these aliens who told me I should
go be a star? He's like, no, forget that scratch that.
I'm going to u Kaipa, California. I'm going to talk
to a psychic. Oh, heaven to psychic and Kaipa. Then
they told Hagar, you need to go to San Francisco.

(01:48):
Fame waits for you, and no.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Stay in you Kaipa. That's where you get famous.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
I swear to God it happened Boom, he became Sammy
Hagar friend of the show. So maybe don't doubt Elizabeth
because we are talking about it any more for the.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Type of psychics than the UFOs. Well.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Also, by the way, he also had another dream that uh,
his father who he was estranged from, was drunkenly pounding
on his door demanding to see the new grandson, and
Hagar He's like, no, you gotta go, man, you can't
be here. Man, the Bay's gonna wake up or whatever. Right, Yeah,
Moments later, the loud knocking resumes, I mean on the door.
This time he goes and he opens the door and

(02:29):
it was a bandmate telling him that it was his
father had been found dead earlier that night, and so
apparently the first time it wasn't a dream. He had
gotten up, but he's seen a ghost. So ghosts and
aliens were key to the formation of the Sammy Hagar
We know, brother, yay, there you got ridiculous right.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
That puts the wabbo in the cobbo.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
You can't have a kabba without the water.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
You really can't do You want to know what else
is ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Brother?

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Do pretty much everything about the guy I'm going to
tell you about Oh, this is Ridiculous Crime, a podcast

(03:24):
about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always
ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Damn right.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
We caught a good one here. I caught a case.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Tell me about it.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
This guy showed up and it was like a fever dream.
I've said before about some cons that it's almost like
I'm making them up. They're so good.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Yeah, is this where you can try to pull one
over on here?

Speaker 3 (03:47):
No? No, no, no, no no, I promise you. It's
like if you havesk someone, are you a cop? I'm saying,
I'm telling you no, this is true. This is this
is this is a true one. You got to tell me, man,
I know I do. Got to tell you. I'm going
to cut to the chase because there's just too much goodness.
Let's talk more rock zaren. I want you to meet
Kevin Trudeau.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
The former Prime Minister of Canada.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yes, the brother of brother Kevin. He was born in
nineteen sixty three. Grew up in West Lynne, Massachusetts. Good
number one, good boy, this one. He was an altar boy.
He played the organ at church and that's not a euphemism.
He was an honor student sports guy, played baseball football

(04:30):
like forty two Blues, swinging amiss ball for all that.
In fact, he was voted most likely to succeed Boom.
Right there, I'm telling you that it has been foretold.
He was also super into magic, like the game or
the pulling out of that as a child magician. Yes,

(04:50):
and that's why he wasn't voted most popular. Instead was
because he went to nursing homes and he put on
the the little magic shows. He worked the birthday party circuit.
And I really hope that he didn't get hired to
do magic at parties of his classmates that like he
wasn't invited to man like.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
The parents are all old, wo oh, we shouldn't have invited.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
He had He had no stage fright, no anxiety and
like the kicker, what made him the coolest. At one point,
he served as president of the Junior Clowns of America.
Did he fight like quadruples?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Do you also form it?

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Like?

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Was he founded this? And he's like I am the president.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
And I'm the president and the soul mem He talks
about how when he was in high school he rocked
the like three hour IQ test. He took it and
it only took him one hour. Okay, but that's because
when he was taking it, it dawned on him at
the whole thing was garbage. So he just filled in
the D bubble for every answer. Yeah, apparently, I think

(05:55):
I've got his i Q down. Then he pulled like
a cool dude move and he got up and strut
it out, and then he later said of this incident, quote,
I hopped in my nineteen sixty seven Firebird convertible to
enjoy my freedom from the classroom.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Like, okay, cool dude.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
I'm just picturing young Matthew mcconnay in this rule.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
So after this he' said, No, you know what I'm
picturing is I'm totally dating myself here. But do you
remember those Radio Shack commercials with the kid with a
like unibomber wire rim kind of aviator prescription glasses?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
I don't think I do.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Anyway, it was like super dork.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Okay, I got one for you. Do you remember on
Family Ties, Justine Bateman had a boyfriend who was an artist,
and he had Carl Nick. That's who I'm picturing.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
How about that, Oh he's actually cool. I'm looking at
like a dork.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Oh you want a dork? Yeah, I thought I'm picturing
a cool guy.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Okay, well so I'm thinking like a dork who thinks
he's a cool guy. Yeah, either way, that's not this.
But this is this is just Kevin, Kevin Kevin. So
here he does that, he gets later called out by
the guidance counselor and in front of other students, the
dude apparently told him, quote, you're a loser and you're
always going to be a loser. And then Kevin says,

(07:07):
of this quote, I tried to put on a cocky
I could care less smile. I don't think I fooled anyone.
I turned around and walked out of the room. I
distinctly remember mumbling to myself, you're going to eat those words, baby,
You're going to eat those words.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Wow. How many ninja and samurai you have at home?

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Oh my god, on n I have a couple of notes, please. First,
it's I couldn't care less, not I could care less.
Let's all remember that. Yeah, it's a pet peeve of mine.
Another thing, how great is a high school student saying,
baby at the end of a sentence.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Oh yeah, I style later baby.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Then he jumps into the firebird like burns rubber out
of the parking lot, but fishtails into a dumpster and
it burns into flames. So we got this like baby hustler,
cool guy, which also ps, I don't think the guidance
counselor said them, why not let me have this? Okay,
I'll give you the legend. So it's at fifteen. It's
like the late seventies. There was a business that was

(08:07):
like a siren's call to him. Okay, Amway, Oh lord. Yeah.
He went to his first Amway meeting at like fifteen,
and the penny dropped. He decided that he wanted financial freedom, Sarin.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
I'm going to be a diamond distributor.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
So we started a mail order business, got into the Amway,
and he later told people that this all made him
a million dollars in profit by the time he was eighteen.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
And by the way, a diamond distributor is a term
from Anway. I had family who was in Amway, like
a rank in the pyramid scheme.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
But I'm sure he was up there.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
I realized it may sound like I'm talking about like
you know, Rocks. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, Diamond distributor,
Samway Knowledge. Oh yeah, if it's silly, someone in my
family's done it.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Well, so Kevin's He's of that of that stripe. When
he got out of high school, he started selling cars, ah,
and he was killing it. He was like nonumber one
on the sales floor, baby.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Touch used car sales and I'm assuming they're used.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
No were No, No, it was colleagues Like his colleagues
would blow people off because he didn't think that they
were goers. Kevin would step in and he'd like chat
them up, charm them, and then get them into the
car of their dreams.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Maybe two or three.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Maybe he really pushed car loans on the customers. Then,
according to Business Insider quote, he would tell people, save
your credit with your bank in case you need for
something else. Van lou, his longtime mentor, recalls, was it
the best advice? No? Was he doing it to get
you the best deal? Hell no. He was in it
for the profit and money. He knew most people are.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Idiots, Like, okay, your money disappeared.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yes. So he graduated from car sales to the seminar circuit,
of course, and he gave talks about how he had
techniques to help people improve their memories.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
That was a big one, an air of like st
and like a lot of nasal improvements way before our
modern like oh hey, while.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
He was doing this, though, he had a side gig
check hiding. Yeah it is. October twenty fifth, nineteen eighty eight,
a grand jury indicted him on seven counts of larceny
for trying to draw on bank accounts of bogus checks.
Two years later, he pleaded guilty to depositing eighty grand

(10:20):
in bad checks. Wow, apparently he impersonated a doctor when
he met with bank officials. He served less than thirty
days on that one.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
And he just walked in with a white lab coat
and his scope.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
And he was like his pagers going off as I
called on. And his handwriting was terrible, and of course
he had explanations for all of it. According to the
Washington Post quote, Trudeau offered several explanations for his crimes.
They were youthful indiscretions and not as bad as they sound,
and besides both were partly the fault of other people.
And besides, he has changed the larceny he explains as

(10:54):
a series of math errors, compounded by the quote mistake
of a bank official. As for why the bank thought
he was a doctor, that was just a simple misunderstanding
because he jokingly referred to himself as quote a doctor.
In memory, he still can't quite believe he was prosecuted.
Give me a break, he says, got excuse for everything.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
So it's like my uncle had a shirt doctor of buttology.
Oh boy, was like, hey, hey, you know I study
good booty. What are you doing?

Speaker 3 (11:23):
God? So I got it like from a beach front,
like total you know what. So just a year after
doing thirty days for bad checks, he got busted again,
and this time he pleaded guilty to obtaining and fraudulently
using eleven credit cards. He went from checks to a
credit card.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, bounce.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
He was stealing names and social Security numbers to get cards.
And he had almost one hundred and twenty five thousand
dollars in AMEX charges And his explanation for this was
that he'd been late in paying an American Express bill.
And then he said that lowered his credit score and
no one would give him a card. And we know
that a credit card is are god given right as

(12:02):
an American car so, and he called these card denials insane,
quote insane, and he was like, I have no other choice.
He had to apply for cards under other people's social
security numbers. They forced me. Come on, they're denying me.
How did he get these numbers? The male good question
why he used the ones from the people who signed

(12:24):
up for his memory classes, Like, I think he must
have asked for their social Security numbers at some point.
Who knows either way. He did two years in federal
prison for that. Yeah, that's serious time. When he was
in prison, he made a friend, a guy named Jules
Leeb and Jewles. He was doing time for cocaine distribution,

(12:47):
rather distribution, and the two they hit it off. Kevin
shared some of his self help books with Jewels and
they talked about the books a lot, not so much
the content, but the concept and the books inspired them.
When they were released. They became business partners, of course,
and they made infomercials and sold health products for a

(13:09):
multi level marketing company called Nutrition for Life.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Whoa I was guessing based on the time they would
get into nutrition was about start selling.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
And Kevin Kevin drew on his time with Amway to
just like kill it at the MLM game it was about.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
That was the early MLUMB like, you know, if you
really wanted to figure out how to like make money off.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Of itamin supplements and stuff. Yeah, and he's this natural salesman.
So he and Jules they got out in nineteen ninety three.
By nineteen ninety six, the company had tripled its sales,
and most of that was thanks to Kevin. If we're
going to be honest about all, he is an amazing
recruiter and so because like part of that is his
tendency to maybe overstate things like promise more than could

(13:48):
be delivered. Yeah, but isn't that the success like the
foundation of a successful multi level marketing operation?

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Pretty much, at least for every great MLM is a
great crime.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
I think that's right, lie. So Kevin inflated profit projections
for distributors. He made crazy promises of like free vacations.
People started to complain to nutrition for life, and he'd
made these promises to so many people that they were
starting to rise up and nutrition for life. They wound
up having to pay a couple thousand people to go

(14:21):
on a weekend cruise.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
That's all they wanted.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
That's all they wanted because give us the vacation promise. Yeah,
they needed to keep them quiet. They gave them the
cruse that they'd been promised, or like an abbreviated version
of it, and they were They were fine.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
The partner, I mean, he got kind of got lucky
because Vin touch a good salesman. So I was saying,
smart job, mister Leib. Is he like the one who's
like calming them down while.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Try Yeah, I don't know, I have no idea. In
nineteen ninety six, the state of Illinois sued Kevin and
Jules because they were trying to set up their own
illegal pyramid scheme, and those two they settled with Illinois
in seven other states by promising to stop doing illegal stuff.
So Kevin and Jewles they part ways, but it's amicable.

(15:02):
Jules thinks of Kevin as his life coach and credits
him with opening his world up to the glory of
multi level marketing.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, he's like I used to be on that cocaine,
but now dreamed Kevin.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
He stayed the course. He went bigger, He went to television.
He pulled to Sheryl Sandberg. He didn't bully subordinates to
snuggle with him in beds on transatlantic flights. Please read
the memoir Careless People for more on that note. He
leaned in, Of course, he leaned in on infomercials. He
got a taste of this working for Nutrition for Life.

(15:36):
Now he's like, I'm going to take it to the
big time. I'm kevin, I go big.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Bigger, Yes, seven states, I want to get to ten
or eleven states.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
He started with his classic mega memory training program, like
the one that he'd done the seminars for the Social
Security number farming. Then he had the sable hair farming system.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Hair farming is taking hair.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
It promised to quote end hairs in the human race.
Then there was doctor Callahan's addiction breaking system, and this
was supposed to break a person of any addiction in
sixty seconds quote virtually one hundred percent of the time.
Sixty second, sixty seconds.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Sixty seconds to freedom.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
You'll like this. The system was supposedly discovered when this
quote doctor Callahan was studying quantum physics. Oh of course
it's big, if true, s Saron a huge.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
I mean they don't want you to know.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Well. Then he was also selling Howard Berg's Mega reading
speed reading program. All those Oh yeah, there was also
the perfect lift, non surgical facelift. I mean, that's self explanatory.
Eden's secret Nature's Purifying product. Okay, I want to know
what that was. I guess some of your favorite materials.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Oh okay, now just tell me.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
I don't want to guess magnets. Magnets secret Nature's Purifying
product was magnetic toe rings and magnetic mattress pads. Then
there was crocodile protein peptide. Say that again, crocodile protein peptide.
And biotape that was an adhesive tape that he said

(17:11):
would permanently treat pain by quote re establishing broken electrical
connections in the body.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Wow, he was like a real fight, oh frontiers for
what we now live with.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
Really, he was pitching more than fifty bogus products, and
he made more than a thousand infomercials, but not all
of us made it to the air, like maybe three
hundred or so, because he wanted like Cream of the Cross.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
By two thousand and five, his media empire was worth
two billion with a B dollars.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
So he was doing all that in the nineties.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah, okay. Two thousand and five Washington Post article describes
him as such quote, This seems like a good time
to note how extremely well dressed Kevin Trudeau is in
the fine tradition of TV salesman and televangelists. Over the
dress shirt is a buttercolored tie that precisely matches the
pocket square tucked into his luxury Brioni suit. He wears

(18:02):
alligator shoes. On his left wrist is a Rolex masterpiece
dripping with diamonds, and on his right ring finger is
a rock so big a child could choke on it.
So if you think that this sounds like someone flying
under the radar, you're wrong, not at all.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, he's so far.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
No, he was. He was rich in two thousand and five,
despite the fact that in nineteen ninety eight the FTC
came calling.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Oh thankfully somebody.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
He said that pretty much all his stuff was false
and misleading. A court order barred him from making false
claims for products in the future, basically banning him from
his greatest skill. And they made him pay. Yeah, they
made him pay five hundred thousand dollars in consumer redress,
established a five hundred thousand dollars performance bond to ensure compliance,

(18:52):
and then separately they went after this other thing that
he was selling, coral calcium Supreme. And so, coral calcium
Supreme was a dietary supplement that he claimed was made
from Japanese marine coral, and he said it provided the
same amount of bioavailable calcium as two gallons of milk
two gallons, and it could be absorbed into the body

(19:12):
faster than ordinary calcium, and it could cure cancer, heart disease,
high blood pressure, lupus. All again, big if true Zerin
June of two thousand and three, the FTC filed the
complaint alleging that the claims about coral calcium Supreme were
false unsubstantiated. He entered into a stipulated preliminary injunction that

(19:36):
barred him from continuing to make that claims about coral
calcium Supreme and then and biotape too. Of course the
market yeah, so, of course. A year later he was
found in contempt of court for violating this injunction where
he sent out direct mail pieces and made an infomercial
for coral calcium Supreme. Let's take a break. How great

(20:00):
would it be if one of his ads came on like,
don't buy it, everybody, please buy all the other stuff
and the ads. But if you hear rue for Coral
Calcium Supreme closure wallet zaren. When we left off, Kevin

(20:31):
got in trouble for pitching coral Calcium Supreme when he'd
been barred from doing so. I guess he was just
trying to clear the warehouse.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
But he's worth two billion dollars and his fines were like,
what a million and a half?

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Yeah, yeah, that was like, you know what, FTC fine,
he's settled. The settlement quote bans him from appearing, in, producing,
or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service,
or program to the public, except for truthful infomercials for
infomational publications. In addition, Trudeau cannot make disease or health

(21:04):
benefits claims for any type of product, service, or program
in any advertising, including print, radio, internet, television, and direct
mail solicitations, regardless of the format and duration. Trudeau agreed
to these prohibitions to pay the FTC two million dollars
to settle charges he falsely claimed that the coral calcium
product can cure cancer and other serious diseases.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
So he's still like only having to pay like about
one percent of his wealth or not even one thousand
of his wealth.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
He was the only person ever banned from selling a
product on television.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
Really, he's the only one. Yeah wow, and there's been
some people on me.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
He's got he's got to pay that two million. He's
like fine. He gives them five hundred thousand cash his
house in Ohi, California, that was one point five million,
and then threw in his two thousand and three Mercedes
and they said, you know what, waiting the deal. Yeah,
if you misrepresented your finance, we are going to come
at you for another eighteen million. Okay, Like yikes. So

(22:03):
why why would he do all this? Why would he
scam these people?

Speaker 2 (22:07):
He doesn't respect other people? Why most likely to succeed?

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Why would he do this even when the government tells
knock it off?

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Why would he do that?

Speaker 3 (22:17):
There's a reason. The Brotherhood, not Brotherhood, the showtime drama
about Rhode Island corrupt politicians. No, the Brotherhood, and not
the Brotherhood of Eternal Love your drug dealer poicy of course.
Now the Brotherhood. It goes like this. When he was
in his twenties, Kevin was approached by a group called
the Brotherhood natural, or so he claims, He later wrote

(22:40):
that he could see why they targeted him. Quote, I
fit a certain profile, being adopted, needing to prove myself, obsessive,
desire to make money, no real family attachments, high IQ,
willing to bend or even break the rules, all put
me in a category of being an excellent candidate. He

(23:00):
said that the deal they offered him was pretty straightforward.
Quote they wanted to use my talents and abilities for
their purposes of increasing their own billions and their own power,
control and influence over the masses, and exchange. I would
receive health secrets, access to the inner circles of the
rich and powerful, and the ability to live a life
of luxury.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
So this is like the coolest Illuminati. Yeah, it's like
a motorcycle gang Illuminati.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
And then he said not accepting would mean a life
of meritocracy, financial struggles, and unfulfillment. It was simply an
offer I couldn't refuse. They're like, we have health secrets, So, Kevin,
it makes sense now, I mean that's the old logical explanation.
Yeah now, oh okay, the Brotherhood, I get it. He
said he was with the Brotherhood for twenty years and

(23:50):
it gave him a sneak peek into the lives of
the wealthy and powerful, and most importantly, he really got
to understand and see how they are the puppet masters
for the rest of us. He saw, yes, and Ron Peel,
he said, he saw everything. He saw factories quote where
food is being genetically modified and manufactured with the sole

(24:12):
purpose of making people fatter. And then he said he
was tutored to the use of quote secret brainwashing techniques
developed by the CIA that are being used in the
news media and in advertisements for certain products. That's what
gangster man so like someone's goofy Facebook. Do you know
what else he saw? I know, I want to guess

(24:33):
Area fifty one. Oh of course, yeah, hangar eighteen bro,
he knows too much. He said. He saw spaceships and
dead aliens in there.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Triangle size.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
What did the Brotherhood get out of letting Kevin Peek
into their inner working.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
And also work with her for twenty years.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
He would never tell anyone the specifics, but he did say.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
Quote you wouldn't name names.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
I'm assuming no, he said, quote. I was used in
covert operations around the world. I was virtually on call
twenty four hours a day, seven days Awa, all while
making hundreds of millions of dollars. They're like, Kevin, could
you be an international man of mystery the CIA? Yeah, baby.

(25:12):
He said that after two decades it just became too much.
He had to speak up. He had to tell the
world quote, I've seen the light. I was on the
dark side doing evil. Now I have repented, changed my
ways and turned my life around. I regret and am
very sorry for all of the bad things I've done
in my life. Now I'm going against the masters that

(25:34):
I once served. I am telling people the truth about
big pharma, the food industry, the oil industry, governments, and
the media. And so how does he go against his masters?
He wrote a book.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
There you go, a book I thought a whole seminar.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
No and too well. And two thousand and four he
published a book called Natural Cures They Don't Want you
to Know about Mysterious.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, it's starting to sound familiar.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
Act.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
He's the bestseller New York Times Wall Street Journalist. It
was number two on the USA Today charts.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
So you know, it's got to be cost to be
a page.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
By two thousand and six, he says he'd sold five
million copies. I'm not sure, I'm believing that one. But
he said most of his books were sold over the phone,
which I guess is the thing. The books were twenty
nine to ninety five.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Of pop no time life books.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, so what's in the book?

Speaker 2 (26:25):
What the book?

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Elizabeth good question? Natural remedies?

Speaker 2 (26:28):
Maybe that they don't want you to know that.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
They the mysterious They don't. He explains how everything from
like the common cold to heart disease can be cured
with crocodile protein peptidey garlic no U CPP rockadel protein weptide.
He also blows the whistle on the Brotherhood.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
He outlines how the federal government, pharmaceutical companies in the
media are doing all they can to keep Americans from
living way beyond one hundred years. Oh really, Yeah, that
we're just itching to do that and they're holding.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Our bodies want to do but the ghost that wouldn't
be good for the text.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
My mind is like I think I'm good.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
My body is like raring to go champing at the
so he.

Speaker 3 (27:08):
Tells in the book, like he hasn't been sick in decades.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
He should call that guy, Brian Johnson or whatever forever
he buys apparently everything.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
He's probably read this book.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
He's probably on crocodile tears.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
His biggest push is for people to drink lots of water.
I can get behind that, like I'm all for hydration.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Sure, that's good.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
He said that diet soda is just as bad as
the regular stuff and causes weight gain and depression.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
You can use it as a wood glue. That is true. Well,
you eat up diet coch you can use but it's
still just it's a tastyolue.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Other gems in the book coral will cure cancer. There's
a special shampoo that will reverse baldness.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Ah, does he have magnetic underwear for sale?

Speaker 3 (27:47):
Because he because I hear you have more magnetic he goes.
He repeats a lot of his stuff. He says, there's
an he has an almost instantaneous method for beating any
addiction for okay. He talks about how MS can be
cured by sleeping on magnetic mattress pads.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Multiple sclerosis.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
This is all Yeah, it's all sounding familiar. He's just reading.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
He's playing the heads.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
But without going on TV.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
In the book.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
He says in the book that prescription drugs are basically
poison like even stuff for diabetes and blood cloths total poison.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah, he gets very RFK junior. He says, quote medical
science has absolutely one hundred percent failed in the curing
and prevention of illness, sickness, and disease.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Like as opposed to the ancients who were known for
their health.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
And talk to some people who I don't know beat cancer. Yeah,
stop taking non prescription and prescription drugs, including vaccines, he says.
Quote sunblock has been shown to cause cancer. Quote don't
drink tap water. Quote animals in the wild virtually never
gets sick. Oh really true. Quote get fifteen colonics in

(28:58):
thirty days. Blow yourself out. Quote wear white. The closer
you get to white, the more positive energy you bring
to your energetic field. I wear anything white, automatically going
to spill something on myself, Like I can go days
weeks without spilling anything. I put a white shirt on Boom, Done,
done so. The New York Consumer Board was appalled by him.

(29:23):
Quote this book is exploiting and misleading people who are
searching for cures to serious illnesses, said Teresa Santiago, the
New York Consumer Board chairman. What they discover is page
after page of pure speculation from cover to cover. This
book is a fraud. People with real illnesses are being misled.
The board also pointed out that the quote on the

(29:44):
back cover of the book, one from Herbert Lay, former
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, sounds a lot like an endorsement.
And the only problem is that Lay died years before
the book was written.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Well, you don't know when you put the material before light.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
They probably know each other for the brotherhood. So once
again the FTC wanted to step in, but they couldn't.
Why not, The book was protected by the First Amendment,
God bless it. Free speech. Interesting, he wasn't pushing products.
He was pushing ideas that could lead the reader to products.
And because of all this, he was able to get
back on the airwaves. He was allowed to run infomercials

(30:20):
for his book despite the lifetime ban, because he was
advertising the book, not products.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
In the book was considered a product.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Exactly, and so and now there's that little clause in
there about the ban that it has to be informational material.
So yeah, he had I'm sure he looked that over
and was like, oh, are you fools. He had a
half hour infomercial for natural cures that ran almost one
hundred and fifty times a week, and once more he's
in the spotlight. He's raking in the dough. He went

(30:50):
on a bit of a side quest here. In two
thousand and five he founded the International Pool Tour. Pool
is in billiards.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Oh hey, I was thinking he was like hot boxing
around and people's backyards like.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
A swimming pool.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
There's a really big one down here.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
In ir International Pool Tour Billiards Tour. Yeah. He wanted
to quote turn eight ball into a viable big league sport.
Winners could take home five hundred thousand dollars prizes. First
round losers were guaranteed five thousand dollars. Your head's at
most pool hustlers were cheap. They're not they're not high
rollers at all, and they weren't working with like large winning.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Like Minnesota fast.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
So this was huge, Like if you're a pool shark
and you see these numbers floating around. So they all
slithered out into the light and signed up for this thing.

Speaker 2 (31:40):
I don't like nine balls.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
He knew that qualifying for the tour would mark them
as professional hustlers for good.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
And like that's not good for business.

Speaker 3 (31:49):
And you know, no pun intended black ball though, but
the money was just irresistible, right, So for a little
while it was a huge success. But nothing gold can stay,
especially when you're talking about pitting pool hustlers against each other.
Who knew zaren Yes close as I want you to
picture it. It's two thousand and eight. The economy is tanking.

(32:21):
People are desperate. You have a job that pays pretty well.
You were hired a couple of years ago to work
for the International Pool Tour. You help coordinate the events.
The owner of the tour, this guy named Kevin, is
a flashy fellow who lives large, fancy suits, nice cars,
the works, and he's a massed a tournament, just crawling
with the craziest pool playing characters around. You're sitting in

(32:43):
a small conference room at a casino and Reno, Nevada.
The muffled sound of slot machines hums in the background
as you tap away at your laptop. The first gig
you worked for IPT was the North American Open in
two thousand and six, held at the Venetian in Las Vegas.
Two hundred players from more than forty countries. There was
two million dollars in prize money, and the whole thing

(33:04):
was broadcast live in Europe for one week straight in primetime.
It was big, but ipt has been slowing down since then.
You read the latest email you've received and blink hard.
The order you've been given isn't a fun one. You're
going to make a lot of people very unhappy. You
get up from the table where you're sitting and walk
out to the casino floor. Navigating the slot machines and

(33:27):
the tables, you head to a makeshift arena area set
up for the tournament. You open the double doors, enter
the room, and let them close quietly behind you. Once shut,
they silenced. The casino floor. In front of you are
a smattering of pool tables. A long table runs along
one side of the room, with space for observers and judges.
Groups of pool players mill around. They all abide by

(33:49):
the tournament dress code. Suits, long sleeved shirts, leather shoes.
There's a whole lot of pin striping going on here,
and many of the gentlemen feel that a maroon dress
shirt really classic. Things up. A custodian vacuums the carpet
on the other side of the enormous room. You pick
up a clipboard and tap a pen against it to
get everyone's attention. They turn and look at you. The

(34:10):
chatter stops, so does the vacuum. You're here to pay
us out. A guy in a fedora asks, well, little
announcement everyone, You say, uh about the prize and participation money?
The pool shark eyes all narrow at you. One guy
stares menacingly while chalking the end of a pool cue. Yeah,

(34:30):
what about it? He mutters. You tell them, and, halting
stumbling sentences, that the tournament is not able to pay
out any of that money at this time. Two of
the pool sharks toss their cues to the ground. They
all step forward towards you. You stammer that they'll get paid,
just not immediately, and it won't be all of the
money at once. They'll each be put on a payment plan.

(34:52):
Payment plan. One guy yells you, nod. You're just telling
them what the email you got said to say. And
you pulled up the account information for the tour. There's
nothing in those bank accounts empty. Thirteen million dollars seems
to have vanished. Yes, payment plan, you repeat back. The
group mutter and began to scatter, grabbing their things and

(35:12):
shoving their cues into custom carrier bags. We'll all get paid,
you announced weekly to the departing pool hustlers. One lifts
his arm and gives you the finger as he walks away.
Will get paid. You realize you're telling yourself too, zaren.
They did not get paid. Ever, let's stop here. When
we come back, more hustling and not just hustling of

(35:34):
the hustlers, zarenzab So when we left off, Kevin Trudeau

(35:59):
had launched to pool tournament with much fanfare and excitement,
only for the whole thing to go belly up and
implode a couple of years later.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
Yes, I think I have vague memories of this pool tour.

Speaker 3 (36:09):
Oh yeah. He also dabbled in the casino of it
all and sold a supposedly quote surefire system for winning
it backrap not my game, but now dad endeavor raked
in over a million bucks for him.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Did he also do TV infomercials for this?

Speaker 3 (36:26):
Probably?

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Okay, so hazy.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Memory late night yet, But as you can tell, it
didn't rake in as much of anything for the dupes
who fell for as it did for him. In two
thousand and nine, he tapped into the self help market
and he released a fourteen CD set called Your Wish
is Your Command? There it is, he said. It was
recorded at a secret location in the Swiss Alps, and

(36:50):
it was a guide to success obviously, and it connected
to the Brotherhood of course. This fourteen CD set was
sharing with the world all the tips from mega success
that he picked up from his time in the Brotherhood.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
He's sharing a lot of what they don't want us
to know.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
They the mysterious they so Spinning off from this, Kevin
started his own brotherhood, a quote exclusive private membership only
club called the Global Information Network or GION Player's Club
International Yes, per Business Insider quote, a membership organization designed
to offer access to numerous motivational speakers for a monthly

(37:27):
subscription fee and a multi level marketing company. GION was
set up with the assistance of a quote council made
up of thirty billionaires and other powerful figures. Trudeau claimed.
Though the council remained anonymous, the organization attracted more than
thirty thousand members at his peak and brought in millions
of dollars a month. Among this advisory council, the website

(37:51):
boasted were quote a former Prime Minister, Members of various
royal families, a former president of a major country, general's billionaires,
cooon's industrialist politicians, a current Supreme Court judge, major media moguls,
and several celebrities. You would know my name, so.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
I can actually get the inside screw from Claire Thompas.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
I was going to say, that has to be who
it is. It has to be Clarence Thomas. Of course,
if you joined, you had to recruit other members and
then you got a little of their dues as a fighter.
And this became a huge cash cow for Kevin. But
it wasn't enough, because nothing ever was. He He had
another scam going those gaining steam, which is two thousand

(38:32):
and seven, he released the weight loss cure they don't
want you to know about, and it was basically based
on Simeon's Protocol, which is a technique developed by a
British doctor in the fifties that was purported to reset
the hypothalamus. Oh okay, that would let the patient lose weight.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
I thought, I just reseat the glycemic index.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
The hyper According to Business Insider again quote among other things,
the cure, which includes an array of dos and don't
spread over four stages, requires the subject to limit him
or herself to five hundred calories per day for a period,
walk for an hour a day, receive regular liver, parasite,
heavy metal, and colon cleanses, and take daily doses of

(39:17):
coral calcium. He or she is also advised to avoid
air conditioning and fluorescent lighting, microwaved food, over the counter medications,
prescription medications, fast food, and food from national chains. Most important,
this subject must receive regular injections of human choreonic GONADOTROPINADA tropes.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
But also this is basically all the stuff RFK is
literally selling now.

Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah, totally pushing hCG. So that's a hormone found in
the human placenta. hCG is essential to Simeon's protocol, though
in the US it can be taken only with a prescription.
So this one the ft he could not ignore or
let me.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
I really cannot know.

Speaker 3 (40:03):
So, along with the US Attorney's Office, they determined that
the infomercials for the Weight Loss Cure were totally misrepresenting
what was in the actual book. So the infomercials said
that quote, the protocol can be completed at home and
you don't have to go to a clinic to do it,
but that's not what the book says. In the book,
Kevin tells the reader that you have to get your
injections from your doctor, and you can't do your own colonics.

(40:26):
You have to go to a pro for that.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Sure, you really shouldn't put the hose up your own.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
And while the book was very specific about hCG, the
infomercials just talked about quote a miracle, all natural substance
that you can get anywhere. So yeah, whatever, Kevin. He
sold more than an eight hundred and fifty thousand copies
of the book and he made around thirty nine million
dollars off of it.

Speaker 2 (40:47):
Are you kidding?

Speaker 3 (40:48):
We're in the wrong business.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I was thinking the exact same thing. Why do we
have morals? Like?

Speaker 3 (40:52):
Why holding us back? Holding us back? A court order?

Speaker 2 (40:57):
Was it like people, Elizabeth, That's what's told goes back
this whole like, oh, I want entertain people, I respect people,
and like we should be just raking stuff.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
We should It would be as much.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
It's like rolling a ball down hill but into a
pile of money.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Oh man, it's just not the cards for us. So
he gets this court order forbidding him from running the infomercials.
He's undeterred. In a year's time, he ran the infomercials
thirty two thousand times. And these are real corkers, The
Chicago Tribune wrote, quote Trudeau described being virtually immune to

(41:36):
weight gain despite a diet that he said includes prime rib, gravy, butter,
hot fudge, Sundays, wine and beer. No hunger, no deprivation,
no exercise, Trudeau says in the ad, I can eat
whatever I want now anything and as much as I want,
anytime I want, no restrictions now. So. In two thousand
and seven, he was finally found in contempt of his

(41:58):
TV ban, and the next year a federal judge banned
him again from infomercials in which he had an interest,
and that was to last for three years. He also
had to pay back thirty seven points six million dollars
to consumers for misrepresenting the contents of his book, and
there was a receiver appointed and they were able to
find some of the money, but not all of it, like,

(42:19):
not even close. In twenty thirteen, he was held into
contempt for never paying the thirty seven point six million
that he owed, so a judge froze's assets, including a pen.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Somebody has a reasonable move instead of it's like, come on,
don't do this, caveat.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Right, So they got his businesses offshore accounts. The judge
wrote that he has seen quote evidence that Trudeau is
living much more like a prince than the pauper he
professes to be. Like, ooh, do tell well, he used
to he used high price lawyers. He drove a three
hundred and forty thousand dollars Bentley. He had two personal

(42:53):
chefs and a butler. Yeah, according to the Chicago Tribune quote.
The government also found that he'd recently spent eight hundred
and ninety four dollars and thirty cents on a single
visit to a liquor store, seven hundred and eighty dollars
and forty eight cents in two trips to whole foods,
which I'm like, well I could, Yeah, you do, three
hundred and fifty nine dollars for two haircuts at Vidal Sassoon,

(43:16):
one fifty seven dollars and eighty eight cents on high
end meat products at Grasslandbeef dot com. And nine hundred
twenty dollars and eighty six cents on cigars. Trudeau told
the judge he was forced to use the bank accounts
the court had frozen because quote, I had no money
for food, adding that he wanted to comply. Who wanted
to comply with the course orders? And quote wasn't thinking

(43:39):
when he mistakenly got the pricey Haircutsops.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
I don't know what I was thinking. It's the only
hairplace I know.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
I know, this is just I get in this habit.
You know, you get in your car and you forget
where you're driving. You started driving exactly. So no one
really knew how much money he'd made at this point,
Like he told people, who's worth north of two hundred million,
and that to be a low ball estimate. Since it
looked like he was taking home twenty percent of sales
revenue for everything, A lot of analysts suspect he was

(44:07):
a billionaire, which is wild. We do know that between
nineteen ninety nine and twenty thirteen he pulled in more
than five hundred million in revenue, and the government wanted
its hands on this loop.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
And also he could be taking some of this money
and putting it into like legitimate things like apartment complexes
and reaping money that way.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
Yeah, yeah, all those investments Kevin, he's determined to keep
the government away. Business insider wrote, quote, A good bit
of that money five million dollars went to pay a
specialist in asset protection, Mark Lane, who court record show
helped him set up more than two dozen business entities
in Belize, Nevis, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Mauritius, the Isle of Man, Panama,

(44:51):
the Cook Islands, and the Seychelles, places where money can
be squirreled away beyond the reach of the US guy.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
He's been down the list of where you had money.
Really the checklist, there's like the Panama papers. He's like,
here's where all the money goes.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
Yeah, Well, then he started moving stuff around. One of
his company's Natural Cures Holdings was sold to a former
business associate for one hundred thousand dollars to hide that asset.
Other companies were transferred to his wife, Natasha Babanko. She
had nothing to do with the businesses at all. Kevin
was not good at covering his tracks and all this.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
Is because of arrogance or just like.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
I think it's yeah, a little bit of arrogance and just.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Think going to do he keeps getting like cop and
not really caught.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
He puts some of his plans in writing. He sent
emails to business associates with like how is all going
to go down?

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Always smart?

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Quote gi N must get money out of the USA
and into banks overseas. Uh so you know he's little
operation bringing in millions.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
Of money, still doing magic tricks apparently.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
Quote never keep more money in the USA than needed.
Every company needs all caps accounts offshore all caps. And
then like a dozen exclamation points, he washed my casinos,
like doing the cash for chips for cash thing. He
bought gold bars when the government asked, He's like, dude,
I'm broke. All I have is a couple of suitcases

(46:10):
of clothes. That's it. And he said pretty much every
other thing like money, trinkets, gifts, any random items were
sold off for cash by the receiver.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
And just keeping the money off shore so where the
US government can't get to it or track it.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
Yeah. And in twenty thirteen, the court appointed receiver finally
got their hands on GIL and it was eventually sold
off to a bunch of Kevin's former associates for two
hundred thousand dollars plush a portion of the membership fees.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
They can make it illegitition.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
It still exists today. There's a website. It's amazing. It
explains that there are twelve membership levels, and there's a
chart that tells you how much the membership fees are
for each level, like almost so, for level one, the
initiation fee is fifteen hundred dollars and monthly dues are
one hundred and fifty bucks. The benefits column says that

(46:57):
this level gets access to the level membership sections of
the GIN website and access to all GIN events with
ticket purchase, So they let you into something that you
buy tickets for. Got it the world's worst gym membership.
The cash, Bonuses, perks reward column on the chart for
level one simply reads classified yeah, which is what every

(47:22):
cell in the rest of the chart reads for all
the other levels classified darn. So what are the events?

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Elizabeth?

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Four major weekend events each year, including an annual five
night luxury Caribbean cruise always always, four one day seminars
and awards, rallies every year, Workshops, webinars, expos quote mastering
the success mastery course events.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
This is so the Amway Timeshare community.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
They have GIN Adventures, local chapter meetings, symposium, global convention
they made in hotels all over the world. So they
claim five star resorts, lots of like Fairmount and four
seasons properties, as well as Trump, Dorrel and Florida. That's
a seal equality. The website says that they are also
in the process of establishing clubhouses all over the world,

(48:17):
even buying a cruise ship. I have no idea how
anyone with two brain cells to rub together would look
at this and think it's on the up and up.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
But what do I know to tell you about the
stay of the world.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
I know, so back to Kevin. Twenty fourteen, Kevin was
sentenced to ten years for quote contempt for violating a
two thousand and four court order that prohibited him from
making deceptive television commercials that misrepresented the contents of his
weight loss cure book. You know who is inside with
him in the clink.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Bernie Madoff no.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Close, former Illinois Congressman, Jesse Jackson Junior, a bunch of mayors,
and Jeffrey Skilling, former CEO of enron It's White Collar
Cooks Central epou So. November of twenty twenty two, he
got out of prison. He still owes the government money.
FTC lawyers say there's still thirty million dollars unaccounted for.

(49:06):
Do you remember his wife, Natasha.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
But bank Bank Oh yeah, hell yeah, she's.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Now his ex wife.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
She voluntarily handed over documents to the FTC that she
took from their mansion outside of Chicago and from their
place in Zurich, Switzerland.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
She's like, what can I keep if I gave you
this paperwork?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
She said that these revealed the location of all of
his overseas assets.

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Oh snaw.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
And she told the FTC lawyers that the Zurich house
was full of all these like jewels and gold bars.
Kevin was like, oh, that's all Natasha's. Natasha said that
some of it was in safe deposit boxes in her name,
but she's not the one who put it all in there.
The Chicago Sutimes. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
I know she's cooperating. It seems like she's totally trying
to get free of this mass while still holding what
she can.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
Yeah. The Chicago Sun Times reported quote the first time
she had ever seen a gold bar, but Banko said
was when a TSA agent search Trudeau's carry on bag
at O'Hare airport pulled out gold bar In the years
that followed, she saw Trudeau handling them often at their
home in oak Brook, and once saw him put a
box of gold bars into a duffel bag before a

(50:12):
spur of the moment trip to Guatemala a box of them. Yeah.
I would see gold bars next to the jewelry, see
him taking them in and out of the safe. She said.
It was a very common thing to see, like him
smoking a cigar every day.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
To touch gold. Yeah, some people touch grass. He touched
the gold.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
In January of twenty twenty three. He was found in
contempt for failing to report to court in the spring
of twenty two after he ended his time in a
half way house after he did eight years inside. He
managed to not get sent back inside for that one,
though sometimes reported that as of twenty twenty three, quote
from the few million dollars in assets identified by the receiver,

(50:51):
the FTC has twice made payouts to around six hundred
thousand people who bought copies of Trudeau's books, but the
checks totaled around twenty five dollars.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
They basically got the price of the.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
They got a refund. It's a pittance, you know, who
wasn't living on a pittance. Kevin Elizabeth Fox thirty two
Chicago reported that quote, the Kevin Trudeau fan club, founded
by devoted followers to route money into Trudeau's commissary account
while he was serving a federal prison sentence for making
fraudulent claims and infomercials, has raised approximately three million dollars

(51:26):
his fan club fan Club for prison commissary. How much
ram he's a political prisoner? Yeah? Quote. Of the three
million raised, only a little more than a million dollars
has gone to pay the FTC commissioned Lawyer Jonathan Cohen
noted while Trudeau has directed the fan club manager to
make seven five hundred dollars payments to quote volunteers who

(51:50):
helped maintain his website, and also to a woman Cohen
identified as Trudeau's girlfriend. Cohen also noted that the fan
club website until recently, was selling a Tesla device with
claims that it would lower blood pressure and blood sugar,
reduce inflammation, and increase circulation, all health benefits. Trudeau himself
is barred by the court from promoting the club counted

(52:12):
several donors who made multiple five figure gifts.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Five figure lizard, why are we cursed with morals. No,
there are so many suckers out there, apparently.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
See Kevin, you know, can't stop, won't stop. Kevin also
makes sense meet by putting together speaking gigs, and he
got a job. He was hired as a salaried employee
of the Global Information Network hired. What's your ridiculous takeaway that.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
There are still after all of this people giving him
five figure like donations. Like I you know that I
was raised with the idea that likely not really good.
It's not like my dad's celebrated con men, but he
basically glorified him, but he really was amused by them
and love the story. So I learned a lot about

(53:02):
the criminals of the world, you know, the Italian gangsters,
con men of America's history. But you'd always would telling me,
like you know the whole like WC. Fields, which I've
quoted before, and never give a sucker and even break.
But I and it bothers me that I just cannot,
as I keep joking, profit off this awareness. But there
are so many suckers and they have so much money,

(53:23):
Like how do they have this money other than like inheritance?
How do they have this? Like how are you going
through the world and how are not like apparently there's
just not enough condon people out there who are like
vacuuming up funds from these people that they are able
to get so far in life.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
I think a lot of amazing is, you know. I
think a lot of it is that people have some
money and they spend it on things like this, on
like a hope and a dream that it will get
them more and other things go on to then credit
and then that's when you see them declaring bankruptcy.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
I definitely feel bad for these people as victims of them.
I don't want to say hubrists, because it's not that,
but like their lack of self regard that they can
think that somebody like Kevin is going to actually look
out for them and give them the inside scoop on
something about their health or how to be the person
they've always wanted to be. I ultimately I feel very
bad for them, but I'm astounded that they have so

(54:14):
much when I know a lot of really competent people
who have so little.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
And I'm always like, but I think too that this
highlights the sort of the curse of critical thinking, is
that it so often leads to disappointment that when you
hear something and you read it or see it and
then you think, is this true and you look it
up and of course it's not. Well, there's the disappointment
that this magic cure isn't out there, or you know,

(54:39):
they're they always talk about, you know, this ancient cure
that no one recognizes.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
Yeah they're ancient or brand new.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Yeah, and it's like, well, no, that's time science works.
And you know, there's a reason why we don't do these.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Things not peer reviewed.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
But it's disappointing because you want to have the key
that opens something up, or even if it's something of outrage.
You know, I have friends who forward me things on Instagram, uh,
the little reels or whatever is, and it's some like
it's gonna get you all mad because they'll say that,
you know, some program has been implemented or whatever. Sure,

(55:12):
and it doesn't sound quite right. And when you go
and actually look it up, your critical thinking skills take
the wind out of the sales.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
And that's the other things. There's so many scams these days.
How many people. I don't know how people still have
money with all the scams. Honestly, even legitimate companies basically
scam you where it's like, yeah, you get give them
your email, and all of a sudden they're like not
lying to you, but essentially lying to you about what
is available, what you can do and then you can
involve you like you find out you can't or like
unsubscribing as difficult, like everything is just so scamming.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
Things that you would normally buy and be won and
done become a subscription.

Speaker 2 (55:44):
Oh got it.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Don't get me started, Like you know, the brakes on
your car.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Anyway, Yeah, what's your ridiculous takeaway, Lizabeth?

Speaker 3 (55:52):
The scamming? Like I just I see these things and
I'm just blown away that people aren't automatically reading it
as an absolute scam, and especially a lot of the
health stuff.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Totally, and it has become more popular. You think people
like you get the idea like, oh, I should be
a little wary because there's so much and I've heard
for so many years now about so many stories. But
that's not the case. They're like, no, no, this is the one.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Well, and the thing is is that the disappointment of
critical thinking and all of this is that all of
his claims are that no, it's not easy, that there
are things that you have that are hard to do
health wise, there are also things that are inevitable. Yeah,
so that's my takeaway. That's my takeaway. I need to
talk back.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Oh my god, I went.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Cheat why Saron and Elizabeth?

Speaker 4 (56:45):
This this chance from Colorado And I'm currently listening to
your Black Panthers Skyjacker to school Teacher episode, and I
just wanted to give a heartfelt shout out to everyone
that's needed a free breakfast or lunch and your appreciation
for the institutions that provide those for us. I was
went a hungry school kid, and I understand how hard

(57:08):
it is to learn on an empty belly. Appreciate y'all.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
Hell, yes, we definitely appreciate. Yes, yes, yes, yes, a
million times. Yes. It's you know, you think about the
basic things that we as human beings have to do
for other human beings and caring for them, and like
particularly for children, like you're saying, like you can't learn
on a hungry belly. Oh yeah, and it makes a
world of difference. So think about, you know, putting your

(57:33):
support toward that children and adults too.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
And we've talked about jokingly but in all serious terms,
we've talked about like, oh, I want to like go
change myself or change the world. Feeding somebody, especially a
child is a great place to start to change both
yourself and the world in a legitimate way. And it's
not very difficult, and not.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
To put it in demonish it. There's an incredible return
on investments.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
Exactly, you know, and you will feel a lot better
about yourself if you important, so if you want to
get into selfish terms and also be able to see, oh,
look at what I've done all the way around.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Yeah, it's a good feeling. That's it for today. You
can find us online at ridiculous crime dot com. Did
you know they got good news at the website?

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Wait news?

Speaker 3 (58:13):
Yeah, the website just got its test results back and
it is negative for correctal cancer.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
They sent their poop in the website.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Did it was hard to collect?

Speaker 3 (58:23):
It was really Yeah. I wasn't there, but apparently, like
you go into those.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Servers and like I heard the straining.

Speaker 3 (58:29):
Oh really, Oh yikes. We're also a Ridiculous Crime on
both Blue Sky and Instagram. We're on YouTube at Ridiculous
Crime Pod. Email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com.
Leave a talk back on the iHeart app reach Out.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,

(58:50):
produced and edited by the Guy who Knows what they
don't want you to know, but it's the stuff you
should know. Dave Cousten starring Emily's Rutger is Judith Research,
which is by Global Information Network Senior Vice President of
Possible Cruise Ships Marissa Brown. The theme song is by
Global Information Network members Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Post
wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guests heron makeup

(59:12):
by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre. Executive producers are Coral Calcium
Futures Traders, Ben Boleen and Noel Brown. Predus Crime, Say
It One More Time, Gequeous Crime.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my Heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.