Skip to footer

Kevin Trudeau jailed, then released, after spending $359 on two haircuts

Kevin Trudeau owes the FTC more than $37 million in fines, but he says he has no money. A judge ruled Wednesday that Kevin Trudeau has been spending lavishly, and order him to jail. On Thursday, he was released.

|
(AP Photo/The Chicago Sun-Times, John Kim, File)
Kevin Trudeau gives photographers a thumb's up in 2010 in Chicago. A federal judge has found author and infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau in contempt of court for failing to pay a more than $37 million fine imposed over misleading ads for one of his popular weight-loss books.
  • By Staff Associated Press

| Chicago

UPDATED 4:30 p.m.

A federal judge in Chicago has released infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau from jail. Trudeau spent the night in jail after the judge ruled that he violated court orders to stop his over-the-top spending and pay a more than $37 million fine.

Trudeau has claimed he has no money to pay the fine, which stems from alleged false claims about his weight-loss book.

Lawyers for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) presented evidence Wednesday that Trudeau has spent $900 at a liquor store, $920 on cigars and $359 on two haircuts at Vidal Sasoon.

US District Judge Robert Gettleman told Trudeau to discuss his assets with a court-appointed receiver while in jail and return to court Thursday.

Gettleman told Trudeau: "This is not an infomercial. You can't talk your way out of this."

On Thursday, Gettleman said "I'm going to release you today," he told Trudeau, who was dressed in an orange jumpsuit after spending a night at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. "If I'm not satisfied that you've been forthright with them, you might be wearing the same color you're wearing right now," according to The Chicago Tribune.

The judge set another hearing for Sept. 26.

In July, Gettleman froze assets Trudeau allegedly controls and held him in contempt of court.

ABC News reports that the "The $37 million penalty at the root of this dispute was formally entered in 2010 when Judge Gettleman ruled Trudeau had made misleading claims in infomercials for his best-selling book, "The Weight Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You to Know About."

The FTC's complaint in that case alleged Trudeau had bamboozled hundreds of thousands of consumers with claims that the diet - which calls for prolonged periods of extreme calorie restriction, off-label injections and high-colonic enemas - was "easy." The judge ordered Trudeau to compensate any consumer who bought the book after viewing one of the ads."

NBC News Channel 5 in Chicago reports that Trudeau withdrew $17,000 from a bank in Australia in July, according to an attorney who works with the receiver trying to recover the $37 million fine.

The attorney says: “I am being very straightforward and am not hiding anything,” Trudeau wrote in an email. He followed it up the next day with another note stating, “I have nothing to hide. There are no hidden assets anywhere in the world.”

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Kevin Trudeau jailed, then released, after spending $359 on two haircuts
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0919/Kevin-Trudeau-jailed-then-released-after-spending-359-on-two-haircuts
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe