‘Infomercial King’ Kevin Trudeau to Be Released from Jail

Hemera/Thinkstock(CHICAGO) — Former infomercial king Kevin Trudeau will be released from jail Thursday after spending one night in federal custody in Chicago.

Appearing before U.S. District Court Judge Robert Gettleman Wednesday, Trudeau was found in contempt for violation of an asset freeze by transferring nearly $20,000 from an Australian account and for using a debit card tied to that account to buy things beyond the ordinary and necessary living expense he is permitted under a court order.

The specific expenditures from the Australian account that led to the contempt finding included $894 at a liquor store, $359 for two haircuts at Vidal Sassoon, $1,057 for meats ordered online and $920 on cigars. There was also an $18,642 transfer from the Australian account that was paid to a lawyer who worked on Trudeau’s taxes, which happened without the judge’s approval.

Trudeau told the judge Wednesday that he spent the money because he had no cash or credit cards and hadn’t yet received his monthly allowance from the receiver, Robb Evans and Associates, a Los Angeles-based consulting firm that was appointed by the court in August to marshal assets and take control over Trudeau’s businesses.

Trudeau and his attorneys argued Wednesday for more time to prove his cooperation, and offered to pay back any money spent on things the judge deemed inappropriate expenditures.

But Gettleman wasn’t convinced and ordered Trudeau to report to the Metropolitan Correctional Center and to remain in federal custody.

But Trudeau, who appeared in court Thursday wearing a short-sleeve orange jumpsuit, with slip-on orange sneakers, pleaded for the judge to believe him and pledged once again to be “100-percent” cooperative.

“I am penniless. I am homeless. I surrender. I am at your mercy,” Trudeau told the court. “I will do anything you ask.”

After hearing his pleas, Judge Gettleman said he is giving the controversial TV pitchman another week to somehow convince him that Trudeau is truthfully disclosing his assets, and granted Trudeau his freedom. Gettleman admonished him to cooperate fully or else he would be back in court “wearing the same color you are now.”

Trudeau’s next court appearance is scheduled for next week.

Trudeau had previously been found in contempt in July for failing to pay a $37.6 million sanction against him for deceptive marketing. Then, in August, Judge Gettleman sided with the Federal Trade Commission in granting a court-appointed receiver broad authority.

Trudeau met with the receiver and the FTC Wednesday night in the visiting area of the correctional center for a hastily scheduled interview that spanned about three hours. In reporting the results of that interview to the judge Thursday morning, both the receiver and the FTC expressed concerns about Trudeau’s vague recollections and sketchy memory.

The receiver, Kenton Johnson, the executive vice president of Robb Evans and Associates, told the court that he had “concerns about some of the content we received” from Trudeau. He said the pitchman had a “consistent failure of memory” and was unable in most cases to provide specific detail in answers to questions.

Although Johnson stopped short of saying Trudeau is being dishonest, he told the judge he found his lack of detail and memory “questionable and troubling.”

The FTC lawyer, Jonathan Cohen, was less charitable. “We strongly disagree with how candid Mr. Trudeau was” in the interview, he said in court.

Some of Trudeau’s responses, Cohen said, were “implausible or demonstrably incorrect statements.”

Trudeau argued it was unrealistic to expect him to recall specific details of transactions that in some cases occurred years ago. He told the judge that at the time of the interview he was tired and “loopy,” and hadn’t eaten all day.

“There is no 37 million dollars. There’s not 10. There’s not 5. There’s not even 1 million,” Trudeau told the judge Thursday in court.

The government, however, remains deeply skeptical.

Despite his pronouncements in court Thursday, Trudeau is getting a monthly allowance of nearly $5,000 from the receivership, and he is still living in a 14,000-square-foot rented mansion in a tony suburb west of Chicago. The receiver stopped paying the rent on that home this month, and it is unclear whether Trudeau intends to, or has the means to remain there.

For the better part of the past 14 months, Trudeau has been locked in an acrimonious dispute with the FTC over the agency’s allegations that he was concealing assets that should have been used to pay the sanction.

Wednesday’s contempt finding was the fourth of Trudeau’s career, which is also dotted with $2.5 million in prior settlements with the FTC for allegedly misleading claims for a host of products he pitched in infomercials. The 50-year-old Massachusetts native’s record also includes two felony fraud convictions from the early 1990s, for which he spent nearly two years in federal prison.

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.

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