TV Pitchman from Oak Brook Guilty of Criminal Contempt

A well-known author and TV pitchman from the area has been found guilty of criminal contempt.

Kevin Trudeau, 50, of Oak Brook, was convicted of criminal contempt in federal court Tuesday for violating a 2004 court order that prohibited him from making deceptive television infomercials that misrepresented the contents of his weight loss cure book.

A jury deliberated for approximately an hour after a weeklong trial. Trudeau had his bond revoked and he was ordered taken into custody by U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman, who set a schedule for post-trial motions but no sentencing date. 

Criminal contempt has no statutory maximum sentence. The court must impose a reasonable sentence under federal statutes and the advisory United States Sentencing Guidelines. 

According to the evidence at trial, Trudeau appeared in three television infomercials between December 2006 and November 2007 in which he willfully misrepresented the contents of his book The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don’t Want You to Know About.

In April 2010, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman issued an order to show cause why Trudeau should not be held in criminal contempt of a Sept. 2, 2004, settlement in which Trudeau agreed not to directly or indirectly produce and broadcast any deceptive infomercials that misrepresented the contents of any book, including the weight loss cure book. 

In closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors listed lies and misrepresentations made by Trudeau in his infomercials. They included his claims that his book was not a "diet," when in fact it required at least three weeks of eating 500 calories or less a day, and that a hormone found only in pregnant women that was required to be injected daily could be obtained "anywhere," when in fact it could be obtained in the U.S. only through a doctor’s prescription. 

Trudeau also claimed that after finishing the diet, consumers could eat anything they wanted without regaining weight, when in fact the diet required severe food deprivation that lasts for life.

SOURCE: U.S. Attorney's Northern Illinois District Office

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