Legal Proceedings
In connection with his promotional activities he has had a felony conviction and has been an unsuccessful defendant in several Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuits. Trudeau has been charged several times by agencies of the United States government for making claims without evidence. In these cases Trudeau signed a consent decree in which he did not plead guilty but did agree to stop making the claims and to pay a fine. Trudeau subsequently began to sell books, which are protected by the First Amendment.
Trudeau was convicted of fraud and larceny in the early 1990s. The FTC has sued him repeatedly and keeps an extensive record of its conflicts with him. A court order currently restricts his ability to promote and sell any product or service; however, he is permitted to promote books and other publications due to free-speech protection under the First Amendment as long as they are not used to promote or sell products or services and do not contain misrepresentations. On November 19, 2007, a court found Trudeau in contempt of that court order for making deceptive claims about his book The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About. In August 2008, he was fined more than $5 million and banned from infomercials for three years for continuing to make fraudulent claims pertaining to the book. The amount of the monetary damages was later increased to $37 million.
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