{"id":308982,"date":"2010-02-11T19:57:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T00:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/?p=18007"},"modified":"2010-02-11T19:57:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T00:57:26","slug":"judge-finds-infomercial-pitchman-kevin-trudeau-in-contempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/308982","title":{"rendered":"Judge finds infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau in contempt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A federal judge in Chicago today found author-infomercial king Kevin Trudeau in criminal contempt of court.<\/p>\n

Trudeau, who for years has claimed to offer miracle health cures, was ordered to post a $50,000 bail and give up his passport.<\/p>\n

And U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman told him to expect to spend some time in custody in the future for urging his customers to flood the judge with e-mails. <\/span><\/p>\n

After being called on the carpet by the judge today, Trudeau sent a follow-up e-mail to his listeners and supporters telling them he’d erred in telling them to write to the judge about his pending civil case.<\/p>\n

“I don’t have confidence in your client,” Gettleman told Trudeau’s lawyer. “I do insist that, if he is to avoid custody today, he post bond.”<\/p>\n

Gettleman, whos overseeing a civil case involving Trudeau, was clearly unhappy at Trudeaus latest antics urging his followers via his Web site to flood the judge with e-mails. They listened.<\/p>\n

Gettleman said Trudeaus actions violated a previous order in the case to not communicate with the judge.<\/p>\n

The judge said some of the e-mails were “harassing, threatening and interfering.”<\/p>\n

“This is direct contempt that’s how I view it,” Gettleman said. “He interfered with the direct process of the court.”<\/p>\n

Gettleman said he initially wanted to take Trudeau into custody this afternoon, but decided he didn’t want to act “hastily.”<\/p>\n

“I do believe a future penalty will include some custody and a fine,” Gettleman said.<\/p>\n

At that, Trudeau briefly looked down. He did not speak in court.<\/p>\n

The Federal Trade Commission has labeled Trudeau a fraud and got a court order in 2004 to curtail his business.<\/p>\n

Trudeau has sold millions of books, in part with the pitch that the government is trying to keep him from telling dieters the truth with his The Weight-Loss Cure They Dont Want You to Know About, which has become a best-seller.<\/p>\n

Gettleman previously has fined Trudeau more than $5 million, then raised that fine to more than $37 million the amount the FTC figured Trudeau made on the book via his infomercials.<\/p>\n

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n

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A federal judge in Chicago today found author-infomercial king Kevin Trudeau in criminal contempt of court. Trudeau, who for years has claimed to offer miracle health cures, was ordered to post a $50,000 bail and give up his passport. And U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman told him to expect to spend some time in custody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}