Trudeau has been jailed since Nov. 12 when he was convicted by a federal jury of criminal contempt for lying in infomercials about the contents of his weight loss book that called for punishing calorie restrictions and a crippling list of food restrictions.
Prosecutors said Trudeau has made no payments toward the $37 million fine imposed by the Federal Trade Commission despite continuing to live a lavish lifestyle. One week after U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman ordered him to pay up “forthwith” in June 2010, Trudeau spent more than $4,000 on draperies, prosecutors said. Between mid-2010 and March 2013, Trudeau spent at least $12 million on first-class airfare, gym memberships, trips to the salon, $12,000 cufflinks, a six-figure Bentley automobile and a mansion in suburban Oak Brook and a California residence that cost a combined $15,500 a month, according to the filing Tuesday.
Prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman, who will impose sentence, to view a televised interview of Trudeau from last year in which they said he acknowledged living a lavish lifestyle and boasted about avoiding paying the $37 million fine.
According to the filing, Trudeau sold more than 850,000 copies of “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,” bringing in sales of $49 million. Some 57,000 buyers returned the book for a partial refund despite the difficult mechanism to do that, said prosecutors, who laid out a history of fraud by Trudeau that they said dates to the mid-1980s.
Trudeau “preys upon the sick who want to be made healthy, the poor who want to become rich, and the insecure who want to feel better about themselves,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “He exploits consumers’ insecurities and weaknesses, promising them an easy fix for whatever hurts or embarrasses them.”
Trudeau’s promises can even be dangerous, said prosecutors, who expect testimony at sentencing from the brother of one man who they said died after he relied on Trudeau’s “Natural Cures” book and stopped taking his heart medication.
Prosecutors said Trudeau faces as much as about 20 to 25 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines but asked Guzman to impose a minimum 10-year sentence.
