Faced with a $37.6 million fine leveled by a federal judge years ago, Kevin Trudeau cried poor.
But the TV pitchman ruled over a vast business empire that collected more than a half-billion dollars in revenue between 1999 and 2013, according to a long-awaited analysis of Trudeau’s books recently filed in federal court.
The infomercial king himself pocketed at least $24 million of the $515 million collected by his various enterprises during that time, according to analysts working for Robb Evans & Associates LLC.
In all, more than $6 million allegedly paid off in part credit cards filled with charges meant “clearly to support Trudeau’s lavish lifestyle” — which included expensive cigars, personal assistants and chefs.
But despite rummaging through more than 400 boxes of documents — from Trudeau-linked companies like Shop America, Natural Cures and even The Whistle Blower Inc. — the court-appointed receiver couldn’t figure out what happened to more than $17 million paid by the business entities directly to Trudeau. Nor could they track down another $13.6 million generated by his various offshore entities.
“Therefore, at least $30.6 million remains unaccounted for,” according to the report.
“Only Trudeau has the knowledge to enlighten the receiver and the court about these vast sums of money that remain in question,” it said of the now imprisoned pitchman.
Trudeau’s attorneys recently predicted the forensic analysis would “make clear” that Trudeau has no money to hide. And they even ridiculed the “vague and unsubstantiated suspicion that ‘something else might be out there.’” But Trudeau attorney Kimball Anderson declined Monday to comment in an email.
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, who presides over the case at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, once compared Trudeau to a jailed bank robber who buries the stash from a heist and waits out his sentence before going to “dig up the loot.” He ordered Trudeau to pay $37.6 million in November 2008 for violating an earlier order of the court.
However, the report, filed June 30, alleges Trudeau circumvented the November 2008 ruling by using his business entities to directly pay vendors and his credit card bills.
Between 2009 and Jan. 8, 2013, those ventures paid about $4 million for Trudeau’s credit card bills and $1.9 million for his legal expenses while paying little to Trudeau personally, it claims.
Still, analysts said they couldn’t know for sure whether they’ve found all of Trudeau’s assets. Trudeau denied knowledge of the operation of his vast empire, a key financial officer refused to be interviewed, bank records reached back only six or seven years, and there were “significant and suspicious gaps” in the paper banking records, according to the report.
In addition to the $30.6 million unaccounted for, analysts said they couldn’t track down detailed accounting or bank records for Trudeau’s Natural Cures Inc. Federal tax returns purportedly indicate the company collected a net revenue of $51.6 million between June 2004 and July 2008.
“It is only logical to conclude these accounting records for Natural Cures were destroyed,” the report said. “Without accounting or banking records, the receiver was unable to analyze and quantify how much of the $51.6 million of reported revenue went to Trudeau or was paid for his benefit.”
Trudeau is currently serving out a 10-year prison sentence for criminal contempt after violating a court order and repeatedly lying about the contents of his diet book.
Forensic analysis of Kevin Trudeau’s companies
