Best-seller ‘Natural Cures’ sparks court battle

Bob Sullivan Technology correspondent • Profile • E-mail

Gerald Bates thought he found the answer to a prayer.  The 69-year-old Clyde N.Y., resident has Type II diabetes, and he's concerned about taking insulin injections. But one night in late June, he tuned into a breathtaking infomercial hosted by Kevin Trudeau — “Natural Cures 'They' Don’t Want You to Know About.”

Trudeau, a long-time infomercial master with a preacher's flair for the camera, urged viewers to buy his "Natural Cures" book. In it, Bates understood, readers would find simple, all-natural remedies for terrible conditions like cancer, diabetes, even weight gain.

"I was skeptical. But I thought, 'He pitches a good story,'" Bates said. So Bates paid $39.90 for the book.

Bates is hardly alone. Trudeau's infomercial has helped turn his tome into the top-ranked book on the New York Times self-help Best Seller list. The author says over 4 million copies have been sold. A mountain of the books sit on a table at the entrance of the Barnes & Noble on New York's Fifth Avenue, right next to the Harry Potter mountain. Television infomercials hawking the book are by one measure the most aired long-form ad on TV. 

But Bates, and other consumers, now say they were had. There are hundreds of angry posts on Amazon.com's page devoted to "Natural Cures." And about a dozen New York consumers have now contacted the New York State Consumer Protection Board.

"The book is just gobbledygook. There's nothing in it. He doesn't say what the cures are," Bates said. Instead, Bates said, on page after page the book urges readers to head to Trudeau's Web site, NaturalCures.com. Consumers must pay $10 a month to use the site. And for those calling the toll free number to purchase the book, operators work hard to tack on a Web site subscription. "Something should be done to pull that ad off TV."

Agency calls book a 'fraud'
That's a step being considered by the New York State Consumer Protection Board, which issued a scathing press release about the book Aug. 5, calling the infomercial "misleading" and the book a "fraud." Agency Chairperson Teresa A. Santiago said she might call on cable channels to drop the ads.

But Trudeau has filed a pre-emptive strike in federal court to keep his ads on the air. Last week, his lawyers filed a complaint in the Northern District of New York asking a judge to bar the state agency from making any requests to dump Trudeau's ads.

It's a question of First Amendment rights, Trudeau's lawyer, David J. Bradford, said.  Government agencies can't limit a person's right to sell a book, he said.

"We are not aware of a government agency trying to interfere with advertisement or sale of a book. It's unprecedented from that standpoint," Bradford said. "You just can't interfere with somebody's expression of opinion."

Opinion is one thing, says Santiago, but misleading advertising is another. "This is not a matter of ‘free speech’ as Mr. Trudeau claims. If you advertise the contents of a book, it had better contain what has been promised," Santiago said. "When you are doing an infomercial and you say you have the cure for diabetes and you go to the book and there's no cure for diabetes, that's an issue."

FTC has reviewed infomercials
Trudeau is no stranger to the courtroom.  He's a convicted felon. In 1991 he pled guilty to credit card fraud — and has a long past of legal run-ins with federal regulators. In fact, he's barred from selling products on television now, as part of a 2004 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations involving misleading statements surrounding health care products. Trudeau admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to stop selling health care products. 

But the agreement doesn't prevent him from selling books.

In Trudeau's complaint against the New York Consumer Board, his lawyers say that both the book and the infomercials have been "reviewed" by the Federal Trade Commission for compliance with the 2004 settlement terms. 

"(The FTC) has not objected to the dissemination of either the book or the infomercials," the complaint says.

FTC attorney Heather Hippsley said the agency reviewed the book and early versions of the infomercials hawking the book and found them in compliance with the settlement. But she said Trudeau has multiple versions of the ad, and the agency has not reviewed them all.

Bradford maintained that all five versions of the infomercial have been sent to the FTC.

Meanwhile, Trudeau has sued the FTC, alleging that the agency defamed him when it issued a press release that he says incorrectly characterized his 2004 settlement with the agency. 

Hippsley said she couldn't comment on the book, other than to say the agency was "monitoring" to make sure Trudeau complied with the settlement. 

Despite Trudeau's history of run-ins with the agency, she said it could not ban him from producing infomercials for his book.

"To ban advertising for fully protected speech would be quite extraordinary and not something you'd want your government to be doing," she said.

Still, Delois Scurry, a 48-year-old Rochester, N.Y.-area resident, said she wished someone had banned the ad before she saw it. Scurry suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, so she ordered the book a few months ago hoping it contained information that would help reduce her reliance on blood pressure medication.

"There was nothing in it that he had talked about from the infomercial. He said there were cures. There was nothing like that in there ... it was just money down the drain," she said. "It is a big rip-off for him to go on national TV and come out and say there's a cure for cancer."

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