Few things make me happier than surfing the internet and eating Cheerios while watching late-night infomercials, and one of the most annoying is Kevin Trudeau's Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About.

Last night, I saw one I hadn't seen before: Kevin Trudeau's cleverly-titled Debt Cures They Don't Want You to Know About. I smelled his rat. His promotional manner and too good to be true claims wreaked of charlatanism so I decided to Google Mr. Trudeau and what I found inspired this post: What Kevin Trudeau doesn't want you to know about.

There are several sites with information on Trudeau's background but, for sheer volume, Wikipedia is the best. Here's a brief summary: In the early 1990's, Trudeau spent 2 years in federal prison for credit card fraud and posing as a doctor to deposit $80 thousand in false checks. In 1996, Trudeau settled charges with 8 states that he was operating an illegal pyramid scheme through his involvement with a multi-level marketing company called Nutrition for Life. In 1998, the FTC fined him $500 thousand for making false and misleading claims in infomercials.

Read the Wikipedia article for the most up to date details of his battles with the FTC.

The point is, this is probably not a guy you should trust for financial advice, or anything else for that matter. The larger message is this: Before you pay anyone to give you financial advice, check into their background a little bit. 20 seconds on Google showed that Kevin Trudeau is not someone people should trust.