Infomercial Guru Kevin Trudeau Sentenced To 10-Years

Best-selling author Kevin Trudeau, who became a familiar late-night TV pitchman, was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday in Chicago for cheating consumers via the infomercials for his book, The Weight Loss Cure 'They Don't Want You to Know About.

As he sentenced the 50-year-old Trudeau, U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman portrayed him as a habitual con man, calling him "deceitful to the very core."

Jurors convicted Trudeau of criminal contempt for defying a 2004 court order barring him from running false ads about the weight-loss book and continuing to run the infommercials. The book touts a difficult 500-calorie-a-day diet and hormone treatments, but Trudeau was accused of misrepresenting the contents in his infomercials as, quote, "a simple, no hunger . . . diet-free method of losing weight."

He sold more than 850,000 copies of the book, taking in more than $39 million in revenue.