TV infomercial pitchman arrested

A popular TV pitchman has been arrested after skipping arraignment on charges that he stole $52 million from people via an online vitamin sales pitch.

Donald Lapre is a guy who left a trail of tears for years as a TV pitchman. He’s so recognized for what he does that he was even spoofed on Saturday Night Live!

Lapre has been indicted on 41 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and promotional money laundering. He is believed to have ripped off more than 200,000 people of several hundred dollars each for a grand total on $52 million in just one scheme.

You may also know Lapre from pushing credit repair and multi-level marketing strategies like the one called the “Making Money” package on TV.

With TV infomercials, anything they showcase winds up looking phenomenal. I remember years ago in my TV work, we bought 6 different products that were advertised on TV. My producer put clips from the infomercials side by side with footage of me trying to use the products.

As you might imagine, none of the 6 products worked anything like they did on the infomercial!

So here’s my advice about TV infomercials: Be entertained by them if you wish. Pass time watching them if you’re bored. But do not buy them. I can’t tell you how many times over the years people have told me they wished they’d followed my advice.

It’s funny though because people ask me about the MagicJack all the time. The MagicJack people use a sleazy infomercial-like approach to generate sales. I have no idea and don’t understand why they’ve adopted that marketing angle!