Marketing company Glomail has withdrawn a South African television advertisement for a supposed memory-training programme that has already run foul of United States regulators.
The withdrawal follows a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about an infomercial broadcast on South African Broadcasting Corporation channels for American Kevin Trudeau’s ”Mega Memory System”.
In 1998 Trudeau paid a $500 000 ”consumer redress” penalty as part of a settlement with the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that barred him from making false claims for a variety of products, including the Mega Memory System.
In 2004 he paid the FTC another $2-million, this time in settlement of charges that he falsely claimed in infomercials that a calcium product he sold could cure cancer.
”This ban is meant to shut down an infomercial empire that has misled American consumers for years,” the FTC said in announcing the second settlement.
The ASA said the South African infomercial featured Trudeau holding the product and claiming that the recall ability of blind and mentally handicapped students using it ”increased from 15% to 90% in just five days”.
It said the complainant, a Patrick Linzer, had submitted that the infomercial was misleading ”as the product does not work” and had been discredited by the FTC.
In response, the ASA said, Glomail had addressed the merits of the matter but also undertaken that the infomercial would not be used again in its current format.
The ASA said this undertaking appeared to address Linzer’s concerns, and there was therefore no need for it to consider the merits of the matter.
It said it accepted the undertaking ”on condition that the claim in question is withdrawn with immediate effect [and] not used again in future”.
The controversy in Trudeau’s past has to do with more than just the FTC.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in 1990 he pleaded guilty to larceny (theft) in connection with $80 000 in worthless cheques he deposited at a bank.
In 1991 he pleaded guilty to credit-card fraud in a federal court.
Among his misdeeds in the federal case, prosecutors said, was that he misused the credit-card numbers of customers of the memory improvement courses he offered at the time.
Trudeau spent nearly two years in jail for his crimes.
A staffer at a Glomail outlet in Cape Town said the company was selling the Mega Memory System as a set of seven CDs with an accompanying book, plus a pocket diary, for R699.
She said there had been ”many customers” buying the product.
Trudeau also sells his system as a stand-alone book, which is available for about R110.
The back cover of the book describes him as ”the world’s foremost authority on memory improvement training”, and says everyone has an ”inborn photographic memory” which the course will activate.
He is also author of the book Natural Cures ”They” Don’t Want You to Know About.
It is reported that people who buy the book learn that to get the full story on natural cures, they have to subscribe to his website. — Sapa