FTC to mail refund checks to buyers of TV pitchman's weight-loss book

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The Federal Trade Commission plans to soon begin compensating customers who bought a controversial weight-loss book that landed infomercial pitchman Kevin Trudeau in prison, according to court records.

According to a filing last week, the FTC will be mailing refund checks within 30 days to hundreds of thousands of people who bought into Trudeau's false promises of shedding pounds while eating steak and ice cream. Trudeau claimed the book was filled with "easy" weight-loss techniques that actually called for prescription injections of a hormone found only in pregnant women, a month of colon hydrotherapy and a 500-calorie-a-day diet.

In its filing, the FTC revealed that it had determined that far more people had been victimized than originally thought. Last summer, the FTC had put the number at more than 820,000, but further calculations showed that almost 1.27 million people had bought the book, it said.

The money will come from the approximately $8 million in Trudeau assets recovered as of last summer by a court-appointed receiver after the so-called infomercial king failed to pay a penny of a whopping $37.6 million civil penalty levied by U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman in 2007.

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