Villains, Scoundrels, and Rogues

by Paul Martin

  When the diminutive lawbreaker finally stood trial, he pleaded guilty (for some odd reason, he invented an eleventh-hour tale about a mysterious accomplice, which the authorities rightly dismissed as fantasy). He was given an extraordinarily lenient sentence of a year and a day in jail. The judge took Juettner’s age and the absence of any prior criminal record into consideration in his decision. Juettner also had to pay a fine of, fittingly, one dollar—and not one of his own creations, either. The old rogue served four months behind bars before being released.18 He then went back to living quietly with his daughter.

  That might have been the end of Old Mr. 880’s tale if a staff writer for the New Yorker hadn’t taken an interest in his case. In 1949, St. Clair McKelway wrote a three-part series of articles about Juettner and the history of counterfeiting. Hollywood picked up on the story and bought the film rights. In 1950, Twentieth Century Fox released the movie Mister 880, starring Edmund Gwenn in the title role. The elderly British actor was the perfect choice to portray a likable eccentric such as Juettner. It was just the sort of character Gwenn had played before, most notably in his Oscar-winning role as Kris Kringle in the original (1947) version of Miracle On 34th Street. (Gwenn’s only other Oscar nomination was for his role in Mister 880, which also won him a Golden Globe Award.)

  In the end, Emerich Juettner made as much money from the movie about his life as he made in all his years of manufacturing those laughable dollar bills.19 Before he was celebrated in film, Juettner announced that his criminal career was over. In July 1948, he told reporters he’d given up counterfeiting forever. Flashing his toothless grin, the old gent offered an explanation. “There isn’t enough money in it,” he said.20

  Don Lapre

  He appeared on our television sets late at night, standing, for no apparent reason, on an isolated beach in front of the rolling surf. A clean-cut young man with short dark hair and an insistent, almost hysterical manner, he was shrieking repetitiously about how to make a fortune by placing “tiny classified ads” in thousands of newspapers.1 With his boyish looks and overwrought sales pitch—which never once mentioned what those tiny classified ads were supposed to be selling—he seemed like an overcaffeinated high school kid trying to convince his best buddy that setting the principal’s car on fire was a swell idea. (“Come on, man, let’s do it!”)

  The name of this seaside Eddie Haskell was Don Lapre (pronounced la-pree), and his strident television ad promoting his “Making Money” self-help package (available for the nominal fee of $39.95—marked down from $149.95!) first appeared in the early 1990s. The frequently aired infomercial touted get-rich-quick schemes related to newspaper advertising, 1-900 phone numbers, and the Internet, all explained in an impressive bundle of books, tapes, and videos Lapre had produced. (Offering testimonials about the effectiveness of the “Making Money” package was a bizarre collection of sad sacks that Lapre must have recruited directly from their parole hearings.)

  In twenty years of hustling television viewers, Lapre reached surprising heights of notoriety, so much so that he was parodied on Saturday Night Live, which was unnecessary, since Lapre’s frenzied TV ads were a form of self-parody. As a businessman, Lapre was never hesitant to take chances. His record included failed companies and fortunes won and lost. Like most manic personalities, Lapre kept charging ahead. “I fail at more things than anyone I’ve ever met,” he said. “But I try more things than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m a good loser.”2 That last statement held true until the day his career as a pitchman ended in shocking fashion. On October 2, 2011, the forty-seven-year-old father of two committed suicide in an Arizona jail after being indicted for fraud.

  For years prior to his arrest, the news media had lambasted Lapre as a smarmy huckster peddling questionable products and services. His friends and family, not surprisingly, portrayed him as a whiz-bang entrepreneur, one whose “greatest love was doing for others.”3 The evidence tilts toward the first characterization, but either way, as a pitchman, Lapre was part of a long and colorful tradition in American history, one that parallels the growth of our country and takes in a wild assortment of product-pushers—from frontier medicine show barkers to radio, television, and Internet “personalities” hawking everything from salvation to salad choppers. When it comes to the pitch, Lapre was just one voice among thousands shouting to the masses, hoping to sell us something we probably don’t need but can’t live without. Just dial this number now! And hurry—supplies are limited!

  Americans have always been intrigued by a good pitch—the promise of getting something new and wonderful at a bargain price—even though we tend to scoff at these frequently cheesy commercial appeals. But no one can laugh at the money pitchmen generate. Television direct-response advertising—from two-minute spots pushing Chia Pets or oldies CDs to extended infomercials trumpeting exercise equipment, jewelry, cosmetics, and who knows what else—rakes in more than $100 billion a year (about 80 percent of which comes from women over forty).4 Some sources credit Ron Popeil with the creation of TV direct-response advertising, which he began using in the 1950s to flog his Pocket Fisherman, Smokeless Ashtray, and countless other gadgets.

  Whatever their era or product, successful pitchmen have always had one trait in common: the ability to persuade an audience. Their ethics, on the other hand, are as flexible as a politician’s spine. The very word “pitchman” carries a negative connotation. It’s essentially a synonym for swindler, despite the fact that there are plenty of reputable pitchmen around. The late Billy Mays—the burly, squeaky-voiced spokesperson for OxiClean and Orange Glo—investigated products before he agreed to sell them, to make sure that they did what they claimed.5 Unfortunately, there’s no correlation between a pitchman’s ethics and his marketing skills. The operative principle is that no matter how shoddy the product, there’s always a pitchman willing to foist it off on the public.

  The reputation for dodginess attached to America’s pitchmen goes back to the early 1800s, when snake oil salesmen began traveling from town to town peddling home-brewed elixirs and patent medicines purported to cure everything from tapeworms to toothaches, but which were often nothing more than water mixed with coloring and flavoring agents and a hefty dose of alcohol to keep the customers happy. Pitch artists such as Brother Jonathan, Silk Hat Harry, and Princess Lotus Blossom sold imaginatively named nostrums the likes of Kickapoo Indian Sagwa and Hamlin’s Wizard Oil—right into the early decades of the twentieth century.6 The larger medicine shows featured vaudeville-style troupes of musicians, singers, dancers, and other performers. Couching their sales pitch amid entertainment, the medicine shows foreshadowed modern radio and television advertising.

  Exactly when Don Lapre joined the pitchman fraternity is debatable. If his later years are any indication, he was probably one of those kids who can con their friends into covering their paper route for them for pocket change. Lapre himself says he got his start in junior high. According to a biographical video, that’s when he began selling bubble gum, which must have taken up most of his time, since he never finished school. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1964, Lapre moved to Phoenix in 1971. His father was a house painter, and his mother worked at a quickie mart. Quitting high school during his senior year, Lapre went to work at a Gemco department store, rising to assistant manager. He later worked for his father’s painting company.

  Throughout his twenties, Lapre dabbled in business ventures of his own. In 1988, he started a dating service. It went bust in two months. In 1990, he and his wife of two years opened a credit repair service, which was quickly shut down by the Arizona attorney general’s office for misleading practices.7 After that, as Lapre tells it, he discovered the power of newspaper classifieds. He advertised a booklet he’d written that described how to make money by helping people get a refund from the federal government after they’d paid off their home mortgage. The ad reportedly generated $1,100 a day in book sales.8 Lapre then began churning out a flurry of self-help manuals, published by a com
pany he started called New Strategies (search “Don Lapre” on Amazon.com and you’ll find nearly a hundred items).

  Lapre’s thin paperback manuals are printed with ruled lines to look like school notebooks. The relentlessly upbeat texts contain a good deal of useful, commonsense information, although many of the tips are painfully obvious—surround yourself with positive friends, make a list of things to do each day, and so on. Some pointers appear to have been written after a couple of mighty pulls on a bong. In Small Ads, Big Profits: How You Could Turn $30 into a Fortune, Lapre offered this insight on the best things to advertise in classified ads: “Make sure you’re selling something that most people might want!”9

  In 1992, Lapre began marketing a package of books and tapes as his “Making Money” kit, which he promoted in a thirty-minute infomercial called “The Making Money Show with Don Lapre.” Along with classified ads, Lapre recommended 1-900 numbers—those special-interest lines dispensing everything from phone sex to psychic readings—as a great moneymaking opportunity. He assured viewers that they could earn $50,000 or more a month with their own 900 lines.10 The secrets were all in his book Profit Per Minute: How to Get into the 900 Number Business. Best of all, Lapre would help his customers set up and run their 900 lines.

  People who bought the “Making Money” package or set up 900 numbers through Lapre’s company instantly found themselves riding a merry-go-round of sales pitches. Lapre’s staff pushed numerous add-on products and services that could easily run into thousands of dollars. (Lapre was following his own advice: “Up-selling can make your ads big winners!”)11 Even after paying extra fees for Lapre’s assistance and supplemental products, most customers realized little or no income from their 900 lines. Before long, they were flooding the Phoenix Better Business Bureau with complaints. Lapre—who was milking his “Making Money” kit for millions of dollars a year—argued that he had far more satisfied customers than unhappy ones, although there was no way of proving that claim.12

  The first pothole on Lapre’s highway to success came in 1994, when the State of Arizona hit him for $45,000 in unpaid unemployment and withholding taxes. A bigger bump came in 1997. That year, the IRS issued a lien of close to a million dollars against Lapre and his wife for delinquent taxes. Two years later, Lapre filed for bankruptcy for himself and his companies, showing a gap of $3.5 million between his assets and liabilities. A new, ill-conceived Internet-based product, combined with a disastrous investment in a Mexican resort, precipitated the financial collapse. Prophetically, when Lapre broke the news to his staff that they were being laid off, he told them he felt like committing suicide.13

  It wasn’t long, though, before Lapre emerged from the flames of his bankruptcy with yet another business concept. He entered into a partnership with a dodgy character named Doug Grant, a self-styled expert on dietary supplements. Grant came up with a new vitamin product on which Lapre bestowed the grandiose brand name of the Greatest Vitamin in the World. In 2004, Lapre began offering television viewers a chance to share in the bountiful profits to be made from selling the miracle vitamin (“Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the history of the world!” Lapre screeched in his infomercial).14 All viewers had to do was pay him a $35 fee to become independent distributors of the vitamin, which they would sell online. Naturally, Lapre would help them set up and run their websites. According to Lapre’s pitch, the distributors would be paid handsomely for their Internet sales and for recruiting other agents.

  More than 226,000 people signed up, only to discover that their initial investment was merely a ticket to the merry-go-round. As he did with his 900-number program, Lapre pestered his vitamin distributors to purchase costly marketing products that did little other than fatten the company’s bottom line. Few distributors made money from the Greatest Vitamin in the World. Between 2004 and 2007, the company collected nearly $52 million in fees and other charges from its independent agents. For their sales and recruitment efforts, about five thousand distributors received a little over $6.3 million in commissions, an average of $1,260 per person. Lapre took home $2.27 million in that four-year span.15

  All along, Lapre had been doing his best to convince the public that his product actually was the world’s greatest vitamin, suggesting that it could prevent or cure cancer, heart disease, and a number of other serious illnesses. The Food and Drug Administration admonished him to stop making such outrageous, unsubstantiated statements.16 The Greatest Vitamin in the World, analysts found, contained nothing that wasn’t available in less expensive vitamins sold at any drugstore. Following a rash of complaints from Lapre’s independent distributors, federal authorities forced Lapre to close his vitamin business in 2007. Four years later, a grand jury indicted the pitchman on charges related to the company’s activities.

  On June 22, 2011, Lapre was scheduled to appear before the US District Court in Arizona, where he was to be arraigned on forty-one counts of conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering.17 He failed to show up. A judge immediately issued a bench warrant for Lapre’s arrest. The next day, US marshals apprehended Lapre outside a health club in Tempe. Considered a flight risk, he was held without bond at a federal facility in Florence, Arizona. On October 2, two days before the start of his trial, guards found Lapre’s lifeless body in his cell. He had slit his throat and bled to death. (Before his arrest, Lapre had tried to sever a femoral artery in his groin.)

  Lapre’s mother stated that her son had been seriously depressed, and that prison officials had taken away his medications.18 It’s impossible to know if that’s what led to his suicide, although the fact that he’d already tried to kill himself before he was arrested attests to a preexisting state of mental distress. The anxiety over his latest setback may have simply become too much for him to bear. More likely, it was the fear of what he faced in his trial that caused Lapre to take his own life. Each of the forty-one counts against him carried fines ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 and jail terms of five to twenty-five years. If he’d been convicted, he might have spent most or all of his remaining years in prison.

  There’s also the possibility that Lapre was racked with guilt over all the money he’d made by taking advantage of people through his infomercials, although that seems remote. It’s a truism that pitchmen—the slippery ones anyway—have a low regard for the “yokels” who fall for their spiels. Such contempt is almost understandable, considering how gullible some folks can be. Even highly intelligent people occasionally overlook the fact that much of the merchandise pitched in direct-response advertising is comparable to the gimcrack you might win at a carnival. But then, if people weren’t so credulous, infomercials couldn’t pay for the cost of airtime.

  As always, the best counsel for any shopper is the familiar adage, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Still, watching Don Lapre on YouTube, it’s easy to see how someone could be swept up by his performance. Like any good pitchman, Lapre had charm—in his case, a boyish enthusiasm and relentless optimism that made you think his ideas could possibly work. It’s clear he possessed a marvelously inventive mind. If only he’d used it to better purpose. But that would have been against his nature. More than one flimflammer has admitted that his biggest thrill comes from concocting some improbable scheme and pulling it off. “I just want to have fun creating ideas and selling them,” Lapre once told a reporter.19

  Like most wheeler-dealers, Lapre kept upping the wager with his businesses—taking bigger chances for greater rewards. If he’d stuck to publishing financial self-help books, it’s probable that no taint would be attached to his name. He entered a different territory when he began pushing customers to buy an endless stream of 900-number add-ons and marketing online vitamin distributorships that cost more than they ever earned. Lapre frequently called himself the King of Infomercials. In truth, he was the king of up-selling and unfulfilled promises. For Lapre, inventiveness and ambition—those hallowed staples of capitalism—proved a volatile mixture.

  T
he final years of Lapre’s career bound him even more closely to the checkered saga of the American pitchman. By hawking his Greatest Vitamin in the World—whose very name was a lesson in excess—Lapre echoed the medicine show salesmen of old, with their shameless hyperbole. In a sense, Lapre’s misfortune was to have been born a century too late. If he’d spent his career selling bottles of snake oil from the back of a wagon, nobody would have complained when the stuff didn’t work as promised.

  Lapre’s death left the question about his essential nature open to debate. Was he guilty of fraud, or did he just tiptoe perilously close to it? Because he was never tried or convicted of a crime, his defenders can continue to argue that he was simply a wily businessman who was unfairly accused. “From what I’ve seen of Don, he doesn’t appear to be a bad person,” a former Lapre employee remarked in 2000.20 That might have been true, but Lapre did seem to possess the one character flaw that separates an honorable pitchman from a trickster: a willingness to sell just about anything as long as it makes a profit.

  CHAPTER 1. MERCHANT OF MISERY—JAMES DEWOLF

  1. Paul Davis, “Unrighteous Traffick—Living Off the Trade: Bristol and the DeWolfs,” Providence Journal, March 17, 2006, p. A12. See also M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Bristol, Rhode Island: A Town Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1930), p. 68, and Calbraith B. Perry, “Descendants of Anthony De Wolf,” reprinted from Charles D’Wolf of Guadaloupe, His Ancestors and Descendants (New York: Press of T. A. Wright, 1902), Gonzaga.edu, http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/~dewolf/perry/chapter1.htm (accessed December 1, 2011).