Late-Night TV huckster Kevin Trudeau is making a late effort to stay out of jail. Trudeau is supposed to surrender Tuesday and remain behind bars at the federal lockup in Chicago until he either pays $37 million fine or proves he is broke.
The ABC7 I-Team has learned that Trudeau has written letters to business, banks and friends asking them to help show that he has no money. Kevin Trudeau is said to be in Washington DC on Monday night raising money for his legal defense fund to help pay for the attorneys who are making a last ditch effort to keep Trudeau out of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago.
This residence would amount to downsizing for Mr. Trudeau who is more comfortable at his place in Switzerland, this Oak Brook manor or even in the Bentley that he has enjoyed.
Monday night, on the eve of his reporting to the MCC for contempt of court, Trudeau is throwing a legal Hail Mary pass in the form of letters from Kevin, sent to people who used to handle his money around the world-- letters asking that they let the government know he is broke.
Mr. Trudeau is even going to his apparently estranged spouse for help. She is Nataliya Babenko, a Ukranian woman Trudeau married a few years ago when she was 22-- the government claims in an effort to hide assets.
Tonight, in a typewritten love letter filed with the court, Trudeau tells Babenko he knows "your financial situation is dire.." and "I hope someday in the future" he writes "we will be able to reunite and perhaps you will forgive me and we can move on together as a couple."
Until then though, Trudeau says he needs her to "to do the following things immediately: "Turn over any: gold bars, gold coins, Patek Philippe white gold nautilus cufflinks; $3,200 in brokerage account, $300,000 sent to Mother Olga money at Global Bank of Commerce, Antigua."
And then, pouring himself out in public, Kevin Trudeau writes to his wife: "Honey, I am desperately trying to purge myself of being in contempt of court so that I will not be incarcerated. Remember, this is only money. I am committed to turning over to the receiver ever single penny even if that means that we are homeless, left with nothing more than a few suitcases full of clothes."
Government attorneys have filed court papers Monday night dismissing Trudeau's last minute cooperation as a sham and encourage the judge to lock him up as planned.
