Don Lapre

You might be most familiar with Don Lapre from "The Making Money Show with Don Lapre," which promised you that you would be as rich as he is by paying to follow his advice.

His show was ranked among the ten most frequently broadcasted cable television infomercials for a few years in a row. Don Lapre entered the infomercial scene in the 1990's with fire and enthusiasm selling his "Making Money" program that sold for $60.00. Don's infomercials described how he became a millionaire by placing hundreds of "tiny little ads" in newspapers. He taught you to place ads in newspapers until you find one that would actually turn a profit (no matter how little) and then multiply that profit by the number of newspapers you would submit it to across the country. Don also advocated the use of your own 900 number to make money 24 hours a day even while you slept.

I don't doubt that Don Lapre's system did work in the past, but I think it is too outdated to fully invest your time and money into now. It seems to be the old fashion equivalent of placing pay-per-click ads on websites and duplicating the ads that work for other sites. If it were 1991 I would tell you to invest with him, but since the idea has evolved, I am going to advise against it. Not to mention, Don got crooked.

Don Lapre's operation was run out of Arizona, where he got into trouble for not paying unemployment and taxes in 1993 and 1994. He was forced to pay the State $45,000. After launching a dating service and meeting his wife, he had to declare bankruptcy only two moths later. His filing listed assets of $9 million and liabilities of $12.5 million.

His reputation started to worsen when he and his wife opened a credit repair business called Unknown Concepts, which led potential customers to believe that they could acquire credit cards and other benefits but merely presented contact information about companies that might provide them with those cards.

Soon later Don Lapre began selling a 36-page booklet explaining how to recover a Federal Home Association. In 1997, the Internal Revenue Service issued a lien of $957,909.49 against Don and Sally Lapre for failing to pay delinquent taxes. He just wouldn't learn.

Most recently, Don Lapre made his success pushing vitamins. His business The Greatest Vitamin in the World got a lot of public attention. I was interested in it during its first years of exposure in the early 2000's and involved myself with his affiliate program. It started out strong for a few months but hit a plateau right when he was all over the news. The FDA shamed Don for making false claims on his vitamins' abilities. He would say things like "Nothing like this has ever been seen before in the history of the world!" As soon as my money stopped, I pulled out of his affiliate program. I had good timing too because in January 2008 his websites become non-operational and all of his affiliates were left out to dry.

It is obvious to see that Don Lapre has a history of doing dirty business and he is not a stable enough person for you to invest in. He was successful for a while and did make some people some money, but his irrational mistakes kept shutting him down.

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