Donald Lapre Case Analysis | Manipulating with Optimism

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the case of donald lapree just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel consider supporting me on patreon and check out my podcast on youtube bellagrande media i will put the relevant links for those items in the description for this video so first i'll look at the background this case including the criminal activity and then i'll move to my analysis donald duprie was born in providence rhode island on may 19 1964. his family moved to phoenix arizona when he was seven years old the pre did not do well in school he dropped out of high school in 1988 he launched a dating service he declared bankruptcy two months later that same year he married a woman named sally redondo they would go on to have two children in 1990 the pre and his wife started a company called unknown concepts this was supposed to be some type of credit repair business in reality the priest simply supplied the contact information for companies that offer credit cards and other benefits the couple was charged with violating arizona's consumer fraud act and the company was shut down they were ordered to pay civil penalties and more than five thousand dollars in restitution to their victims lapree was not discouraged by this he started selling a 36-page booklet which explained how to recover a federal home association insurance refund after paying off a mortgage and he started selling 900 numbers in 1992 april started broadcasting an infomercial called the making money show with don lapre he would declare himself to be the king of infomercials he sold a number of different products and services including a collection of materials like books and tapes he called money making secrets this program was really just another way to sell those 900 numbers the 60-day marketing course cost 295 dollars when somebody would buy the marketing package lapree would have sales representatives bombard them with telephone calls trying to sell them websites and a series of 900 numbers like dating entertainment psychic and chat lines this would cost about another 850 dollars the salespeople would continue calling trying to sell television advertising for those phone lines in 1997 the irs put an almost one million dollar lien against lapree and his wife in 1999 leprey filed for bankruptcy in 2000 laprie came up with another scheme he partnered with a man named doug grant who was into selling vitamins grant formulated a new vitamin product the pre once again launched infomercials in 2004 where he referred to the product as the greatest vitamin in the world the pre-made a number of claims about this vitamin for example it could treat mitigate or prevent conditions like arthritis diabetes and cancer the vitamin was the product of millions of dollars of research and over 100 studies from the new england journal of medicine that's not the way journals work of course no journal like that would have over 100 articles on any one topic that specific there was never even one reference to his vitamin in any article published in that journal the pre also claimed that the vitamin was endorsed by an organization representing most nba teams and it had a gold seal award i guess the platinum seal was reserved for vitamins that had billions of dollars of research and development and thousands of articles and journals the priest's claims about his vitamin were lazy and ridiculous it's like he didn't have time to make up convincing lies if for some reason people couldn't figure out that the vitamin marketing plan was a scam based on the claims i mentioned the pre gave another opportunity to detect the fraud through his bizarre financial claims according to the pre people could become independent advertisers for 35 dollars the goal would be to direct people to their website which was designed to get people to buy the vitamin they would get one thousand dollars or up to two hundred dollars a month for life every time they convinced twenty people to make a purchase there was a problem with the math twenty purchases of the vitamin would add up to about nine hundred dollars how could leprey afford to pay a thousand dollars to make just 900 after many complaints his company was shut down in 2007 in 2009 doug grant who had developed that vitamin for lapri was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter in connection with the death of his wife he had been charged with first-degree murder on june 8 2011 duprey was indicted by a federal grand jury in phoenix arizona he was charged with 41 counts of conspiracy mail fraud wire fraud promotional money laundering and transactional money laundering the government said that he was running a nationwide scheme selling businesses that had no value he had defrauded about 226 000 victims out of 52 million dollars the pre was facing between 5 and 25 years in federal prison he failed to appear in court and was arrested in tempe arizona at the time he was arrested he was living in a gym and had a severe wound to his groin that the authorities believed was self-inflicted like he was trying to bring an end to his life on october 2 2011 which was two days before his trial lapree brought an end to his life in jail using a razor now moving to my analysis it's reported that leprey had a history of depression and was being treated for depression at the time he was arrested the last message he wrote on his now defunct website is consistent with depression here's a summary of what he wrote he tried to create the best product on earth paid out millions of dollars and tried to make the products better every year but was ultimately accused of something he did not do attorneys reviewed his entire company he didn't do one thing that would violate the law the majority of people did not make money with this program even though he told them they could make as many thousand dollar checks as they wanted he was left to fight a battle that will destroy what energy he had left inside the pre made it seem as though even up to the end he was innocent he had a good business that only failed because the people who purchased it didn't follow the plan they just couldn't accept being handed thousand dollar checks that wasn't good enough for them this was the priest's mentality he maintained his role as the victim even though he was the perpetrator leprey appeared to be quite narcissistic probably more on the grandiose side as opposed to vulnerable he was talkative overly self-confident did not accept responsibility was self-centered had fantasies of wealth and power he was assertive and had a sense of entitlement he wanted fame and fortune without really creating anything of value he simply believed people should hand him money for essentially no reason the pre was willing to steal from people at a phenomenal rate of the approximately 226 000 people he defrauded only 5 000 of them ever received any money from his company very few people made any type of profit how was the pre able to fool so many people during his infomercials the pre-demonstrated exaggerated over-the-top mannerisms he was unnaturally upbeat enthusiastic and energetic he was highly repetitive superficial and creepy for some time he was able to avoid scrutiny because his presentation seemed so comically unbelievable most people regarded leprey as harmless thinking that nobody would fall for his obvious scam they thought perhaps he would just keep doing infomercials for a while and then give up and go away it wasn't until he got into the whole vitamin situation where he started attracting attention those claims about the vitamin treating a number of conditions were noticed by the authorities looking at his specific tactics to trick people into buying we see a number of items on his infomercials he would never actually say what the business was that he was involved with there were no specifics of the program given the pre understood that giving specifics up front in a sales presentation will discourage people from buying he knew that the value needs to be emphasized over the actual product or service and that is what he did repeatedly in his infomercials he would talk about how a person could make thousands of dollars for doing almost no work his infomercials were designed to get people excited designed to tap into a fantasy people started thinking about how nice it would be to earn fifty thousand dollars a week or whatever and that excitement would interfere with the application of logic and reason by the time they heard they would be advertising vitamins they didn't care they were already focused on the money at that point the pre had already trapped them through his manipulation the pre would interview successful independent advertisers who talked about how it was ridiculously easy to make thousands of dollars these testimonials would allow a viewer to vicariously feel what it was like to be successful they wanted to be like the person in the infomercial they wanted to be stunned that money was just falling out of the sky the pre worked hard to identify with the potential victims of his scams for example one of laprie's most notorious lines from his infomercials was how somebody could place tiny classified ads in thousands of newspapers to make fifty thousand dollars a week the pre claimed that he did this from his tiny one-bedroom apartment he made it clear that his strategy did not require someone having any skill or work ethic this was just like a magic money tray that somebody could plant in their yard the pre made it seem as though he was just so excited about how he made all this money he was happy to share the idea with anyone moving to the next question when putting everything together how does the depression fit in with la priest's criminal behavior his depression was severe sometimes under those circumstances a person will fight that feeling by trying to force themselves to the other extreme perhaps this is what don leprey was doing he created this whole fantasy where he could become a millionaire by cheating people he could have everything he forced himself to be upbeat when recording those infomercials he was trying to become somebody else in the end reality caught up with him in that moment all his attempts to be successful came crashing down on top of that it was likely he would be residing in prison for many years to come not a place usually associated with positive feelings i think in a way scam artists like donald lapree sometimes need to believe their own scams a little in order to continue their work they need to fool themselves to some degree in order to fool others to a large degree now moving to the lessons learned what can we learn from the behavior of donald the pre the first lesson one of the most amazing things about donald dupri is how many people think well of him even now he has a large number of supporters people who believe that he changed their lives they have good memories of his infomercials they found him to be positive charming and charismatic he was an inspiration maybe not so much in the business that he sold but in their own businesses the ones that actually worked and made money like he helped people to believe in themselves so they could then be successful unbridled optimism can be a tool for manipulation it's one that people don't expect to see from a criminal it allowed luprie to fly under the radar he was able to steal from people and have some of those people thank him for the theft the lesson here is that even something bad can lead to the formation of good memories it's all a matter of perception if people thought that they were having a good experience with the pre they will not worry about all the other people that he harmed i've seen the same dynamic occur in domestic violence situations where one person in the family was not the victim and they remember that everything was great for instance if there was a situation with a father mother and a daughter and the father harmed the mother but did not harm the daughter the daughter may not believe the mother's version of events when they are delivered later in life like the daughter might say that the mother was being dramatic because the daughter remembers everything as being fine her father was a great man she has good memories of her childhood the second lesson i think that this scam had just about every component that we see in popular fraudulent behavior knowing don le priest's tactics can help us to detect other scams some of these i already mentioned he was light on specifics the amount of money that could be earned was disproportionate to the actual amount of work the investment was minimal and the math did not work out the third lesson when people are very focused on their own suffering they often cannot empathize effectively with others it's a special gift to be in pain and yet be able to feel others pain at the same time donald lapree did not have this gift his lack of empathy combined with an intense focus on his own suffering to result in an individual who would step on anybody to achieve his own desires those are my thoughts on donald dupri please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis on this topic worthy to win a gold seal award thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Id: T9uFEUCqCI0

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021