Following up on a tip I told them about, today's front-page story exposes the questionable practices of Thorsten Wietschel, aka Sven Kugler, a "magnetic therapy" salesman.
Wietschel, or someone working for him, left the flyer below in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago.
As I uncovered by doing a Lexis search and informed the Record, Wietschel has a history of shady practices, including being charged with burglary and grand theft in California and being ordered by a court in Arizona to cease selling bogus medical products. Now he's in Kitchener for several talks in which he gives seniors a free lunch and then starts his pitch, offering expensive mattress covers lined with cheap magnets that he claims can help cure diseases. Apparently Wietschel is very smooth and convincing and has fooled people before.
The Record article by Brian Caldwell is well-written and pulls no punches. Hopefully it will prevent Wietschel from fooling more desperately ill people into buying his worthless magnetic mattress covers. Congratulations to Caldwell and city editor Harvey Taylor for a job well done!
5 comments:
dr. shallitt,
Thanks a lot! Thanks to you I missed out on the free lunch. There were 36 rreservations but only five, including myself, showed up in the Jaegerstube of the club.
Seriously I went there to watch his skilled con and ask embarassing questions . The presentation was cancelled at the last moment much to the annoyance of the would be audience.
I did have a ten minute chat with him in which he gave me his side of the story.
Regards.
Robert McCauley edtkm
What's with the patriotic preamble to his spiel? Seems totally irrelevant (unless it says something about his target audience -- that suckers can be softened up by mindless flag-waving).
Wietschel has a history of shady practices, including being charged with burglary and grand theft in California and being ordered by a court in Arizona to cease selling bogus medical products...
Not to mention his crimes against the English language - "glorius"
Good to see your blog!
Cousin Keddy
I've noticed magnet therapy stuff and copper bracelets next to the check-out area of my local pharmacy. I occasionally talk loudly about it in front of the pharmacist but have had little impact.
Here's some nice pseudocrap, too:
Infinity Water
following in the grand tradition of magnetic water conditioning, and even invoking John Wheeler!
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