Dean Graziosi, the infomercial personality and author of Millionaire Success Habits, was the face that drew hundreds of thousands of people into hotel conference rooms across the United States to hear how they could get rich in real estate. The operation behind those rooms was Response Marketing Group, LLC and its affiliates Nudge, LLC and BuyPD, LLC. In November 2019 the Federal Trade Commission and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection sued them, alleging the scheme took consumers for more than $400 million. In September 2020 the FTC amended its complaint to add Graziosi personally, along with Scott Yancey, star of A&E’s Flipping Vegas. According to a survey the FTC filed with the court, more than 95 percent of the consumers who attended those seminars paid Nudge more than they netted from any real estate transactions that followed. Graziosi and Yancey were each paid roughly $10 million. On April 24, 2023, a federal judge in Utah approved settlements in which Graziosi paid $1.25 million and Yancey paid $450,000, the first monetary settlements the FTC has ever obtained from celebrity endorsers.
Graziosi settled without admitting wrongdoing. A statement issued on his behalf described the settlement as a business decision made in good faith to resolve the Commission’s concerns, and noted that he is not covered by the ban on selling wealth creation products because he was not an owner or executive of Response Marketing. He is, however, permanently prohibited by court order from making or assisting others in making any misrepresentation, express or implied, in connection with any consumer transaction.
He Was Not a Spokesman. He Was on Commission.
The detail that separates Graziosi from an ordinary celebrity endorser is how he was paid. He did not receive a flat fee to appear in advertisements. According to the FTC, Graziosi and Yancey were typically paid a percentage of the money consumers spent on Nudge’s programs after attending the seminars the two men promoted. Every additional dollar extracted from an attendee was a dollar he took a cut of. That structure is why the FTC estimated roughly $10 million flowed to each of them, and it is the reason the agency pursued them as defendants rather than as witnesses.
The funnel those commissions came from was built in stages. Infomercials and direct mailings, fronted by Graziosi and other television personalities, promised to show consumers how to find properties below market price and obtain financing without using their own money or credit. Those advertisements drove people to free ninety-minute events. Since January 2015, more than 750,000 individuals attended one. According to the complaint, the events were not designed to teach the advertised techniques. They were designed to sell the next thing: advanced training and supposedly personalized coaching, marketed through telemarketing, at prices reaching $30,000. The FTC alleged that consumers who bought were told they would receive special tools to make them successful investors, and that the defendants ultimately did not provide those products or services and instead pitched further programs.
The FTC Says He Knew About the Complaints and Helped Bury Them
The most serious allegation against Graziosi is not that he lent his name to a bad product. It is what the FTC says he did once he learned what customers were saying. According to the amended complaint, both Graziosi and Yancey were aware of many consumer complaints about the training and coaching programs, including complaints posted publicly online stating that Response Marketing had failed to deliver on its promises or that the operation was a scam. The FTC alleged that the two men were involved in efforts to bury those complaints, and specifically that they told Nudge and its affiliates to place positive reviews on third-party websites including Yelp and ConsumerAffairs.
If accurate, that describes an active response to knowledge rather than ignorance of a problem. A public complaint from a customer who paid $30,000 and got nothing is a signal. Answering that signal by seeding favorable reviews on the platforms where prospective buyers go to check is a decision to keep the funnel running. The FTC’s stated rationale for pursuing celebrity endorsers rested on exactly this point. Announcing the settlements, Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine said the Commission would continue cracking down on deceptive moneymaking opportunities and unlawful endorsement practices. The $16.7 million judgment was the largest consumer protection settlement in Utah history.
$400 Million Out, $1.25 Million Back
The arithmetic of the resolution is worth stating plainly. The scheme allegedly took consumers for more than $400 million. Graziosi’s share was approximately $10 million. He settled for $1.25 million, roughly one eighth of what the FTC says he was paid, and he kept the rest. Response Marketing, its affiliates, and its principals, Brandon B. Lewis, Ryan C. Poelman, Phillip W. Smith, Shawn L. Finnegan, and president Clint R. Sanderson, paid $15 million and were permanently banned nationwide from the wealth creation business. Graziosi was not banned, because the ban applied to owners and executives, which he was not.
In March 2024 the FTC began sending refunds. It mailed more than $10 million to 4,670 consumers, and sent claim notices to nearly 400 more who had previously filed complaints. Set against a scheme the government valued at over $400 million and 750,000 seminar attendees, 4,670 people received a check. Douglas Crapo of the Utah Attorney General’s office said the payments would heal at least some of the harm. The word “some” is carrying most of that sentence.
Now He Sells Courses About Selling Courses
Graziosi’s current business is Mastermind.com, the platform he runs with Tony Robbins, which sells a monthly subscription giving access to courses on building what it calls a knowledge business. The model is one level removed from the seminars: rather than teaching people to make money in real estate, it teaches people to package and sell their own expertise, largely through marketing funnels. The entry point is familiar in shape. Consumers are invited to free online summits or asked to pay a nominal fee, in some promotions a $1 charitable donation tied to Feeding America.
On Trustpilot, ConsumerAffairs, and the Better Business Bureau, hundreds of consumers have posted complaints describing the same experience: they entered card details for a $1 or free signup and were subsequently enrolled in a recurring subscription of roughly $47 to $97 a month, which they say they discovered only when reviewing statements months later. Reported totals in these accounts range from a few hundred dollars to over 1,800 euros. Reviewers repeatedly complain that cancellation is difficult and that support does not respond. It is important to be precise here: these are consumer complaints, not regulatory findings. No enforcement action has been brought over Mastermind.com. The company publicly responds to many of these complaints, has attributed at least one disputed charge to an internal billing error, and has issued refunds. Positive reviews also appear alongside the negative ones.
Conclusion
Dean Graziosi’s face brought 750,000 people into hotel conference rooms to hear a proven formula for making money in real estate. More than 95 percent of them paid the operation more than they ever made back. He was paid a percentage of every dollar they spent, which came to roughly $10 million. The FTC says he knew people were publicly calling it a scam, and that he helped answer those complaints by having favorable reviews planted where buyers would look. He settled for $1.25 million without admitting anything, kept the difference, avoided the industry ban that hit the company’s owners, and is now permanently barred from misrepresenting anything to a consumer. The FTC had never before taken money from a celebrity endorser. It started with him.
