The Seedy Underside of TV Pitchmen

Aug. 12, 2009— -- It's late at night. Your eyelids are growing heavy. You hear some sales pitch on the TV for the next great miracle product. You pick up the phone, give out your credit card number and eagerly await the postman.

Why? Because you trust that man in the TV. You've seen his face and heard his voice so many times, it's almost like he's part of the family. But what you didn't know is that off-camera, he might have a seedy personal life.

This has not been a good year for the TV pitchman. First we learned that Vince Shlomi, the man better known as the ShamWow guy, wasn't so squeaky clean after all. Back in February, he was arrested on felony battery charges for allegedly punching a prostitute in the face because she intentionally bit, and refused to release, his tongue. The charge was later dropped.

And the other day, news broke that Billy Mays, best known for hawking cleaning products Orange Glo and OxiClean, had a dirty past. Apparently, the energetic Mays had been a cocaine user, something that a Florida medical examiner listed as a "contributory cause" of his death.

These two men are just the latest in a long line of late-night TV pitchmen -- and a few women -- whose reputations have been stained when their shadowy actions came to light.

We start our trip down memory lane in the late 1990s with Jamaican psychic Miss Cleo and the Psychic Friends Network. You remember her thick Caribbean accent and colorful clothing? Well, it turns out that Miss Cleo was born Youree Dell Harris in Los Angeles. She might have been born near the water, but it was clearly a different ocean. And how about her parents? They hail from California and Texas.