Waist Not, Want Not

What kind of products would you expect from a company called Sweet Deceit? Well, how about a line of sugar-free bakery desserts with such names as Chocolate Grande Finale or Carrot Angel Fantasy Cake?

The Los Angeles-based company says the products are also low in cholesterol and fat as well as void of sodium and preservatives. Sweet Deceit claims that a slice of its Sour Cherry Black Forest cake has 185 calories, compared to 850 to 1,200 found in the regular variety. “It’s just in time for the high-consumption season,” spokeswoman Beth Powis said of the upcoming holidays.

Another Cleveland Joke?

It’s become rather old hat for folks in Los Angeles to make Cleveland the butt of their commercial jokes. But now a Cleveland advertising firm is poking fun at the type of people who live in Los Angeles in a new radio ad campaign called “La La Land” that promotes Ohio wines.

The commercial, created by Meldrum & Fewsmith for the Ohio Grape Industries, begins with soft rock music and a guy who says: “Hi, we hang out in L.A.” Then, a stereotypical Valley girl says: “It’s like so laid back here. . . . Right now, we’re opening a bottle of wine that Brian’s ex left when they broke out. Oh wait! It’s from Ohio. Oh yuck! How could you, like, live with a person who drinks Ohio wine? Brian! Ohio is like a soybean subculture.”

The ads goes on to say: “Some people think good wine only comes from a Napa Valley address. Not true. Today, Ohio actually produces more types of varietal wines than California.” And finally: “Ohio wines. They’re better than you think.”

A Riches to Rags Story

Ed Beckley, a former Sacramento area schoolteacher who in the early 1980s became television’s self-proclaimed “millionaire maker” real estate guru, is out of business.

Last week, an Iowa bankruptcy judge ordered the liquidation of his Beckley Group Inc., a Fairfield, Iowa, company that sold Beckley’s get-rich-quick real estate courses on cable television shows and late-night programs. Two years ago, Beckley’s company was the largest of the nation’s get-rich-quick real estate firms, claiming $40 million in annual sales of cassette tapes and books purporting to teach people how to get rich buying property with no money down. But the firm fell on hard times when the Iowa attorney general sued the company on behalf of consumers demanding refunds.

Beckley joins a number of other get-rich-quick promoters, including Southern Californians Albert J. Lowry and Tony Hoffman, whose businesses have collapsed recently. Said Beckley: “I’m sort of a battler, but I’m out of gas here.”

Not Much Call for It

In the market for a complete set of all 3,700 volumes of the nation’s phone books? It can be yours . . . for $42,000.

Not for everyone, to be sure. But Pacific Bell Directory theorizes that some big businesses might find its offer a bargain now that they must pay 75 cents for each directory-assistance call. And the order call is toll free: 800-848-8000. Oh, you don’t have to buy a complete set, either.

One Born Every Minute

File this under the heading: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

The scam surfaced in Southern California a few months ago. Borrowers are told a legal technicality allows them to pay off a mortgage or other loan with a certified draft drawn on a Mexican bank at a cost far under the loan balance. The cost of this wonder draft runs about 15% of the loan balance.

Orange County lawyer Keith A. Dawson represents a couple who paid $23,000 for a draft that the seller promised would pay off their $116,000 home mortgage. The couple submitted it to the bank that holds their mortgage, but the draft turned out to be worthless and the couple found themselves out the $23,000.

Dawson, who wants people to know this scam is still around, summed up the situation rather bluntly: “If stupidity were a crime, my clients would be in jail.”