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Marked Man
Rapping to the masses: Matthew Lesko with Darryl Wheeler, left, and Matthew Talley, trying a new infomercial jingle that promises to "getcha money."
(By Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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Today, Lesko's wearing a blue suit with bright yellow question marks. Fleg walks over and hands him a piece of cartoon bling -- a necklace made of a foot-high styrofoam question mark that's been spray-painted silver and sprinkled with glitter.
Lesko laughs and puts it on. Immediately, his suit is speckled with glitter. He takes it off and hands it back to Fleg.
"Let's let it dry for a while," he says, smiling as he picks a fleck of glitter off his nose.
The bowling alley parking lot is getting crowded now with the college-age kids Fleg recruited to serve as unpaid extras in the ad, which he'll shoot in a weed-infested vacant lot nearby. The guys are dressed to look like gangbangers, the girls like, well, sexy women. They stand around eating bagels and bananas and watching Lesko bounce back and forth, practicing his rap: "You need to get your money? Then you gotta follow me!"
The kids watch him and laugh. For some reason, they think a gray-haired guy in a question-mark suit carrying a boombox and rapping is funny.
"Who is he?" an extra named Lauren Blick asks Fleg.
"He's Matthew Lesko," Fleg says, smiling. "What else can I say? He's the government info man."
"I've seen his ads," an extra named Tiffany Toney tells her friend Aliesha Zynda. "They're for -- what? Loans?"
"Government money," says Zynda.
"Government money?" Toney says, suddenly interested. "I'll have to ask him about that."
The Cost of 'Free Money'
Yeah, what about that government money? Do the people who buy Lesko's books really get free money from the government?
"Some do, but I don't know how many," Lesko says. "Not the majority, because it takes some effort. You don't just buy a book and make a phone call and get a check next Tuesday. There's money available but it takes some effort."
