If you’re one of an estimated 50,000 trusting investors misled by the get-rich-quick guru, Wade Cook, you might be able to get some money back.

If you’re paying big bucks to any guru who promises to teach you his exclusive, market-beating system, ask yourself if you and your wallet are being “Cooked.”

For a while, Wade Cook was the leading prophet of easy money. The speakers at his workshops taught that investors could easily earn 1,000 percent or even 3,800 percent a year.

To “prove” it, Cook published what he claimed were his real trading records. In fact, those records included fake trades (big winners, of course). They also left out some of Cook’s many losses.

Hundreds of thousands of dreamers have attended Cook seminars, paying anywhere from $12 (for the privilege of hearing his sales pitch) to $7,995 for a two-day workshop. His books have landed on bestseller lists.

Now, his game is slowing down. In October, Cook’s companies Wade Cook Financial Corp. and Wade Cook Seminars Inc. signed a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC charged that Cook’s strategies failed to earn “the extremely high rates of return” that were claimed.

Naturally, the companies denied doing anything wrong. But they accepted a consumer-redress agreement that’s backed by Cook, personally. Some of the people who were misled should get some money back.

Cook’s spokesman Matthew Richardson says that the agreement was “the best thing for customers and positive for the company.” He said the FTC found “no false advertising, no false reporting.”

“Wrong,” says Bob Schroeder, assistant regional director for the FTC’s Northwest Region, which brought the case. “The complaint charged them with not telling the truth to the consumer.”

The FTC did not name Cook himself as a defendant, which outraged two of the five FTC commissioners, Orson Swindle and Thomas Leary. As things now stand, Cook can truthfully say that the FTC never charged him with anything illegal.

But Cook is his company, Swindle and Leary complained, in a statement issued when the settlement was approved. He shouldn’t be able to “disclaim responsibility for conduct that likely caused millions of dollars in injury to consumers,” the two commissioners wrote.

Cook wasn’t named because that made it easier to get a settlement, Schroeder says. “He’s bound by the order, and that’s what we wanted to accomplish.”

Under the FTC order, Cook and his companies have agreed not to claim success for their strategies unless they also disclose the actual rate of return they have achieved.

The returns for the previous 12 months will also have to be posted on Cook’s Web site. (His seminars are now titled Stock Market Institute of Learning). The FTC is still trying to establish what those 12-month returns should be.

However, the investments held by Cook’s public company, Wade Cook Financial, dropped 73 percent in value during the first nine months of this year, says Thomas Benson, president of the Diogenes Group in Naples, Fla., who examined the company’s balance sheet for me. (And Cook passes as a great investment adviser?)

Cook himself collected $22.2 million in compensation between 1997 and 1999.

But Wade Cook Financial is losing serious money. In public filings in March, the company’s independent auditors questioned whether it can stay alive (something the FTC didn’t know, Schroeder says).

Naturally, that raises the question of how much money will actually be on hand for consumer redress. Cook is liable personally for whatever his company doesn’t pay, but collecting would almost certainly be a struggle.

The redress program covers only the people involved with Cook’s Wall Street Workshop, from 1997 through 1999. If you paid for it, didn’t attend and asked for a refund, you should get your money back automatically. Checks are supposed to go out Dec. 22.

The FTC order, by the way, applies only to the workshops and the materials promoting them. In his books and videos, Cook is still free to make his outrageous claims. And he’s still selling seminars that promise easy wealth.

Syndicated columnist Jane Bryant Quinn can be reached in care of the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St., Washington, D.C. 20071-9200.