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It's not unusual for Matthew Lesko to get the best of the government. The Kensington man has made a career of shtick, hocking information about government grants and financial assistance using loud infomercials and question-mark outfits to get the attention of insomniacs.

But last month, it was a gag and not a grant that came at Uncle Sam's expense, when an ad starring Lesko criticizing the government bailouts won two Virginia libertarian filmmakers $27,599 in a contest sponsored by Right.org. Hopping around to frenetic music, the format is oddly familiar: Lesko's in a white and green question mark suit, yelling.

"Eighty-five billion to help bank executives take a vacation!" Lesko shouts. "Twenty-five billion to make cars that people don't want to buy!"

The 30-second ad, "Free* Government Money With Matthew Lesko!," netted Meredith and Austin Bragg, of Alexandria and Arlington, respectively, their personal share of free Lesko money with a first-place finish and $27,599—the amount Right.org reports as one person's share of the bailout burden.

And if by criticizing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act it seems Lesko was selling out his bread-and-butter, he doesn't see it that way.

"It's fun," said Lesko, of why he helped with the film. "I'm just trying to show people reality. It's not political to me at all, that's stupid."

Information, Lesko said, is his crowning loyalty. There may be an Obama sticker on his bumper, but Lesko said he doesn't think government programs are "good or bad." They're just there, and he wants to make sure you know.

"People just — we don't know our options in our society," Lesko said. "To me, to tell you the truth, it's not money, it's information that's important."

When offered his third of the winnings, Lesko turned it down.

"He just said, ‘Oh, don't be silly, I don't need it," said Meredith Bragg. "He wrote us this e-mail back saying if we want to we can take him out to lunch or dinner and explain how we will use this money for what we want in life."

What Lesko wanted, and found, in life was the courage to just be himself, even if that was a late-night infomercial icon in one of 17 custom-made question mark suits. Now 66, Lesko didn't wear them out in public until his 50s, but now routinely sports interrogatives couture in Adams Morgan, where it makes people smile, and at Congressional Country Club, where "they don't know what the hell to do, so they just ignore me."

"I don't care," he said. "I just can't think of anything more luxurious in life than getting up in the morning and doing what you love."

And so, his brief foray into political commentary aside, Lesko still gets up in the morning to do the government research he loves, which now largely includes the very stimulus he speared for the Braggs. It's the next big thing, Lesko said, and he is looking into small business loans, government contracts and household weatherization grants within it for his latest round of "Free Money" research.

"The best opportunity we have right now is the stimulus," Lesko said. "I think it is for everybody right now, I think it's the only game in town. I think if you want to do something in the next year or so you've got to know the stimulus."

His advice has worked for some, like Debbie Lawless, who said she couldn't have opened her Kensington restaurant Café Monet in 1998 without help from Lesko. Lawless has now moved to Atlanta and the café is gone, but she found out about a Small Business Administration Loan to open it from one of Lesko's books, purchased on a whim from the Internet.

"That's the only reason, that and I owned a house," which helped her get the loan, Lawless said. It was only when Lesko and his wife, Wendy, walked into her café that she learned her adviser was also her neighbor.

But some, including the Better Business Bureau of Washington D.C., turn the research microscope back on Lesko. The BBB has received 4,700 inquiries into Lesko and 107 complaints. He has a D+ rating from the group, which he dismissed as a "mafia protection racket."

"Bottom line, we found that the advertising claims were problematic and there was more hype than fact," said Edward Johnson, president of the BBB, explaining the rating. Johnson said many of the programs Lesko touts are actually welfare or other programs with stringent eligibility requirements. Also, he said, "Anybody selling this kind of information can generally get it free through the government."

Lesko doesn't hide that, and added to Johnson's observation that anyone who finds his Web sites using Google could do the work to scroll through a few hundred more Web pages and find the same information he aggregates.

But he points out that his BBB complaints get resolved—only one remained unresolved as of Monday— and Lesko said any grant, loan, or direct payment is going to take work.

"If you don't want to do anything than don't bother looking," he said.

His standard reply for inquiries about his work is "I get stuff for free and I sell it for as much as I can," and information being king, Lesko said he's not nervous to be honest about even that. Sitting in a black and white question mark suit beneath a portrait of himself, both Leskos smiling, it's difficult to tell if the scene is duplicitous or just duplicated.

"Is the shoe shine guy nervous?" he asks, raising bushy eyebrows. "You could shine your own shoes."