Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Kevin Trudeau: Rumors, lies, and SNAG support

IMPORTANT NOTICE/UPDATE, 4 July 2013: When I'm wrong about something I feel obligated to correct it as soon as possible, and I was wrong about one point regarding the recent court happenings with Kevin Trudeau. It turns out that one of the rumors Lenny Coldwell was spreading -- regarding the terms of a secured bond set in Trudeau's criminal case -- was not a rumor but was true. I was unable until today to retrieve a document stating that Kevin's parents put their Massachusetts home up to secure the bond. So I will make corrections in the text below to reflect this point. Corrections will be in this pretty red color.
 
As many of y'all may know, serial scammer Kevin Trudeau spent some time in court last week (and part of this week) for hearings on both his civil and criminal cases. Despite the crowing of his loudest detractors, who salivate over the prospect of Kevin being stuck in a tiny cell with some imaginary jailhouse rapist named Bubba, KT remains un-jailed. Reportedly there will be some actual judge-ly decisions made by the end of this month... but then, we've heard that before.

But there's a little bit of news anyway. For instance, while conferring with my seekrit pal PACER.gov for information about the most recent goings-on in court, I was made privy to an interesting little tidbit about Trudeau's April 2013 bankruptcy. Seems that this bankruptcy case has already been terminated -- as of June 3, 2013 -- due to failure to file required documents. I hadn't heard anything about this on the forums of those who are supposedly keeping the rest of the waiting world informed about Trudeau's cases, so it was news to me that the bankruptcy action was discharged a month ago.

The deadline for objecting to the discharge is August 30, 2013. Knowing the way Kevin and his legal team roll, this could be just another delay tactic, one of hundreds they've employed over the years that this case has dragged on. As a friend of mine observed, "This gives them until August to delay and maybe make a deal, and failing that they protest and refile and delay another 4 months. This is making 20 lawyers very rich."

I think that sounds about right.

Meanwhile, Loony Lenny Coldwell, former b.f.f./business partner/faux-physician for Trudeau, and now KT's daftest detractor, has been spreading rumors [okay, not just rumors ~CC] on Facebook about the latest court happenings. Earlier this week, Loony stated that Kevin's aged parents were willing to put their home on the line for their youngest boy. Or, as Loony put it:

Abe here is what happened: His Parents had to put up their house as bond for Trudeau. The judges (both) told him that he has to hand over his US and Italian Passport asap and that he will not get the passports back. The final ruling is set for the 26th of July.

Trudeau had to put up a secured bond of $209,000. [If you have read this far, you already know that I later found out that his parents had indeed put their Massachusetts home up for the bond.] He also temporarily got his US passport back so that he could go to Canada. Reportedly he's going there for a fishing trip with his buddies, but I don't know if that's true, and if so, I don't know if it's just a private trip with him and the Morters and a few others, or if it's the one where he charges a bunch of people several thousand dollars for the privilege of accompanying him. Here are pics from a previous fishing trip in 2011.

Anyway. Loony's followers were properly outraged about the prospect of the elder Trudeaus possibly losing their home if their little Katie flew the coop. I would have suggested caution before outrage, and would have advised that the outraged ones do a little research before flying off the handle, but I have been blocked from the forums where this was discussed, because both Loony and Abe are afraid of me for some reason.

Kevin's brother Bob, who is very protective of his folks, was particularly upset by Loony's "news."
Click to enlarge.

I thought my caution was well founded when I found out that Bob had spoken to his parents, and they told him the rumor was not true. Privately Bob has told me that he thinks even Kevin wouldn't deliberately do anything to hurt his folks. He said that Kevin doesn't own the house and couldn't put it up without their consent, but he knows that Kevin wouldn't do that to their dad anyway, even if he could. At any rate, Bob tried to set things straight on Loony's page.


Unfortunately, this is one time Lenny was right. And when I say "unfortunately," I don't mean it's unfortunate that Lenny was right about something. Even someone like Lenny can't be wrong about everything. And I don't have a problem admitting when I'm wrong about something, even if it means Lenny was right. I just mean that it is unfortunate that the elder Trudeaus' well being is contingent upon their younger son's doing the right thing.

While I was on PACER.gov I found a document that was filed on July 1, regarding Kevin Trudeau's criminal contempt case with Judge Ronald Guzman [case number 1:10-cr-00886]. This document told me most of what I needed to know: that Trudeau's previous plea of not guilty has been accepted by the court, and that, as I noted above, a secured bond was set in the amount of $209,000. Trudeau was given his US passport, which he had previously surrendered, for travel to Canada. (As noted on a previous post, he claims he left his Italian passport in a biometric safe in Zurich, so he couldn't surrender it to the court.) He has to surrender the US passport again upon his return to the US -- if he returns, that is. And given the bit about his parents' home... we have to hope that he does return.



I also downloaded the docket for this criminal case, and saw that several other documents were also filed on July 1. But when I tried to view them PACER indignantly told me that I do not have permission to do so. The docs PACER coyly mentioned but refused to let me see were listed on the docket as "Pre-trial Bail Report," "Bond," and "Order setting conditions of release." In other words, the deets of the bond are hidden from public view for now, or at least they were as of July 2. Note: Document Number 69 -- the Forfeiture Agreement (regarding Kevin's parents' home) -- was not even listed then, but is now, and is now available for viewing. When I checked, however, the other three documents were still not publicly viewable. Here is page 1 of the docket as I saw it when I first wrote this post:


I looked for the latest documents on the civil case too [1:03-CV-03904 with Judge Robert Gettleman], and retrieved a 27-page document that had also been filed on July 1. The document contains the June 25 opinion of one Mary O'Connor, ASA. Ms. O'Connor was engaged by Trudeau's law firm to provide expert witness testimony related to the question of whether Trudeau's various companies contain sufficient assets to pay the $37.6 million FTC fine. There are pages of figures, including a balance sheet for all of KT's companies as of June 24, 2013. As Ms. O'Connor explained, however, it is only relevant to the companies and not to Kevin's and/or his wife Natalie's personal assets. She wrote, "...we were not provided with information regarding the personal ability of the Trudeaus to pay this amount and therefore, we have no opinion related to the probability that this receivable could be collected."

There really isn't a whole lot of new information in the document, as much of Ms. O'Connor's report was based upon testimony and data previously supplied by Michael Dow, the former financial guy for Natural Cures and some of True-dough's other companies. I wrote about that depo on this post (scroll down to "The Dow deposition"). At any rate, the main point of Ms. O'Connor's report and the attached documentation seems to be to demonstrate that the FTC is not going to be able to get the moneys for that big fine from KT's companies.

In related news, self-described GIN destroyer (and Coldwell protege) Abe Husein posted a video yesterday. He says he is taking a break for now from the constant updates about GIN and KT, due to the fact that his mission to bring GIN to its knees is accomplished, according to him. I think we've heard that "Mission Accomplished" thing before...

But I digress. Abe opened the video with that dramatic tale of Kevin putting his parents' home at risk in order to get his passport. He made a big deal about how inconsiderate and heartless Kevin is. (By the way, he has since announced that he is going to be doing more media interviews and that he is going to expose some of the other scammers in GIN. So... maybe mission not-so-much accomplished after all.)

* * * * *

So that's pretty much the latest on the KT court cases (are you getting bored with them yet?). But before I go, I want to share some comic relief in the form of a couple of impassioned blog posts defending Kevin Trudeau. These are noteworthy in that they provide yet more evidence that Kevin has clearly captured the SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy/Gal) market, as well as the more secular selfish-help/hustledork wannabe market. Today's featured SNAG True-doughnut is named Etienne Charlatan... I mean, Etienne Charland... and he has a web site and blog called Spiritual Self Transformation.

Etienne, a native of Quebec, is a New-Wage dilettante, a self-described "Emotional Architect" who offers all sorts of services, including something called "Force of Life training." He seems to be obsessed with certain themes, most notably, sexual polarity. He has kind of a gay cowboy vibe going on too, not that there's anything wrong with that. And his professional dilettante creds are truly impressive:
  • Member of the Enlightened Entrepreneur Club
  • Master Alchemist
  • CEO Space Graduate
  • Reiki Master
  • Computer Science Diploma
Etienne, as I indicated above, is quite the defender of KT. At the time he first published this post about Katie's legal woes, he thought that his hero had actually been thrown in jail. Apparently Etienne had misread the headlines that merely indicated that the Feds want to throw Kevin in jail. Later Etienne corrected part of the post but not all of it, a few sentences read as if KT really is behind bars.

After writing that first post, Etienne apparently did a little more ruminating on KT's troubles, and managed to mostly convince himself that Trudeau is really A-Okay and a truly enlightened soul, as indicated in a follow-up post. He does acknowledge that there have been complaints about Trudeau's bidness practices, but apparently talked himself out of believing that those gripes were valid.
Then, there are a bunch of complaints about credit card overcharges and problems with refunds from those purchasing from his TV advertisements. Unless these are all made up to damage his reputation (which would be unlikely, unless someone can show me evidence of it?), that’s definitely not acceptable.

Edit: As Paul pointed out in his comment, it’s too easy to buy online public opinion. For $300 a month, you can get someone to work full-time in writing reviews and complaints.
Uh-huh. I am sure that every complaint and criticism about True-dough has been bought and paid for by the "They" who "don't want you to know" the truth about anything. I'm sure all of the hundreds of consumer complaints, and all of the scathing reviews of Trudeau's books on Amazon, and all of those critical blogs, are bought and paid for by Katie's enemies. Etienne, dude, you are beginning to sound a little bit like Loony Coldwell.

Etienne concludes his blog post with a rundown on the "polarity readings" of Kevin Trudeau, as well as "readings" of such New-Wage huckster notables as Secret stars Bob Proctor and John Assaraf. Scientist Bob has been a fairly frequent snarget on this Whirled (and I know some icky things about his "polarities" that I am not yet at liberty to write about), and I have even mentioned John Asshataraf a few times as well. On this post, for instance.

* * * * *
And so it goes. Rain may be falling on GIN and KT, but the sky has not yet fallen and may not fall. Kevin Trudeau still has plenty of friends and fans, and they don't show any signs of giving up on him. GIN may end, but Katie will go on. The faux-hero prognosticators, who claim to be fighting on behalf of those who feel they've been screwed by KT, have been proven incorrect time and time and time again. They long for that neat and tidy ending that, as I've said so many times before, will probably never come. But shhh! Don't tell Loony and his pals. It will be our little secret.


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* * * * *
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    2 comments:

    reson8r said...

    I bought the bullshit crook, wine and stinker. I'm man enough to admit that now. But mostly I'm here to confirm that Etienne is a first rate scam artist. More than that, he is supported by secret societies and a low level demonic channeler. I don't know the name of this society, but I call them the Neoluminati. They are associated with Kevin Trudeau, and differ from the 'old' Illuminati in that they like to 'invite' people en mass and train them to be evil scammers. They use various mind control techniques like Alpha-Beta dynamics, NLP and Public Hypnosis to convince their pasties that their activities are 'raising the planet's vibration.'

    I know most of you here don't believe in any of that woo fairy stuff, but I know for myself it is real and Etienne had nothing to do with my awakening, other than showing me where not to go. As a matter of fact, the whole purpose of his secret society's agenda is to take spiritually minded people and convince them to use their spiritual energy to chase money by starting pyramid schemes. I was a 'bad student' of his because I saw the inherent dualism in his philosophy, which he passes as 'unity consciousness' as so many New (c)Age deceptions do.

    His program involves periodic 'distance healings' after his event. When it became clear to him that I was not 'down with the program' (that is, not wanting to become a scam perpetrator) bad things would happen in my life for a few days in a row. Like sickness, nausea and insomnia internally, and shitty sexual experiences, getting kicked out of my house etc. His healings turned into psychic attacks once he realized I had pulled the hook from my gill.

    Spread the word. Stay away from this guy.

    Wednesday, May 21, 2014 2:43:00 AM
    Cosmic Connie said...

    Thank you for your comment, reson8r. In my view, one doesn't have to believe in the "woo fairy" stuff in order to accept that Etienne is a scammer or a scammer wannabe. But he's such a minor, obscure figure that the point may be moot anyway. What is clear is that there are scads of sociopaths and psychopaths out there who are willing to take advantage of people's need to believe and their search for meaning... all in the service of pocketing these good people's money. (That's why I call it the New-Wage industry; it's the mercenary aspect of New Age. But New-Cage will work too! :-))

    And you don't even have to believe in seekrit societies to see that this is true and to keep yourself away from these scummy folks and their scams.

    Wednesday, May 21, 2014 11:39:00 AM

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