Viva Lost Wages: Sin City becomes GIN City for a weekend

Hey, kids, it's Friday the 13th! Are you feeling lucky? If you're in Las Vegas for serial huckster and convicted felon Kevin Trudeau's GIN Dream Weekend, you are no doubt feeling extraordinarily lucky. But you can't always trust your feelings, and in this case, you'd better not.

On the compellingly toxic and seemingly indestructible tree that yields an endless supply of hucksters, hustledorks, flim-flammers, and fraudsters -- the Tree of Lies, you might call it -- Kevin Trudeau is, I realize, the low-hanging fruit. It scarcely takes any effort at all to find negative information about him; for more than twenty years a string of critics in both the mainstream and not-so-mainstream media have been blasting away at him for his creative methods of parting the trusting masses from their money. He's been in prison (1991-93), he has been fined extraordinary sums, and yet he keeps on churning out the scams. As I've noted many times before, I'm not treading any new ground here. 

And yet, KT and some of his more loyal followers just keep coming up with more imaginative malarkey, and I never cease to be both amused and astounded by the absolute and utter crap that the hopeful masses continue, against all reason and common sense, to believe.

The newest news is that, beginning today, Friday the 13th, and lasting for three fun-filled days, you have a whole new way to lose your money in Sin City: the GIN Dream Weekend in Las Vegas, April 13-15, 2012. 

GIN, or the Global Information Network, is one of KT's most majorly mercenary money grabs. Defenders like to say that he doesn't actually own GIN but is merely a co-founder, along with about thirty other world-class billionaires (who, of course, shall remain anonymous), and he merely acts as the spokesman for this "multi-form company organized in Nevis/St. Kitts." GIN, or so the marketing tall tale goes, is based upon seekrit knowledge that until now was only accessible to princes and presidents and Bilderbergers and Bohemian Grovers and other elites.

KT claims to have once been a member of a secret society called The Brotherhood himself (beginning at either the age of 12 or the age of 15, depending upon which version of the tall tale he's telling); they approached him, he says, because they recognized what a rare and gifted soul he was. He says he risked his life when he finally left the society and opted to share The Brotherhood's forbidden information with the public.

He says that some of the other founders of GIN are still members of elite secret societies, which is the only way he can continue to get all of the inside information so he can sell it to GIN members, but which of course also 'splains why he has to keep the other founders' names hidden, because otherwise their fellow society members would shun them or even... gasp... kill them.

And people -- educated grownups, mind you -- BELIEVE this. Since some time in 2009, GIN has been skillfully preying upon the hopes and fears of those who long for financial independence and wealth beyond their wildest imaginings. 

If you're unfamiliar with GIN and don't want to take time to follow the other links in this paragraph, here's a Squidoo page to get you up to speed quickly.

The GIN Dream Weekend site basically consists of a few teasers about how fabulously exciting the event and its host city are. But in truth it tells nothing about what the event actually is; it only promises that attending will allow you to "Bathe yourself in this high vibration environment that will TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE!" KT and his minions are talking a lot about vibrations these days; you'd think they were '60s era hippies, but really they're still just slogging that old Law of Attraction meme, inspired by Abrascam Hicks and The Secret.

The GIN Dream Weekend site also says that the Dream Weekend is a MAJOR EVENT, and Major Events are must-attends where "decisions are made and lives are changed." I'll just bet they are. The promotional video tells nothing either. And yet... and yet... they're drooling with excitement about it on the Global Information Network Facebook page.

Baccarat bounty...or not
Las Vegas seems like the perfect place for a GIN event, particularly since one of the hooks GIN has been using is the promotion of gambling systems that True-dough claims he has used to make millions for himself over the years. Apparently KT has been pushing this stuff for a while, but I just recently became aware of it a few days ago when I heard from someone who's concerned about a long-time friend who has become deeply involved with GIN. 

The person who wrote to me hadn't really even heard of Kevin True-dough before conversing with this friend and conducting some independent research. I'll share parts of the email, which my correspondent gave me permission to use. The first item of concern was the actual cost of membership:

The $20,000 to get through the GIN [Membership] levels does not include the monthly cruises / Vegas trips / Seminars or additional GIN learning opportunities.

Members pay another $1000 plus transportation and expenses to go to these things and meet the charlatans. Monthly costs for the brainwashed can easily be over 5 grand per month after participating in all the fabulous GIN events.

That's pretty much consistent with what I've heard from others. And here's where the gambling comes in. My correspondent continued:

In addition to this stuff and what you already know, GIN is really trying to bash its most gullible members over the head with their ... Baccarat "money management system." Whatever money they make sending their dopey hoards off to a casino with their last 10 grand is nothing compared to the money these people will lose following [this] gambling system.

That got me doing a little rudimentary research of my own, and I found a mention of baccarat, and wealth through gambling, in a post by a very enthusiastic GIN blogger named David Krueger, who appears to have a major man-crush on True-dough:

In this f-----g amazing installment, Kevin reveals that he has convinced his friend, who has an amazing sytem [sic] for winning at Baccarat, night after night, will be teaching a one time only seminar to GIN members. We are also getting the horse racing sytem [sic] that Kevin himself has used to win millions over the years. Are you kidding, Join GIN now!

Here is a link to the video mentioning the gambling. If you don't want to watch the entire vid -- and I certainly can't blame you because it's one hour you'll never get back -- I'll tell you now that the gambling stuff starts at about 1:07 and continues through about 12:00. It's pretty disgusting.
If you go to the KT Radio Network site, you'll see a list of entries with a "baccarat" tag: http://www.ktradionetwork.com/tag/baccarat/

Granted, the KT vid I linked to above was posted over a year ago, and at that time True-dough said that the baccarat training he was planning to offer, thanks to the good graces of a baccarat-savvy buddy of his named Don, was only going to be a one-time deal. Of course, as I noted to my correspondent in a subsequent email, we know that the perception of scarcity is one of the tools (or weapons) of influence documented by Robert Cialdini in his classic book, and it's a weapon that is used shamelessly by the slimiest of Internet marketers.

In any case I wondered if KT and GIN are still pushing the gambling wisdumb as part of the package of "benefits" for those who pay for GIN membership. One of the "benefits" listed on the GIN member benefits page is, "How to be lucky and win at gambling, including horse racing, baccarat and other casino games," but I wanted a little more information.

So I asked my correspondent about this, and was assured that the observations shared in the email were based upon very recent exchanges with GIN members, some of whom had done the gambling seminar about a month ago and were obviously gambling novices, but were gambling 5-10 grand per week using their newly learned system. My correspondent added:

I am guessing the scarcity of the training depends on how easily or cheaply GIN can get a degenerate gambler to show up...

I'll add more specific info about the gambling/"money management" systems actually being taught to GIN members as I get it. Apparently they are based upon the Martingale betting system. Wrote my correspondent:

The system is good for scammers because it works as long as you have a large bankroll. Once you start getting near your limit you risk it all until you are broke again. These guys can sell the systems as long as people are betting and not yet broke. People using the system will claim they are winning constantly and will not admit that they lost their shirts until they need to borrow money. Using the system with a large bankroll means you can stretch out your 1% loss over a long period of time and tout [the] system to other nincompoops.

In any event, I think my correspondent nailed it pretty well in the first email to me:

Of all the shady nasty things GIN seems to be putting into the heads of these gullible nitwits, to me this one is the worst. For the few grand GIN might make for selling this crap to its members they are encouraging them to risk 100 times more money than GIN could possibly make on this scheme...

Until I met a few GIN members I would have laughed about this stupidity, but the scams are starting to look like stealing candy from babies. I am sure the few members I've met will be cleaned out within a year.

It seems Trudeau has found the perfect balance between Amway, Tony Robbins, As-Seen-on-TV, conspiracy theories, cults and Scientology. Much of his pabulum is just repackaged self help nonsense from as early as 1800s mixed with objectivism. It seems he has pre-programmed his followers so no amount of evidence of this fact will ever penetrate their heads.

Harsh words, those. And lest you think this is a case of victim-bashing, the context makes it clear to me that my correspondent is motivated chiefly by compassion and concern for a close friend who has recently been imbibing the GIN-spiked Kool-Aid in a big way. As for me, I still struggle between my compassion for the easily fooled and eternally hopeful, and my desire to grab them by the collective shirt collar and shake them (figuratively speaking), while shouting at them:
"WAKE UP!"

Of course, KT has convinced many that it's the rest of us who are asleep, and the lucky ones who join GIN who are awake.

Jimmy Ray Jumpsuit serving GIN from prison cell
And in related news -- probably worth a blog post of its own, but I'm a little rushed today -- convicted killer James Arthur "Death" Ray, currently serving time in prison for the deaths of three people in his fake sweat lodge in October 2009, is apparently trying to help True-dough out by flogging Your Wish Is Your Command, the 14-CD upsell for GIN. Wrote Tragedy In Sedona author Connie Joy on her Facebook page yesterday:

Under the subject of "You just can't make this kind of thing up" I just got an email from JamesRay@aweber.com with the title of "From the Desk Of James Arthur Ray"! I didn't know that he had a desk in jail?!? But he is still selling his stuff. He has a "GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU" a program he is calling Your Wish Is Your Command. "I've personally gone through the entire program and can strongly recommend it to you." Yes, you want to buy this so you can be just like him???

Perhaps Death Ray is just paying True-dough back for speaking out in defense of Death Ray (and the entire selfish-help industry) on the KT "radio" show last year.

As far as I'm concerned, the meat industry isn't the only thing producing a lot of pink slime these days. Slime is slime, whether it's decked out in an orange jumpsuit or a silly hat.

More True-dough on this Whirled:

• February 2012: A. Rose by any other name would shill as sweet
• December 2011: True-dough updates: Bad poetry for KT, hate mail for CC
• November 2011: A jumpsuit for Jimmy
• August 2011: First Amendment Stuporhero
• August 2011: Calling all lazy men: let's build a pyramid together!
• August 2011: Everything old is Nouveau again (or, Neo-scam by any other name), Part 1 of 2
• June 2011: Holy Guacamole! True-dough's racist rants
• June 2011: For he's a jolly good felon: True-dough speaks out for Death Ray
• December 2009: Illuminutty: the secret brotherhood of the chronically gullible
• November 2009: How to take over the world
• July 2009: Horse farts and related matters
• January 2009: Mr. Fire meets up with true dough

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