Kevin Trudeau gets some mainstream media lovin'

When Abe Husein of Kansas City, Missouri, realized he'd been sold a bill of goods by serial scammer Kevin Trudeau and Trudeau's Ponzi-like Global Information Network (GIN), he did more than just get mad. Abe went to the news department of one of his local (Kansas City, Missouri) TV stations, KSHB-TV, with an idea for a story about this global fraud. He spoke with Emmy-award winning investigative reporter Ryan Kath. And after three months of investigation, the story is finally complete. It will be airing on 41 Action News on Monday, November 12, 2012 at 6:00 PM CST.

I will provide a link to this story when it goes online, but for now, you can watch the promo video on this public link on KSHB-TV's Facebook page. You can also get to that page by clicking on the graphic above, which is a screen shot of my own Facebook Timeline shout-out.

Since 2009 I've been blogging about Trudeau and what a scammer he is and what a scam GIN is (see list of links below). Numerous other bloggers, commentators, and mainstream journalists -- mostly print and online journos, but some TV journos as well -- have documented Trudeau's many, many misdeeds over the years. He has been well known as a con artist, and his nearly two-year stint in Federal prison (1991-93) has been on public record.

Yet he has been able to go on conning, through infomercials, online promotions, his KT Network "radio" show, and direct-mail promotions. He has very successfully marketed himself as a hero for free speech and a sharer of information that "they" -- the government, Big Pharma, the food industry, and the Illuminati -- don't want you to know about. When GIN was launched in 2009, and promoted through infomercials for a 14-CD set called Your Wish Is Your Command, its big selling point was that GIN members and participants would not only be privy to all of the seekrit information of the world, but that they could also become almost effortlessly rich through selling GIN memberships and other KT frauducts.

I blogged and blogged and blogged about how absurd all of this was, apparently to no effect. (As one of my most humorously deranged detractors has been trying to convince everyone, my blog only has two readers, so maybe that's the problem.) In any case, almost nobody paid any attention to me or to any of the other critics who have much wider readership, and the GIN party went on. And on. And on. And that's understandable, since part of Trudeau's cult tactics was that he continually discouraged his followers from listening to critics and naysayers.

Meanwhile, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and numerous other government agencies and authorities had their probes up Trudeau's assets, as they have for many years -- and that story ain't over yet by a long shot -- but the party still went on.*

Then the disgruntled GIN members -- such as Abe -- started grumbling, and the grumble became a roar. And who knows how loud that roar will become?
Many people have been eagerly awaiting the KSHB-TV 41 Action News story, including yours truly. Some have speculated that it will mark the absolute and utter end of GIN and of Trudeau's scamming. Frankly, I am not that optimistic. Neat and tidy endings just don't usually happen in these cases. Then again, I am always prepared to be pleasantly surprised. But even if this story, with the exposure it will surely enjoy, only knocks a dent or two in the big sick machine, it will be well worth it.

I have not yet seen the finished story or even any of the raw footage, but I have been told about some of the content, and I think it's going to be pretty good. So I applaud Abe Husein, and I applaud Ryan Kath and his team, for taking these steps. It's still all too rare for a TV station to go after infomercial scammers in any significant way, since the stations and networks do, after all, benefit from infomercial revenue. This 2005 (pre-GIN) Salon.com article discusses Trudeau's "Natural Cures" infomercials:

...one source in the direct-response industry who asked not to be named estimated that Trudeau is spending a million dollars a week on national cable and could also be spending another half a million on broadcast channels. The source suggested that Trudeau’s return from that investment would be about $2 million to $4 million a week. “He’s got the formula down and he knows how to trick people,” says the source. “And he’s got enough money to do it. The FTC can’t stop him because the amount they fine him is nothing compared to what he takes in.”

And that was in 2005, before GIN and the Your Wish Is Your Command infomercials, even before the "Debt Cures" infomercials.

So again, good on Kansas City's 41 Action News for digging into Trudeau's biggest money grab. At the very least, I think that this story will be, as the punch line for everyone's favorite lawyer joke goes, "a good start."


PS ~ For some interesting, detailed documentation on the fall of GIN, see Bernie O'Mahony's GINtruth.com.
* Here's Salty Droid's perspective about the Feds and the likelihood of "Caging Kevin Trudeau."

More True-dough on this Whirled:

• October 2012: Kevin Trudeau: Rats in our heads, GIN down the toilet...and life goes on
• October 2012: Kevin Trudeau: The shape of things to come?
• September 2012: Leonard Coldwell and Fred Van Liew: Pot, meet kettle
• August 2012: Truth is better than GIN any day
• July 2012: Drunk on GIN, and you can too!
• July 2012: Kevin Trudeau's GIN: part of the big sick machine
• July 2012: Independence Daze
• May 2012 (updated September 2012): Paging Dr. C: Bernd bridges in Deutschland?
• May 2012: Can alien DNA save Kevin Trudeau's GIN?
• May 2012: Does a canary with a GIN hangover sing as sweetly?
• April 2012: Viva Lost Wages: Sin City Become GIN City for a weekend
• 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

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!