Kevin Trudeau: FTC still calling for jail, while court hearing is postponed due to government shutdown

Happy October, y'all! September was a busy month on this Whirled because it was an active month in the courts for serial scammer Kevin Trudeau and his nemesis, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The civil hearing that took place on September 26, and for which Trudeau's loudest and looniest detractors held out such high hopes, was originally continued to today, October 1. The Loony was not happy about that, no-siree.

But subsequently the FTC lawyers, with the blessings of Katie's lawyers, filed an emergency motion to move the hearing to later in the week, due to the looming government shutdown. Without government funding, the FTC lawyers prolly wouldn't be able to show up for the hearing, said they. Accordingly said hearing was rescheduled for Friday, October 4. I guess they're optimistic that the government will be back in operation. If not, they can always reschedule. They seem to be good at that.

Anyway, a flurry of new court documents appeared on September 30. There are three docs for the criminal case [1:10-cr-00886, Judge Ronald A. Guzmán presiding]. They are mostly about the pre-trial motions, which are still being argued back and forth endlessly, in preparation for the November 4 trial. And there was one doc for the civil case [1:03-cv-03904, Judge Robert Gettleman presiding], with a long exhibit attached. Here's a link to the civil document.

The main document is "FTC’S STATEMENT REGARDING THE NEED FOR COERCIVE SANCTIONS" -- in other words, a recap of why the FTC thinks Katie needs to be thrown back in jail again unless one of three "precise purge conditions" can be met:

1) He fully complies with this Court’s June 2, 2010 order (DE372);
(2) He establishes that he has no present ability to comply with the Court’s
June 2, 2010 order beyond what he has already done; or
(3) He establishes that continued incarceration will not have a coercive effect.

By and large this is more of the same old same-old that we've heard and read recently, but there's newer info too, including a summary of additional recent violations of the receivership order. According to the FTC, Trudeau has violated recent orders at least five times, which they recap in a footnote on page 1:

As discussed further below, these five instances include: (1) failing to disclose the Australian account; (2) spending and transferring assets from that account; (3) destroying documents; (4) failing to disclose an offshore gaming account; and (5) lying to the Receiver, as the Receiver’s reports document. There are additional instances of noncooperation that the Receiver has asked the FTC not to raise because, in the Receiver’s view, doing so would impair the Receiver’s ability to recover certain assets.

Lying to the receiver? That alone is enough to get Katie thrown back in a cage, according to the terms of the receivership agreement as I understand them. (By the way, In case you don't know about that Aussie account, here's the scoop.)

If you've been reading some of the other recent court docs you'll recognize some of the items from the exhibit as well, but there are new items there too. It's all pretty interesting.

Perhaps because the FTC is following Katie's advice to "look for the gold" in everything, the issue of Trudeau's gold purchases has appeared numerous times in the court docs over the past year or so (including in his ex-marketing guy Peter Wink's declaration to the FTC). And there's more in this latest doc about Katie's purchases over the past few years from Peter Ragnar's Golden Lyin'... I mean Golden LION Mint. In another footnote on page 1 of the main doc the FTC declares:

As discussed further below, Trudeau purportedly could not remember any details regarding significant new evidence the Receiver discovered indicating that Trudeau acquired additional gold bars (beyond the ten already known) and gold coins between 2008 and 2011, see infra at 6, except to say that he thought his wife had them.

Oddly enough, Ragnar has reportedly distanced himself recently from both Golden Lion Mint and Roaring Lion Publishing (perhaps leaving his bidness partner and Lion etc. co-founder Tony Balistreri dangling in the wind)? By the way, here's a Ripoff Report complaint about Golden Lion Mint, dated April 28, 2013. Quite a contrast from "Health Ranger" Mike Adams' glowing review back in December 2008. Seems like lots of Scamworlders have gold fever, including, of course, Loony Coldwell.

I really do need to finish that blog post about Peter Ragnar, whose real name is Peter Lundell, and who has a very iffy past, like so many players in Scamworld. Ragnar certainly benefited from GIN, even after the sh-t started really hitting the fan. He is still being sought by various pro-GIN folks as well as some anti-GIN (but pro-Scamworld) factions. Here's one of numerous recent examples of two robbin' Peters flim-flamming in tandem...



Ragnar is still waxing profound on Facebook and doing various webinars in conjunction with other hucksters, and in my opinion not being held accountable for his part in the huge GIN scam.

But I digress. One point that the FTC is trying to make is that the receiver's investigation will exhaust all of the available resources if allowed to continue much longer. They apparently think that jailing KT may hurry things up. (Cue laugh track.)

Says the FTC in its statement:

Simply put, there is no realistic probability that the Receiver will locate the bulk of Trudeau’s assets without his cooperation, and there is zero probability that Trudeau will ever cooperate voluntarily....

The continuation of the current collection plan has drained significant public resources in a fruitless attempt to collect Trudeau’s assets. Worse yet, without coercive incarceration, the costs of the Receivership almost certainly will outstrip the assets ultimately collected. Thus, the choice at this point is stark: either incarcerate Trudeau for however long it takes to coerce him to turn over all the assets he controls, or continue depleting the assets available to Trudeau’s victims. In the event that the Court chooses the latter, the FTC will of course follow any order of the Court, but it cannot continue wasting public funds chasing down the avalanche of Trudeau’s lies and deception. Unfortunately, absent coercive incarceration, there is nothing further the FTC reasonably can do to help Trudeau’s victims.

So the FTC has given themselves an out, anyway. In another footnote they declare:

There is nothing Trudeau can do to further the goals of the Receivership outside of prison that he cannot do from within prison. However, the FTC requests that any coercive incarceration order provide the Receiver with access to Trudeau in the event that the Receiver needs Trudeau to execute documents or make phone calls under the Receiver’s supervision.

The subtext is that Trudeau can lie and deceive from jail just as easily as he can lie and deceive anywhere else. I guess the FTC is still holding out some hope (or is pretending they are holding out hope) that he can be "scared straight," but that hasn't worked out too well so far.

What all of this jail talk is accomplishing is increasing his martyr/hero creds, and he still has a passionate and fairly large fan base. We visited some of them here the other day. An apparently larger group of the faithful are enthusiastically planning a GIN cruise on their own to replace the January 2014 GIN Leadership cruise, which the court-appointed receiver has postponed indefinitely. They even started a Facebook group to plan it. (I bet they end up getting better rates than they got with the Katie cruises, and they'll see (or not) how he was ripping them off.) One person on the group wrote:

This up coming cruise will be a great event for all of us.
We are doing this because a great man taught us how to dream big and how to look for the gold in everyone and everything. Most of all how to believe in our abilities to do for self. ( If it is to be it is up to me.) (if you can do it I can do it.)

For some odd reason I was invited to join that group, but out of respect for their privacy I will not attempt to link to the group here and will not name it or any of the parties who are planning the cruise. Actually I think it's a good thing that they're planning for life without Katie, and I told 'em so. They deserve a good party after all they've been through. I don't think it's a good thing that they're still doing it all in His Holy Name, but so many people are still in denial. At least there is better and more objective information for them when they're ready for it, and they know where to find it. They know that they won't find that more objective info on Loony Coldwell's Facebook rants or his little brother Abe's YouTubes.

By the by, on the September 30 civil document I linked to above, I didn't see a mention of the FTC's concern that the receiver is possibly running an illegal operation by keeping GIN open. Closing GIN may not be a top priority right now for the FTC, despite what was reportedly brought up in court during the September 18 hearing that ended up with Katie being incarcerated overnight, and despite what Loony (and his little bro) have been mouthing off about.

Notwithstanding the forced joy of the alt-GIN cruise planners, once again it doesn't look real good for Katie at the moment, but you never know what might happen between now and October 4. And there's no guarantee right now that the hearing will happen even then, what with that gummit shutdown. And so the saga continues, with the Cosmic mantra once again playing in the background...

No. Neat. And. Tidy. Endings.

* * * * *

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