Kevin Trudeau: Here's where the story ends. Oh, wait, it doesn't.

I love that classic by The Sundays, "Here's Where The Story Ends," but as you know, I strongly feel that the saga of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, like that of most sagas in Scamworld, will have no neat and tidy ending, and actually no ending at all. As Trudeau preps for his criminal trial, which commences this coming Monday, November 4 (I will have a recap/update post soon, with links to relevant documents), GIN and ex-GIN members alike continue to struggle, in their own respective ways, to keep Kevin's scam-dream alive.

As noted here the other day (scroll down to, "And in other news..."), Perry Kiraly, an Ohio GIN member who describes himself as a Level VI candidate, Visionary, Founder, and Inner Circle member (which means that he paid either $50,000 or $75,000 (!) to be considered a member of that rarefied group), recently started a Stand With GIN movement to enable members to wrest control of GIN from the court-appointed receiver and the FTC. Perry issued an update on Wednesday.

October 30, 2013

Update on SWGF

Activities to date:

• Approximately 80+ hours personally devoted to writing letters, answering emails, phone communications and setting up hardware (i.e. dedicated mailing, email, phone, banking, and computer applications to conduct SWGF business).
• 3 Lawyers in the Cleveland Ohio area have been consulted
• 5 Law firms/lawyers out of the Chicago area have been communicated with

Objective being researched and reviewed by Law Firms/Lawyers:
The main objective of this effort is to restore or transfer the club, GIN, to our, the members ownership, direction, and control.

Aspects being researched and reviewed to achieve the main objective:
• (Non-Litigation approach) Utilize skilled attorney in corporate law to negotiate with the Receiver to purchase the club directly from them on behalf of the GIN membership.
• Initiate litigation to strengthen the legal ownership or right to ownership position of the membership then negotiate with the Receiver to purchase the club directly from them on behalf of the GIN membership.
• Initiate litigation to contend that the true owners of the clubs assets are the members in GIN since it is the member’s money that paid for them.
• Litigate that innocent people (GIN members) are being collaterally damaged by the interference of GIN’s affairs by the Receiver. I use the term innocent in the legal sense meaning not having anything to do with the act that resulted in the 37 million dollar judgment against one of our members, Kevin Trudeau.

Progress made toward main objective:
The first of the Chicago based attorneys got back with me today to say that his firm would be interested in representing us in negotiating a direct purchase from the Receivers. This approach is certainly the path of least resistance in that it does not require litigation in court; and it does achieve our main objective. But it is not necessarily the best path especially if we can establish a stronger position of ownership or ownership itself.
It is certainly a good start and the first response that was expected. Whereas the other listed aspects of achieving our objective will take a bit more time to review and research the applicable laws which govern this case and the extensive record to date.

Once that data is reviewed by the lawyers I have contacted and I am advised of the likelihood of success in the various aspects under consideration the GIN membership will have viable options from which to choose.
Tomorrow I have an office appointment with a different attorney and will keep the members updated as things progress further.

As a final note I appeal to all the members that have not yet contributed to this fund – do so now. So that when all the data is in and assessed, the lawyer can be readily retained and initiate the action.

Thank you,

Perry Kiraly

How can the members negotiate with the receiver when the receiver does not actually own GIN either? Seems to me they would have to negotiate with the court, in whose hands the decision about GIN's fate ultimately rests. But then, I don't have the fine legal mind and business experience necessary to understand all of this stuff, so I'll just leave it to y'all to figure out.

Other loyal higher-level members, who are also (finally) seeing that GIN is in trouble, don't seem to be supporting Perry's cause, however. And why indeed would they want to put out more of their hard-earned (or perhaps hard-scammed, in some cases) cash to "own" GIN, when they'd been putting out thousands of dollars over the past few years precisely because they believed they already "owned" the club?

Meanwhile, there are the GIN spinoffs (GINoffs?), and I believe we can expect more in the months to come. For now, there's the IBMS Master's Society, run by GIN's former marketing director Peter Wink and Katie's former b.f.f. and resident alt-health quackadoodle Mocktor Loony Coldwell. There's a newer rip-off org called the Omnia Society, run by a couple of GINsiders named Deano Andrews and Stephen Lee, who saw that GIN was sinking without Katie and decided to grab some of the content and hop into a lifeboat. And there are tons of other scams, such as Empower Network/Blog Beast, that are attracting GIN and ex-GIN. The big sick machine is going on without missing a beat.

I also heard some buzz that at the recent Kevin Trudeau fundraiser in the Washington DC area, Kevin expressed confidence that he will prevail in the upcoming criminal trial (some of his fans who were apparently called to testify at the pre-trial hearings have expressed similar confidence). Katie and a few of his fans are apparently in favor of just ditching GIN altogether and starting something new. Katie suggested that if he did form a new club he could simply redo the Success Mastery Courses that his fans have been insisting is the most valuable part of GIN. He'd have to do some pretty extensive retooling, since most of the existing material is now available for free-ish. (Then again, it always was recycled/borrowed material, so in that respect not much has changed).

The point is that Katie still has a fiercely loyal fan base, and despite my never-wavering opinion that he is a lifelong scammer and can't be trusted, he is more brilliant and skilled than any of the "GIN Destroyers" who have been capitalizing on his troubles for the past year and a half.

Someone sent me this series of screen shots, taken from a private GIN group (name redacted out of respect for a vulnerable soul). This is yet more evidence that with Kevin Trudeau's fans there's a fine line between dogged persistence (a trait of successful people) and utter denial (a trait of the easily scammed).

Of particular note in the denial department is the un-named member's insistence that the vast majority of people didn't join GIN to make money from the affiliate program, as evidenced by the fact that most people didn't make money from the affiliate program. Well, actually the commenter says that the evidence is in the fact that there were not more Platinums and other high achievers. But it's the same thing (it's in the third panel, number 3 of 5). And oh, good Goddess, my brain hurts.

1 of 5

2 of 5

3 of 5

4 of 5

5 of 5

It goes without saying that I was not at the GIN Family Reunion, nor was I at the Katie fundraiser that took place the following Monday. But I know how these pep rally events work, and how pumped people can get when they so desperately want to get pumped, and they find themselves in a room full of other people with similar desires. The need to believe and to keep on believing runs strong in the human heart. And the emotions generated by these events are very real, but so often the factors that fuel those emotions... well, they're more in the unicorn realm. From where I sit as an observant outsider, that unicorn thing was precisely what was going on in Washington the weekend before last. Your mileage may vary.
 
My friend Tim was spot-on as usual when he commented, on a recent Facebook thread, about the scam that was GIN.

So MH [Mark Hamilton, Neo-stink owner] and kt's wife [Natalyia Babenko] walked away with millions free and clear, kt spent 10s of millions all while the members' payments were delayed, illegally "taxed" and sometimes not paid at all due to glitches/stories etc from GIN. That's not how any legitimate business works, probably par for the course in MLMs though.

Yep, that sounds about right, particularly if we're talking about an MLM with Katie at the helm. And here's where this blog post -- though not the story -- ends. I'll be back soon with more.

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