People are free to spend their
money on whatever they want--more power to 'em. But just as I
don't personally care to "waste" my money on some
gazillion-dollar sports car to park in my driveway, I also don't
need a gazillion-dollar imported German Hanoverian warmblood in
my stable to make my life complete. That's just me. If people
really WANT it, okay, whatever makes ya happy. I just noticed, as
a casual observer, that there's a whole lotta money being tossed
about in [the horse lovers']
world, and if I were the cynical predatory type it would be a
consideration to, uh, consider.
Another observation: I would guesstimate from my own
experience... that probably 70-80% of the horsie world is
FEMALE... So if I were looking for companionship and I were
attracted to the female persuasion, it would be a good place to
look. Or troll, as the case may be...
...The potential for lots of money and sex: it's a winning
combination! Though I am CERTAIN all these people and services
you mention [in the blog post] only
have the animal's (and the consumer's) best interests at heart.
I'm just sayin', that's some pretty green grass, there, is
all....
~ My friend "Mojo" (being sarcastic) in a comment to an
August 2008 Whirled Musings blog post
Note: This post is a bit off of the beaten path -- at least the
path I've been riding for the past numerous posts. Enjoy the
break; I'll be back to Kevin Trudeau court docs and so forth
before long. Meanwhile if you want some good articles and links
about the now-imprisoned Kevin and the lasting effects of his
mega-scam GIN, visit
Bernie's GINtruth blog.
~CC
I love horses, and have been fond of them since I was a kid. I've
never really been into riding, though I have ridden a few times
over the years (not very well, I might add, but at least I know
how to get on a horse, and I've never fallen off, so
that should count for something). I might actually take up riding
for real at some point, but for now, I simply appreciate horses
for who they are, or to be more accurate, who they seem to be,
based upon my own observations and projections. I don't claim to
have any special knowledge about horses but I admire them and
find them endlessly fascinating. I love the way they look and
feel and move and sound and smell. Having been fortunate enough
to live in proximity to (other people's) horses for several
years, I have come to appreciate them even more. I completely
understand how people can fall so deeply and hopelessly in love
with their horses.
I also understand how expensive and high-maintenance
horses are, even in the best of circumstances. Overall it seems
that many of them are less hardy than some of their
less-romanticized but generally healthier and dare I say smarter cousins (e.g., the
long-ears, particularly mules) -- and even though horses clearly
have a strong survival instinct, as do pretty much all sentient
beings, many of them also seem inordinately prone to sabotaging
their survival chances in shocking and costly ways. (The Oatmeal
has a humorously cynical outlook on horses; I have probably
linked to it before, but here
it is again. Of course I do not agree
with the whole "I hate horses" sentiment, or with the
notion that we should be eating equines, or with the author's
general contempt for horses... but it's pretty funny anyway.)
Combine the normal expense factor with the profound love that
people have for their horses and their desire to do the very best
for their equine friends, and it is easy to see why catering to
the horse lovers' market can be lucrative indeed. It's lucrative
for legitimate business owners and practitioners, and I certainly
do not begrudge any of these people their right to make an honest
living. Unfortunately, judging by what I've seen and heard, the
horsey market can be pretty profitable for scammers as well. I
was reminded of that again recently by an alert reader who is a
horse expert and is utterly appalled by the way certain scammers
-- who, as it happens, have a connection to now-imprisoned serial
mega-scammer Kevin Trudeau -- are taking
advantage of people who have horses with health challenges. We'll
get to that specific herd of horsey hucksters in a few moments.
But first, some context and history.
Saddle up; you're about to be taken for a ride
In the years I've been blogging, I've managed to work in a few
drive-by snarks about New-Wage horseplay. For instance, there's
this August 2008 piece (scroll down
to, "The horse is the new dolphin"). That's the post on
which my pal Mojo, whose words you saw at the beginning of this
post, commented; here's the link to the entire comment.
Nearly a year later, in July 2009, I used the topic
of equine flatulence as a shaky framework for a post about the
aforementioned Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie) and another
huckster Katie was courting at the time, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale.
At the time I wrote the horse-fart post, I had no idea that Katie
was getting ready to launch his biggest boondoggle of all, the Global
Information Network (GIN), which is
currently having its big "Inspire France 2015" event in
Paris. (It's free, but you couldn't have gotten in on it even if you'd learned of it on time, because it has been sold out for weeks, according to the web
site.) The impending GIN launch was apparently why Katie was
courting Joe back in 2009; no doubt he wanted to capitalize on
Joe's fame as a star of the New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, as well as get his greedy hands on Joe's mailing list.
For his part Joe was over the moon about being sucked up to by
one of the most successful marketers of all time, though he has
been strangely silent about Katie since the latter's trial, conviction and
imprisonment. Anyway, I didn't learn about GIN till a few months
after I wrote the-horse-fart post, and it (GIN, not horse flatulence) has been a frequent topic on Whirled
Musings since then.
Although the equine-exploitation angle of Scamworld has never
been a predominant theme on this blog, I've been aware of it.
Apart from the posts cited above, I've mentioned, for instance, Gary Douglas, the founder of the cult-like sex-and-money org
Access Consciousness (aka Scientology Lite). See this post, under
"Warning: ACCESSories on the loose". Gary and his
younger sidekick Dain Heer have a pretty good horse shtick going with their Conscious
Horse Conscious Rider workshops.
Not content to bill himself as a mere horse
whisperer, Gary claims that he is an "international horse
medium." Back in 2012 my good friend Yakaru did his own drive-by snark about
Gary's horse mediumship. Gary maintains a small herd of trained "facilitators" to
present his workshop; Texan Suzy Godsey appears to
be one of Gary's trail hands. She helps out with the Conscious
Horse Conscious Rider workshop scheme and also has a "horse
bodywork" shtick going, based
largely on Access teachings.
Over the years Gary appears to have targeted rich older women for
his various scams and schemes, including rich older women with
horses. A few years ago he even told a story on a radio show
about possibly missing out on an opportunity to inherit some $67
million because he wouldn't bang a wealthy "older
woman" whom he was helping with her horses. But maybe that's
fodder for another blog post. I do have a recording of the
interview, though, and it kind of disgusted me.
And moving on to even lower forms of equine exploiters (if that
is even possible), we have the vociferously self-promoting and
profoundly daft Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell, a former
b.f.f. of Kevin Trudeau. Lenny was a highly paid GIN speaker
until his firing in 2012, and even today his profile still appears on
one of the Taste of GIN pages on the
official GIN web site. But I probably don't need to tell you
about his GIN background, which is actually what brought him to
my attention in the first place. As it turns out, among his many
other claimed accomplishments Lenny is a horse guy too, and
according to him he knows all about horses and how to train them
and work them.
I'm not insinuating that horses are Lenny's main
shtick or even close to it; as far as I can tell, most of his
time these days is still taken up with promoting his cancer
quackery and other alt-health propaganda, as well as spreading
idiotic conspiracy memes on Facebook. In the service of the
latter he has made several hilarious attempts over the years to
discredit the Internet's most famous conspiracy-meme debunkers, Snopes, as we just discussed here the other day.
Although Lenny doesn't currently seem to be actively exploiting
his love and knowledge of horses, a horsey theme pops up every
now and again in his public show-and-tell. There is, for
instance, a picture of him sitting astride a saddle horse on a recently created page on one
of his new-ish German web sites. The apparent purpose of that
page is to show off what a successful, well-loved, and wealthy
man he is, though frankly I think this picture is much more
representative of Lenny than any of the others on the page. Not
wanting his English-speaking audience to be deprived of yet
another glimpse into his rich and successful life, Coldwell also
provided a link to the German page on a thread on his main
Facebook page. This shot is from August 13, 2015:
But I digress. Contrary to what a casual observer of the page on
the German site might be inclined to conclude, that picture of
Lenny on horseback is not a portrait of a wealthy gentleman horse
owner on one of his noble steeds. Rather it is a pic of Lenny on
a rent-a-horse, taken at a motivational/"spiritual"
weekend retreat he hosted in late January 2013 on a dude ranch in
Georgia, the Southern Cross Guest Ranch.
In the promotions for that event he clearly attempted to
capitalize on his immense horse knowledge, and I wrote about his
promotional efforts on a February 2013 blog post (it's
up towards the beginning, so you don't have to read the whole
thing if you don't care to). The marketing copy I wrote about is
pretty icky, and though it is long gone from Coldwell's own
sites, this promo video is still on his main site. In the vid he mentions that "horses need
leadership," the message being that if you learn, under his
expert guidance, to show your horse who's boss, you can be a
leader in life. And speaking of icky, there is this
cheesy video, produced post-retreat.
A couple of years before the horse camp, while he was still in
GIN, Coldwell apparently gave some horse-loving GIN members the
impression that he was a breeder and owner of top German show
jumpers and that he had sold many horses in the $100,000 to
million-dollar range. That nugget was shared with me by an ex-GIN
member who is a seasoned horse lover and owner. This person
acknowledged that top show jumpers do indeed command that kind of
money, and added that many of the top horses come from a handful
of bigwig breeders in Germany and the Netherlands. The ex-GIN member
claimed to actually know quite a few of these people but added,
"I somehow never heard Coldwell's name come up in those
circles. Gee, no surprise there...I don't think he ever trained
any horse; he doesn't ride well enough... [but] he's aware of his
limited riding skills...If he ever was involved I'm curious who
rode for him. It's a pretty small world amongst riders; we
compete against each other all our lives. I never got around to
asking him [about] that, though. I was already aware of his
exaggerations."
And then there are those backyard horses that may or may not
exist. In the fall of 2013, Coldwell boasted on Facebook that he
was moving into a 17,000 square foot mansion. He posted several
shots of the alleged residence, which actually looks pretty
generic on the outside and doesn't appear to be even close to
17,000 square feet. Included in one of his boasts was a picture
of what he said was his back yard, which looked like a huge open
pasture, and he added that "the horses" would be
delivered there soon. But he never did share any shots of the
horses in his backyard after they were delivered, at least not
that I've seen. Maybe they are actually unicorns and don't show
up in photographs.
More recently (June 2015), Coldwell was apparently on a throwback
kick on Facebook, and he boasted about having had a horse ranch
in Virginia a mere two years after moving to the United States
from Germany. He claimed it as one of his great
"successes." Here are the screen shots:
Suspecting he was fibbing or at least
stretching the truth, I reached out to someone who knew him very
well when he still lived in Virginia.
Did he actually own a horse ranch in
Virginia in the early years after he moved to the U.S.? I
read something in the [2007] police report about him having some kind of horse training
venture with somebody, but that's not the same as actually
owning his own horse ranch. Anyway, he's been boasting about
his past on Facebook lately, and yesterday he posted a boast
about the success he had at his horse ranch...
The person answered back:
NO he never owned anything in Va - not
horses, a house or anything. I don't know where those photos
came from but I have never seen them before. I recognize the
shirt though. That's actually funny since anybody can find
out that he is lying. And as a side bar there are no ranches
in VA; they are called horse farms no matter how big they
are. LOL.
Virginia apparently does have a few dude or
guest ranches, but the type of property Coldwell was talking
about does indeed seem to be what they would call a
"farm" in that neck of the woods. But beyond the
semantics... I know, I'm as shocked as you are that Leonard
Coldwell apparently lied yet again. No worries for him, though.
His fans did not even seem to question his claims. They simply
nuzzled up to him as per usual, whinnying their approval.
Also as per usual, I am willing to seriously entertain notions
contrary to what I think I pretty much know to be true. I'm
always willing to admit I am wrong if I am. Accordingly if Lenny
-- or someone else who knew him back in Virginia when he
supposedly had that "horse ranch" -- would like to
present me with some concrete evidence that he was telling the
truth about being a successful horse breeder who owned a horse
operation in The Commonwealth in the 1990s, I am all ears. Or
eyes. Drop me a line at one of the email addresses displayed on
this page, or via a comment through Blogger.
I would especially love to hear from someone who was in the horse
world in Virginia in the mid to late 1990s to early 2000s. Lenny
resided in Fauquier County, Virginia back in the day (Remington
and Warrenton, I'm told). Do any of you horse people who were
living in the area, or anywhere in Virginia back then, recall a
short, volatile little German guy with unnaturally black hair, a
perma-tan and a porn mustache, who was a highly successful horse
trainer/breeder and/or horse farm owner? He most likely went by
the name Leonard Coldwell, but could have still been using Bernd
Klein or maybe even Bernd Witchner. (He didn't actually get his name legally changed to Leonard Coldwell till
June 1998, but clearly he was using
that name for years in Germany and the U.S.)
So let me know. And if I hear anything contrary to what I've
written, I will be glad to retract, correct, or amend the above
as appropriate, and to restore Leonard Coldwell to his rightful
place in the horse world. Otherwise I'll assume that he is just
shoveling sh-t as usual and is about as prominent and
accomplished in the equine world as he claims to have been in the
martial arts world.*
Trick and Morter
Now -- finally -- let's get to those other
flim-flammers, the ones to whom I was alerted recently by my
correspondent, who is not only a lifelong horse lover but also a
professional horsewoman with what appear to be very impressive
creds. This concerns a scampire run by some long-time buddies and
business partners of the aforementioned Kevin Trudeau, the Morters. I've known about them for years and have mentioned them in passing,
but have simply never given them the attention on this Whirled
that they so richly deserve.
Next to Fred van Liew, another
nearly-lifelong Katie pal to whom I have paid tribute
here several times, the Morters are arguably some of the most
nefarious in the foul stable of Katie enablers. Unlike Freddy,
they weren't mentioned in Aaron Gell's excellent piece for Business Insider, which was published earlier this year (here is my blog post about it).
I don't know if Aaron reached out to them and they refused an
interview, or if it was just an oversight, but in my book, the
Morters deserve their own stars on the Scamworld Walk of Infamy.
The Morter scampire was founded by the late Dr. Milton Theodore
(Ted) Morter, Jr., who was apparently good buddies with Katie for
many years before his death in May 2013. If you were simply to
visit the link above on the Morters' main web site you might
think he is still alive, but here is his obit.
Back in the 1970s, Ted the Elder (one of his sons, Ted III,
carries on his name as well as his schemes) invented a health and
healing gimmick called Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique,
or B.E.S.T., described thusly on
the Morter site:
B.E.S.T. is a non-forceful, energy
balancing hands on procedure used to help reestablish the
full healing potential of the body. Understanding the body
makes no mistakes regarding health and longevity, B.E.S.T.
principles acknowledge the concept of Interference we create
with our conscious mind. This Interference caused imbalance
in the autonomic nervous system leading to exhaustion of our
organ systems over time. Researched at major universities,
taught in several Chiropractic Colleges and in professional
continuing education seminars, B.E.S.T. is recognized as an
effective healing science. The principles and concepts of
Morter HealthSystem and B.E.S.T. technique are available to
families, therapists and health care practitioners.
If think you've heard that kind of stuff before, you almost
certainly have, if you've been following some of the snarks on
this blog over the years, or if you've been following or
observing the
New-Wage/New-Age/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health
subcultures and industries at all. Most of these "healing
modalities" offer pretty much the same line of horse crap,
and I mean no offense to either horses or their crap. The schemes
just have different names and various other branding details. But
if you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all, or, as we
like to say on this Whirled, it's deja screw all over
again.
The B.E.S.T. main page goes on to elaborate on various offshoots
of B.E.S.T., including something called Morter March ("a
technique designed to use contralateral movement and stretching
to neurologically update and re-time your body"). Then
there's "Physical B.E.S.T" (hands-on stuff "taught
to practitioners only" -- you can probably understand why).
By "practitioner," the Morters are probably referring
to chiropractic -- they are chiros, as was their daddy -- and
select other alternative or "holistic" fields.
If you're not a practitioner, no worries, you still have a chance
to be taken in by "Emotional B.E.S.T.," which
"utilizes advanced technology developed to update higher
brain interference from the physical body." Described as the
core of B.E.S.T technology, Emotional B.E.S.T. is also, according
to the site, "the pattern for health and wellness"
which "unlocks the power." Patients as well as
practitioners can do Emotional B.E.S.T.
Not surprisingly, B.E.S.T. isn't just about techniques of
hands-on and hands-off woo. There
are boatloads of supplements, kits, and
other frauducts and info-frauducts to help relieve you of that
burdensome money.
So there you have the foundation of the Morter brand of New-Wage
crapitalism -- at least the part devoted to human animals.
There's a whole other related realm in the scampire, devoted to
non-human animals, and we'll have much more on that in a moment.
It's not so much that I'm taking time getting to the point, but
rather that there are so many points to make.
Background is important because, I believe, the role that the
Morters have played in Scamworld cannot be overstated. They have
their own shtick, certainly, but for years they have also been
bloated planets orbiting around the bright and toxic sun that is
Kevin Trudeau. Though marginally dimmer, Katie's light continues
to burn even from within the walls of the federal prison camp
where he now resides. Back in 2009 The Morters -- not only the
late elder but also his two overfed, smirking sons, Ted III and
Tom (horse people might call them "easy keepers") -- were apparently only too happy to jump aboard Kevin
Trudeau's GIN gravy train. (Their
sister, "Dr. Sue," doesn't
seem to have been involved so much with Katie and GIN, but she is
doing her own motivational/pseudoscientific dog-and-pony show and
is, among other things, a member of that Scamworld
cartel that calls itself the Transformational Leadership Council.)
Even though the GIN assets were sold to a group of Katie buddies in
2014, the Morter boys are still part of the GIN
"faculty," or at least they were last time the GIN site
actually listed its "faculty" members. They were also
part of a group of investors recommended by the court appointed
receiver, Robb Evans, to purchase what was left of Katie's
Natural Cures scampire; see page 5 of this document.
The group called itself the Business Education Support Team
LLC... B.E.S.T. ... get it? And Ted Morter is currently listed as
a
"faculty" member of the group that bought GIN, AXS. So really, GIN didn't change hands at all.
Speaking of the GIN "faculty," I found it interesting
that the public part of the GIN web site now only has a teaser
video on the Faculty page. Do they have
such a high turnover rate that they don't feel comfortable listing individual
"faculty members" any more? Or were those individuals
simply getting too much publicity (positive or negative)? In any
case I thought it amusing that the final shot on the current
video is a sound bite of Kevin Trudeau himself saying,
"Listen to somebody who has what you want, and has been
where you are." Well, I suppose that anybody who has
aspirations to end up in Camp Cupcake (aka Federal Prison Camp Montgomery,
Alabama) could do worse than listen to
and follow in Katie's footsteps, though I imagine you would also
have to have access to many millions of dollars to feed your
high-priced lawyers (a la Katie) in order to be incarcerated in
such (relative) luxury. Good luck! Let me know where you end up
and give me your inmate number, and I might send you a postcard.
GIN "faculty" or not, it appears that the Morters are
still quite involved in GIN, and they still maintain their GIN Morter Facebook page,
which displays a website address that
redirects to their main site. The Facebook page has a relatively
modest number of "likes" at present -- only a little
more than 900 -- but I have no doubt the Morters have profited
handsomely from being a part of the GIN scam, particularly in
GIN's heyday. However successful they may have been on their own,
Katie gave them a huge platform they almost certainly would not
have had otherwise.
And they got to have a lot of fun with Katie too, at others'
expense. They were privileged to be part of numerous fishing trips and cruises with
Katie, paid for by countless scammed GIN members and other
consumers of Katie's frauducts and flopportunities. Here's a pic
from happier days, of Old Doc and Younger Docs Morter on a
private plane with Katie. (That's pool shark Mike "The
Mouth" Sigel in the background.)
And here are Teddy and Tommy and Katie playing
the fat-cat role to the hilt -- smoking expensive cigars,
drinking expensive booze, and gabbing about energy, GIN, and
fishing. It's an August 2011 video and I know I've linked to this
one before, but it so deserves another sharing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-joxyPHISo
Are you disgusted yet? If so, prepare to become even more so.
Talk to the animals...
It's really no big surprise that there is an Animal B.E.S.T. We love our non-human companions, after all, and horse
people aren't the only folks who, with so much love in their
hearts, can be especially vulnerable to animal scams. Enter the
Morters, who have been only too willing and able to reach deeply
into the hearts and wallets of these loving souls with their
pseudoscientific flapdoodle. Here's the capsule summary of what
Animal B.E.S.T. is all about:
Animal B.E.S.T. (Bio-energetic
Synchronization Technique) is energy work, which balances the
body and updates memory patterns so animals can heal.
Yup. Same song, different verse.
Early in July I received a comment to a November 2014 blog post
largely devoted to Katie and his scam circle. Rather than
re-write what the commenter so adeptly wrote herself, here it is in full:
My correspondent (let's just call her Melissa)
and I have communicated several times since her initial comment
to my blog. She describes herself as a professional horsewoman
with numerous championships and world titles in winnings. In
short, as Melissa says, "I know horses." I believe her.
For personal and professional reasons Melissa wishes to remain
anonymous, and that's one of the things that apparently riled Dr.
Ted and James Murphy, as well as the guy whose video I linked to
a couple of paragraphs up. That guy is a Texan named
Joseph Agrue, who bills himself as
"The Animal Shaman." He is another certified Animal
B.E.S.T. practitioner and also a massage therapist -- somewhat of a New-Wage dilettante, it appears.
Melissa sent me correspondence and screen shots to back up her
claims that she was treated first with indifference, then with
suspicion and rudeness when trying to communicate with these
people via phone, social media, and email. It appears that they
all tried to turn the criticism on her, calling her cowardly and
vengeful, among other things. For instance, in late July she sent
an email to the Animal Shaman Joseph Agrue, which read, in part:
...I am an Equine professional and I take exception to
those that pretend to be helping horses when in fact they may
be causing more harm. For you to pretend that you are
qualified to instruct or train others to diagnose the origin
of lameness in a horse is potentially harmful to both animal
and human. The horse in your video has
front feet issues that require the cooperation of
veterinarian and farrier to address. The owner of that horse
has wasted time and money on the BEST technique , when that
horse could have gotten much needed care and real relief.
The claims that "the color changed" and that the
horse "now has dapples" are ridiculous and patently
impossible. That is a scientific impossibility. Also, to
encourage inexperienced people to stand directly behind
horses to "check their hip alignment" is another
issue altogether. Is is just a matter of time before someone
gets seriously injured.
Here is the deal; real horsemen know a fraud when they see
one. Real horsemen want for the horses and owners to be well
and safe. You sir are no horseman and it is glaringly obvious
to those of us that are. You have no idea about lameness
issues, you do not even use the correct verbiage unique to
the industry. The claims being made are bogus and can be
proven out by other Equine experts...
Here was the Animal Shaman's response:
I have no doubt you are a vindictive
evil woman. I talked to dr. [sic] Ted myself yesterday and he
has no idea who you are. Unless you tell us who you are and
give us a name and contact infol [sic] you're not going to be
taken seriously you are a joke. why are you a coward and
afraid to identify yourself?
In my years as a scam watcher, I have noticed that in addition to
the usual ad hominem attacks on their critics (accusing them of
being jealous losers, evil, or on someone's payroll, for
instance), scammers love to call those critics out as cowards
when they don't use their real or full names. Actually, though, I
understand why Melissa hesitated about revealing her identity
when communicating with these New-Wage hucksters. I have seen how
angry and vindictive scammers and some of their lunatic fans can
be. Some will even resort to sham lawsuits against their
critics, or to serious attempts to physically endanger their critics. So I can't blame any critic or skeptic or questioner
for being a little circumspect about his or her identity. That's
not cowardice; it's simply common sense.**
There's another good reason for Melissa to shield her identity,
apart from the plausible risk to her personal safety. If she were
to reveal her identity and her business, particularly through
this blog, she might be accused of engaging in underhanded
self-promotion, and for that matter I might be accused of aiding
and abetting someone whose agenda is to undermine the
"competition." People might think that Melissa is no
better than Coldwell and his former partner Peter Wink, who used
their vitriol against GIN and Kevin Trudeau as a springboard to
launch and promote their own GIN ripoff club, the IBMS Masters Society. And
readers might question my ethics for allowing such promotion on
my blog.
After questioning her at length, however, I personally am
satisfied that Melissa is not in competition with the
frauduct and flopportunity peddlers like the Morters and their
"certified" Animal B.E.ST. practitioners. Rather she
teaches real-world riding skills that include a variety of
English and Western disciplines, including pleasure riding,
jumping, trail riding, halter, reining, cutting, barrel racing,
Western Dressage, team penning, and ranch sorting. In addition
she says that she breeds, breaks and trains show horses. All of
her life she has been around horses and horse breeders and
trainers on both coasts and several spots in between. She seems
like the real deal to me.
And although I have no way of knowing for sure, I think it is
very possible Melissa would never have even heard of Animal
B.E.S.T. had it not been for the fact that a woman contacted her,
wishing to use Melissa's horse for "master
certification" work in Animal B.E.S.T. The woman needed to
complete and document 20 "cases" in order to receive
her certification. Melissa describes her as having bought the
Morter gimmick hook, line, and sinker but adds that she was able
to teach the woman a few things about horses and the real reasons
they do the things they do, which apparently rid the lady of her
delusions about the horsey aspect of B.E.S.T. "But she is
still into the human bioenergy crap," says Melissa.
My point here is that in most cases, erring on the side of
caution regarding one's true identity is a smart thing to do when
one is criticizing volatile and unstable people. I know from
experience, and learned it years before I'd even heard of Loony
Coldwell, that some of those "love and light" people
are actually some of the darkest and most hate-filled -- not to
mention litigious -- folks around, particularly if they think
their income stream is being threatened. I think Melissa has been
handling things sensibly, and more than that I think she is
coming from a place of deep concern for horses and the people who
love them.
Murphy's flaw
As I explained in my response to Melissa's initial
comment on my blog, I hadn't actually heard of James W. Murphy
and when I looked him up, the first info that popped up was
apparently for another James W. Murphy, a Maryland gentleman who died in 2009. That Murphy
was also a horse person, but was involved with horse racing and was
apparently credible and respected.
But the Animal B.E.S.T. James W. Murphy is very much alive and
resides in Arkansas, where, as it happens, the Morters also hang
their hats. If you Google James W. Murphy you have to be pretty
specific, and even then you're more likely to get results for the
dead Murphy. But there is this June
2013 video, which is one of the chief
pieces of content that really got to Melissa, due to what she
felt are Murphy's exaggerated or false claims about his own
accomplishments. He also tells a touching back story that raised
some serious red flags for her (it even sounded a bit suspicious
to me, as little as I know about horses). Melissa explained the
credibility gaps to me in detail. We'll have a little more about
that in a moment, and I'll link to the video again.
Oddly enough, Murphy's actual web site doesn't seem to pop up
very prominently in the search engines, but
here it is. I am thinking that
Melissa's efforts to reach out to B.E.S.T. and to Murphy himself
had an effect. The above linked video apparently was but no
longer is on the Animal B.E.S.T. site, though Murphy is still
listed on that site as a certified Animal B.E.S.T practitioner. And more
interestingly, Murphy's claims about his horse training creds and
whatnot seem to be gone from the "About Us" page on
his own site. Melissa sent me a screen shot of the original blurb
that captured her interest. Here it is:
And here is how it looks today:
Melissa explained that some of the photos on
James' web site were another red flag for her. Take, for
instance, the three pics that are currently on the "About Us" page
on his web site. Here's Melissa's critique:
In one, he has the lead rope wrapped
around his wrist and hand. A HUGE no-no, any horseman would
never ever do that.
In the middle one, he is all off center with his saddle
slipping off to the right. His right stirrup is hanging lower
than his left and he is twisted in the saddle. All because
his cinch isn't even secure. Enlarge the photo and it is
evident that the cinch tongue isn't through the latigo hole
on his saddle. ...not to mention he has his horse over
bridled, and by the look of the bit shanks, the curb strap
isn't positioned correctly.
Then in the far right photo, his halter is not placed
correctly on his horse's nose... I have 6 yr old beginner
riders that know better than that!
When I pointed out to Ted [Morter] that people were paying
big money to learn about horses from his so called expert,
using false credentials, that's when he got touchy.
I'm no riding expert so I can't judge the
photos myself. I'm just passing along what Melissa said. The
money is definitely an issue I think I understand, though, and
big money it is, potentially. Even if it is not huge money by the
standards of Scamworld or the larger world of commerce, it still
adds up. Melissa wrote:
They charge $2,500 for people to attend
their classes in order to be certified as practitioners for
Animal B.E.S.T. (the Morter technique). [The woman who
contacted me about using my horse] witnessed about 60 people
at these animals classes. There are at least 4 per year which
includes Paris, France as a venue. The animal classes have
been going on for 8 years. Do the math...then these scammers
charge naive pet owners $100 to "balance" their
pets. They are in the process of requiring that all of their
practitioners that wish to be certified in their human
B.E.S.T. attend the animal classes. This will bump their
sales up significantly as they offer at least 15 other
events for certification.
Of note, the B.E.S.T. event going on in Paris, France this
as-we-speak-end coincides with the GIN Paris event.
That's cozy! Here is the
schedule of upcoming B.E.S.T. events.
And if you want more info about B.E.S.T. courses and their costs, go
straight to the source and ask the
horse. Not all of the links work correctly; some of the
enrollment links lead to the Morters' frauducts catalog page. But at least
one link directs properly, revealing the price for the course
being described. The whole issue of the actual course costs is a
little confusing to me, though, particularly after reading the FAQ
page. In any case, it seems the
training isn't terribly cheap, whether it's human B.E.S.T. or
Animal B.E.S.T.
Another point of contention for Melissa was Murphy's
video, which I mentioned above. It's
not real new; it's from 2013, but Melissa assures me that it was
up on the Morters' site until recently, when she began making
noise about it. For Melissa the first red flag in this video was
Murphy's apparent claim that he had more than 70 world titles.
She wrote, "Hell, I'm accomplished, and having five to ten
is damned impressive!"
Then there is the story Murphy tells in the video about how his
horse Patches saved his life. I recommend that you watch the vid
and hear it yourself, but I'll summarize it here. Murphy says he
was riding Patches in traffic one day when an eighteen-wheeler
made a big boo-boo, causing all sorts of mayhem and panic. He
tried to get Patches to turn in a certain direction to avoid
disaster, but Patches, for the first time EVER, ignored his
instructions and turned sharply in the opposite direction. What
happened next with the truck and the surrounding mess was a
complete surprise to Murphy, but he says that he realizes that if
Patches had obeyed him instead of going his own way, they would
have both been killed. So... hero horsey, humbled rider.
But poor Patches hurt his back terribly from the sharp turn, said
Murphy. He was so bad off that vets and horse experts told Murphy
he should just have the horse euthanized. But how could Murphy do
that to his faithful friend who had saved his life? Then Murphy
heard about Animal B.E.S.T. He took Patches to an Animal B.E.S.T
class to be worked on by the class. They all worked on Patches
all day, and voila! Patches was healed and even better
than before. So Murphy decided the right thing to do was to try
to get in on some of that Animal B.E.S.T. action himself.
Here is Melissa's take on the story:
In Murphy's testimonial video he described
how his horse "turned very quickly and hurt his
back". I promise you Connie, nothing turns faster and
harder than a Cutting Horse. They do it over and over and
over without hurting their backs. lol. He did not mention
that the horse fell...nor slipped...he only mentioned that it
turned hard. That alone shows me his inexperience. Then he
claimed that the horse would lie there and not get up. Again,
I am here to tell you that a horse cannot lay down for long
periods without creating a much more serious problem. His
story is crap. And IF that horse were SO injured that a
qualified lameness expert could not help it, nor get to
stand, that damn BEST flimflam hocus pocus would not help!
...Plus, I asked him for the name of the attending
veterinarian and what tests were done...no reply. *crickets*.
But what a heart tuggingly new age feel good story that was
eh? Horse saves man from death, BEST saves horse? Bull....
Of course if James W. Murphy (the live one, not
the dead one) would like to contact this blog and counter any of
the above, he is welcome to do so.
Melissa says her only motivation in making a stink
about these frauduct and flopportunity peddlers is to promote the
welfare of horses and the people who love and work with them. She
says she even went so far as to persuade the Texas State
Chemist to send Morter a cease and
desist order against their pet feed supplements. "I
have Ted's attention, and he sent me an email that pretty much
reads as an offer of a bribe," she told me. I have seen an
email where Ted asked what it would take to make her happy, so I
suppose that could be open to an interpretation of bribery. It
appears to me that what would make Melissa happy would not be
bribe money, but a world in which scammers would stop taking
advantage of good, decent people.
That would make me happy too.
Horse sense and nonsense
I know this post has already dragged on more than
long enough. But here's one final point. While we were on the
subject of animal scams, Melissa and I also discussed the
contemporary craze for various types of equine assisted therapy, which
I snarked about it in one of those blog posts a few years ago.
Melissa said that this therapy certainly does have its value in
some contexts but is often misused. She wrote:
I have worked horse therapy
with children with issues. It was really rewarding as the
children were more active and attentive when interacting with
the horses. However, there is now a push to use horses in all
sorts of therapy. As you pointed out, they are the new
dolphins!
...It is a racket filled with wannabes that can't wait to
pretend they know something about horses.
The problem is how they use the horses....those therapists
miss the real deal of what working with horses can do. They
zero in on catch phrases like "trust" and use
anthropomorphic reasoning to relate horses and humans. That
is where they lose the whole basis on how horses can help
humans work through issues. They do not understand the
horse's viewpoint and how that can help the human. I get
livid listening to their BS. Typical example is the Sandra
Bullock film 28 Days, where she is in horse therapy and is
told to "trust the horse" in order to pick up its
foot. Ridiculous crap like that abounds. There is a very deep
and real way that working with horse can help people, but
first one has to truly understand the horse. And sadly not
many people do.
In a subsequent communication she
wrote:
People like think that horses are these
mystical, all knowing animals that are half fairy dust and
half quantum particles. They are an animal that is hard wired
to react in a given way. Yes they have different
personalities, but they are innately horses, period. You can
call me from France and tell me about a problem with a Polish
Arabian that was an embryo transfer from a Dutch Warmblood
and I can tell you how to fix the problem. Horse behavior is
not unique nor it is a "feeling". It is what it
is...a learned herd behavior of a prey animal. Period.
Call me a neigh-sayer, but I'll take the word
of a genuine professional horse person over that of a New-Wage
frauduct or flopportunity peddler any day.
* Speaking of martial arts and
horse whispering, here's the latest offering
from one of Lenny Coldwell's nuttiest
friends/supporters/sycophants: stoner filmmaker, low-budget movie star and
kick-boxer Ian Jacklin of iCureCancer infamy, who was supposedly going to be doing another
breakthrough film about natural-cures heroes, featuring Lenny. No telling what happened to that; apparently he couldn't get sufficient funding. This vid is all about
Ian, not Lenny. There's a lot in the vid about vaccination evils,
wholistic cancer curing and even sovereign citizenry, though, all
of which offer clear clues about why Lenny and Ian have been consistently masturbating each
other. The horse whispering part of
the new vid appears to be a mini-saga of Ian trespassing
into someone's pasture to make friends with a nice horsey; it starts
at about 12:00 and goes on for several minutes. Apparently Ian
had been spending a great deal of time trying to get into the
pasture, but was too stoned to figure it out until he finally
discovered he could have just opened a gate and walked in all
along. Watch the whole thing if you have time, though. It's
hilarious. It's not quite Harold and Kumar quality, but still
fun. And honestly, I can't tell if Ian is just a harmless stoner
or deeply disturbed and potentially dangerous... or maybe just in
character, playing a deranged activist. I'll leave that up to
mental health experts and/or film critics to determine. Maybe
"deranged" is just part of his persona, like his doppelganger Seann William Scott of
Stifler/American Pie fame, who like Ian seems to be a
little on the washed-up actor side. Except Seann may be a has-been, and Ian... well,
he seems to be kind of a never-was...
** Regarding cowardice and anonymity: Even though I don't think
it is necessarily a mark of cowardice to want to be anonymous
online, I do think that the people who send anonymous death
threats or abusive comments to critics and skeptics and questioners are
cowards. I hear from such cowards all the time. Even so, I
continue to allow anonymous comments on my blog. (Note: I'm not
claiming that everyone who disagrees with me and chooses
anonymity is a coward -- just the abusive ones.)
Some people have told me I am a fool for revealing my own
identity on this blog, but I have a feeling that if I had tried
to disguise it I would have been outed anyway, as my pal Salty
Droid was not long after he began blogging. At any rate I'm
"out," and have been facing the consequences for more
than nine years now. Among many other things I, like my new
friend Melissa, have been called an evil and vindictive woman
(and worse).
I had one look at the pics and videos of their supposed "Master'" instructor James W Murphy and knew the con was on. He claims to be a professional horse trainer, showman etc. I KNEW this man had never won a National or World Title as he was claiming. Not possible.
I called Morter Healthcare and asked them exactly what titles that he had won. I pointed out that he was in a video on their site claiming that he was a huge success and endorsed and taught the Morter technique. So...surely they had his credentials somewhere that listed his accomplishments? They said I should call him, that they only knew what he told them, but I could leave a voice message for "Dr. Ted".
I called Murphy himself. After just a few pointed questions from me, he started backing up quickly. He wanted nothing more than for me to go away and hang up. No such luck for him. His final comment was that he was under Confidentiality agreements not to divulge his show record! ( lol alrighty then fraud face). He claimed 73+ World Title affiliations, yet was not able to ["divulge"] one single name of a horse or show or trainer that won said "World Titles"?
Next call was to the 2 major breed associations to check out his judges status that he had touted. Ya well....he never has held a judges card with them. Tsk tsk...
Armed with my personal conversation with him, and backed up with the info supplied by the National Associations, I called Morter Healthcare back. (of course no one bothered to return my call after I had called 3 times and left a voice mail) This time in no uncertain terms, I told the receptionist that they had a fraud on their hands and I felt that they had some exposure there seeing as how they were making money off of his false claims ($2,500 to take the 2 class package that his instruction was among the class choices) oh...and that I would not be letting this go. This time she put me through to "Dr. Ted" himself.
After listing the issues related to Murphy's false credentials, Dr. Ted attempted to turn suspicion around to me. When I pointed out that this was not about me, but rather his failure at due diligence to vet his spokesperson, Dr. Ted became condescending and combative. I gave him the names of the association and told him to get to work. He wanted an email sent to him with my information before he would take it any further. Call me paranoid, but I am not about to give that bunch of money grubbing cons any of my personal information. Nope, not gonna happen.
Suffice it to say that Morter Healthcare Systems is making bank off of the false credentials of their sadly incompetent horse 'professional". BIG bank. They have been put on notice, it will be interesting to see how they handle it.
The horses don't deserve this failure of care. I have viewed youtube testimonials by another idiot that claims to be modifying their genetics by use of the B.E.S.T. technique. One particular horse was obviously suffering from feet issues which needed xrays and corrective farrier work. This honyonker was claiming that the horse needed his energy balanced. Poor horse was lame and being made to move around on hard ground for the video.
Yep that'll get me good and pissed off. Here's hoping you may get a bit pissed off too!