I'm going to close out the steamy month of August with some good news: For the time being, my pal Salty Droid is back on his blog. It's something for Jason to do while awaiting the emergence of SaltyDroid Phase II, a phase that I speculate will not be good news for scammers but will be really good news for many other people.
In his new post Jason/Salty mentioned, among other things, the defamation flawsuit in which he and I and several other entities were involved earlier this year as defendants. I hope that in a subsequent post or posts he continues to elaborate on the profound stupidity of that suit and on the hilarious exchanges he had with plaintiff Leonard Coldwell's lawyers. I've told the basics from my side but I suspect that Jason has much more to tell. It seems clear that he really knows how to bring out the crazy in scammers and their lawyers, but frankly, in this case there was a lot of baseline crazy to work with in both the plaintiff and his formidable legal team.
Jason also thumbed his nose at Donald Trump (speaking of loathsome litigious blowhards, which we were, because Leonard Coldwell is a loathsome litigious blowhard, and so is Donald Trump). Wrote Jason:
Donald Trump is ahead in the polls for the presidential nomination? What the what? I wonder how many terabytes of audio exist of Utah’s boiler room cartels boiling down Trump’s “university” leads into quivering masses of bankruptcy and despair?Indeed. In 2013 Jason published several eye-opening posts about Trump's MLM scam connections -- this is one of my favorites -- and I hope these posts get a much wider audience as we get into the 2016 presidential campaign. Not that the haters who love The Donald will really care that in addition to being an egotistical blowhard/arrogant one-percenter/endless fount of hate speech, Trump is also a Scamworld player. But some who are on the fence about him might take notice.
There's another Trump connection that is of particular interest to this Whirled: the current head of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's big scheme the Global Information Network (GIN) is Troy McClain, CEO of the AXS Investment Group (of Trudeau's good buddies) that purchased GIN last year. Troy first rose to infamy as one of the more arrogant contestants on Trump's "reality" show, The Apprentice. He has gotten a lot of mileage out of that and proudly quotes Trump as saying that it's guys like Troy who make Murica great.
On his latest blog post, Jason also did a drive-by at the excessively scammy MLM Vemma, which of course he'd previously reported on at length.
The FTC just gave the full smack down to Vemma! Fun. Empty-heart condolences to my BFF Anthony Powell. Back to Herbalife maybe Anthony? Or how about doTerra … I hear it’s all the rage? #pyramidpimp moves on …
Vemma has been shut down, but apparently only temporarily. Even so, this is news because the Federal Trade Commission rarely takes such radical (read: responsible) action against a multi-level marketing company. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Vemma rise again in a marginally less exploitative version. Historically the FTC has been extraordinarily lenient with MLMs. And MLMs continue to do their insidious work of destroying people's lives (at worst), or, for many millions more, falling far short of the hype -- and all under the guise of "dream building."
The good news is that Vemma's shutdown, however transient, will no doubt put a damper on the efforts of some of the scummiest scammers in Scamworld -- not just the aforementioned Anthony Powell, but also long-time Kevin Trudeau buddy (and current GIN co-owner) Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan and perhaps especially his Voldemort-in-training spawn, Chris Jr. (Here's a pic of Voldy Junior stylin' the style, from this searing piece of journalism published in July 2014, when Junior was still flying high on the Vemma fumes. A scintillating snippet:
Q: As a young entrepreneur, what are some of your favorite brands that you love wearing and that actually helps you feel more like an entrepreneur?
CM: HUGO BOSS. Couple of factors with that one, the word boss if you are an entrepreneur resonates with you. One of the main reasons (if not the main reason) people start businesses or become an entrepreneur is because they want to be their own boss. Then when I first heard the name Hugo Boss, the only reason I bought the clothes is because it said boss on the tags. Hugo Boss really has a fine line between high quality but not out of control prices. You can look really sharp without spending thousands of dollars. I wouldn’t have known any of this and would have spent a bunch of unnecessary money if I didn’t connect with a stylist and have been guided through what to do.)
Speaking of GIN, I'll wrap up this August wrap-up with a mention of a rumor that I just heard about the 2015 GIN Family Reunion, which is (appropriately) being held this year at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Sorry, kids, but comments are disabled for that vid. (Here is the YouTube link.)
Being the savant about dates that I am, I couldn't help but notice that the big party will be held the week after the sixth anniversary of James Arthur Ray's infamous Death Lodge, which happened on October 8, 2009. And this is relevant because the rumor I heard is that Ray will be a speaker at the GIN Disney event.
True or not? I don't know yet. But, as reported here last year, Ray info-packets were reportedly being passed out to registrants at the previous Family Reunion. And Ray's products were formerly featured in the GIN store (which apparently is in the process of being revamped and will be password-protected). As well, Trudeau publicly defended Ray after Death Lodge happened, and Ray had his marketing people promote Your Wish Is Your Command (the upsell for GIN) even while Ray was still serving his much-too-short prison sentence for cooking his followers to death. More recently, other GIN loyalists/leaders have promoted Ray (see this post, under "GIN promotes killer"). So really, I suppose it is just a matter of time before James himself is paraded live before the GINfolk at a real GIN/AXS event.
Again, I don't know if the rumor about a Ray appearance at the GIN Family Reunion is true -- either the details haven't been finalized or GIN is keeping them under wraps because they fear (justly) negative publicity -- but I am following up on it now. If you've heard anything, please do let me know. If the rumor does turn out to be true, then how pathetic is it that while Kirby Brown, James Shore, Liz Neuman and Colleen Conaway are still dead, Jimmy Ray gets to go to Disney World to help celebrate the fact that he and GIN are still alive? It's a small Scamworld, after all.
And it's a world that very much needs a Salty Droid in any of his phases.
PS ~ In case you are at all puzzled about the title of this post, here ya go.
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