GIN fat cats still in cahoots with Kevin Trudeau

If you're ever in a jam, here I am
If you're ever in a mess, S.O.S.
If you ever feel so happy you land in jail, I'm your bail
It's friendship, friendship
Just a perfect blendship
When other friendships have been forgot
Ours will still be hot
~ Cole Porter, 1939

Friendship can be such a wonderful grift -- especially decades-long friendships based on a mutual mission/compulsion to aggressively promote an endless series of frauducts and flopportunities to gullible or vulnerable people. Consider, for example, the decades-long bond between imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie) and three of his bestest buds, Blaine Athorn and the Morter Brothers, "Dr. Ted" and "Dr. Tom."

On February 7, 2020, a message celebrating this enduring friendship was posted to Kevin Trudeau's "official" Facebook fan page. As I've explained in previous recent blog posts, I'm going to assume that this post, like virtually all of the messages on that and related pages, was directed by Kevin himself, and that one of his proxies posted it on his behalf.

Here's the post in its entirety.

Over the last 6 and 1/2 years, thousands of people have asked to be added to my visiting list and be allowed to visit. I have politely said no.

I desire to spend this time in mostly isolation, where I could meditate, read, write and do various mental and spiritual practices.

I did however allow a few people to visit. These included Blaine, Dr. Tom and Dr. Ted.

Over the last 6 years, these three have come to see me regularly. They are very special friends and very special people. For those of you who have the opportunity to spend time with them, or hear them speak, I encourage you to take advantage of those opportunities.

Blaine and Dr. Tom were just here recently and we talked about some extremely exciting things for the future. Get ready to blast off everyone, and to go to places you could never imagine.

I'm excited! How about you?

Much love,
your friend,
Kevin

Now, as it happens, Blaine Athorn and the Morter bros are the current owners of what was once Kevin's biggest scam of all, the Global Information Network (GIN), which I've blogged about many times since 2009. In fact, "Dr. Tom" seems to have pushed himself up to the front and center as the GIN web presence; he's now the one doing the GIN weekly updates. Frankly, I liked the other guy who was doing them before, but nobody asked me.
 
In light of the fact that GIN and Kevin are still in very much in love, even though (on paper) Trudeau no longer has ownership, it's not surprising that he would allow GIN's owners to visit him in the clink. Granted, Blaine and the Morters can't literally be his bail now that he's in jail, so the lyrics to the Cole Porter classic aren't a perfect fit, but they can do the next best thing to posting bail: visit him in jail -- or, more accurately, federal prison camp -- and cook up new ways to pick people's pockets.

And speaking of picking people's pockets, here's the February 7, 2020 GIN update from "Dr. Tom." I tweaked the link to begin it at the 2:32 mark, because that's when Tommy Boy really starts talking about the urgent need to "upgrade" one's GIN membership by a certain date. It all has to do with getting the Level 8 "teachings" for free, direct from "KT."

Is history repeating itself?
Tom says some folks have raised questions about preserving "the integrity of the system" if some members will be rushing through upgrades in order to qualify for Level 8 by December of 2021, which is the deadline for qualifying to receive Level 8 for free and getting to see Katie deliver it. (There's also a deadline of December 2020 to actually join GIN, though something tells me that if someone were to join later than that, they'd still qualify for the big Katie deal as long as they coughed up the money for the first seven levels by the December 2021 presumptive deadline. In fact, I'm willing to bet that if they joined after that deadline, but were still able to come up with what is more than likely tens of thousands of dollars for the prerequisites, GIN would gladly accept their money and deem them worthy of "Level 8" training.)

But Tom assures his audience that members upgrading by several levels quickly will not get access to all of the information at once; they'll still have to go through the process of assimilating the info for each level and passing tests to get to the next level. Presumably, however, they will still have to pay the increasingly costly upgrade fees upfront, for however many levels they wish to purchase. But hey, no worries; Tom adds that the leadership hasn't quite worked out the logistics yet, but they will, in plenty of time for the big event. Addressing the question of preserving "integrity" he says, "Trust me" -- which for several reasons should be a big red flag right there, for anyone paying attention.

I will concede that the current plot does not seem to be as extreme, on the scam-scale, as the schemes a few years ago when Katie was still running things and the GIN MLM was still going strong. I'm thinking of the "Lazy Man" scam, in which members were fraudulently sold expensive leads in order to build their affiliate business (after which both orders and money were reportedly withheld from many of them); and the infamous "Platinum Bonus" swindle in which members were implicitly encouraged to take shortcuts and even cheat the system in order to get to a certain "level" by a certain time, at which time it was promised that they would get a huge bonus that, for the great majority, was never delivered.

This time around, members aren't overtly being promised a big bonus or instant wealth or anything like that -- just a free entry to the as yet nonexistent "Level 8" in GIN, and a chance to maybe see Katie in person (barring any unexpected developments such as Katie being re-arrested or going into hiding on the other side of the world, but the GIN leadership doesn't go into that part). But I think that it's merely a matter of scale, and it's easy to see the flaws in the plan, given past history. While there may not be nearly as much money in the pot as there was a few years ago, the current promotion still appears to be a cynical money grab.

My guess is that if the leadership actually does try to pull this off, it will be an administrative nightmare for the few employees who are probably left at GIN and who most likely do the real work, and that if it all goes wrong, which has been known to happen in GIN, Blaine and the Morters and possibly "Lee" (that would be another Katie cohort, Lee Kenny, whom Tom mentioned in his update a few times) will still be able to pocket a lotta moolah, leaving pretty much everyone else in the lurch.

It's the same old circle jerk (and you're not invited)
On the PS to the February 7 Facebook post, there's a link to two videos of what Kevin-through-his-proxy describes as "me and my friends." Years ago I linked to the first one, which features the Morters, but here it is again. In this 2011 offering, produced during GIN's heyday as a super-scam, Katie and his well-fed buddies waxed profound about "Energy, GIN, and Fishing." Given the fact that they were, at the time, at the very apex of their scheme to scam hundreds of people out of many thousands of dollars, the vid kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Although Kevin himself does not appear in the second video, posted in 2018 but dating from 2011, he is very much a presence in it nevertheless. This video features Blaine "interviewing" Chris McGarahan Jr. (son of Voldemort, who as you may recall was one of GIN's top hucksters a few years back). In the guise of a frank discussion on Scamworld's youth movement, Chris Jr., sounding much more like a California stoner than an ambitious go-getter, shamelessly touts Kevin Trudeau as one of his most important mentors. And with Blaine's encouragement, he also flogs the 14-volume scamfomercial CD set, Your Wish Is Your Command (originally created to be a come-on for GIN), claiming that it's one of the essential self-help classics, on a par with Napoleon Hill's works and The Magic of Thinking Big.

But I wouldn't trust Chris the Younger or Chris the Elder as far as I could throw 'em. There's a substantial bit about both McGarahans in this June 2014 Whirled post. That was back when Chris Jr., still apparently masquerading as a leading member of the younger generation of go-getters, was pushing an MLM flopportunity called Vemma, about which my friend Jason "Salty Droid" Jones had a few things to say.

Nor would I trust Blaine Athorn or the Morters, and as indicated in the links in the first paragraph of this post, I've blogged about these guys several times over the years.

I first discussed Blaine at length in this April 2013 post about one of Kevin Trudeau's bankruptcies (particularly under the sub-head, "MLM fever"). In that same post I also cited a December 2004 piece (which for several reasons you really need to read if you haven't already), which references Katie and Blaine's Amway days. The piece claims that Blaine fired Kevin after the latter's 1989 credit card fraud, but apparently there was no bad blood between the two, because they're still buddies.

And I wrote at length about the Morters as well in this August 2015 post, mostly under the sub-head, "Trick and Morter." These guys have a real family scampire, which began with their late daddy and which they show every sign of continuing and expanding as long as they can get away with it.

Included on the February 7 Facebook post I referenced above are several photos of Katie and his fat-cat buds taken over a period of years. There's one of him and the Morters in a private jet; a pic of Katie and the Morters on stage jawing about GIN; a couple of pics of them at one of their "exclusive" fishing trips (paid for by GIN members, many of whom were vainly expecting their own lives to get better as a result of pouring money into Kevin's piggy bank); and an old pic of a pudgy Kevin and two guys whom I assume are either a couple of Morters or a Morter and an Athorn.

And below, you'll see a bonus photo that's not on the Facebook post. Appearing on this Flickr album, it was taken at a GIN event in the Bahamas on New Year's Eve of 2010, which was when the GIN scam was really hitting its stride, raking in lots of money by making all sorts of wild promises to the rank and file. The pic shows Kevin Trudeau and the Doctors T gabbing excitedly about something.

If you follow the link in the paragraph above the pic, you'll see several other pics of Katie and Blaine and the Morters and a few others lounging on a boat, clowning it up in a limo, dining scrumptiously, and just generally having a good old time at the expense of hundreds of GIN members who apparently didn't have what it took to be invited to the private parties held at GIN events, but whose money was certainly good enough to subsidize those parties.

Well, I guess that's understandable. The elite leadership has to escape from the riff-raff once in a while, don't they? There are several other albums on Kevin Trudeau's old Flickr collection that you might find interesting as well.

Every picture tells a story, and truly, it's the same old story: turds of a feather clump together. Or more specifically these days, they huddle together during visiting hours at a federal prison camp to plot and plan their next grift(s). As Kevin wrote, "I'm excited! How about you?"

As for everyone else, the writing has been on the wall for years, for those who are willing to read it: The only people who will significantly benefit from any project that even marginally involves Kevin Trudeau will be Kevin himself and a select few of his closest buddies. Everyone else is disposable and interchangeable, as long as that money keeps coming in. It has been this way for years and it will most likely always be this way.

In the future the big hook to catch all the little fishies may not be GIN specifically; it may be another big "exclusive" club or group of "like-minded" individuals. But I'd say that at this point, if you're not Blaine or a Morter, or possibly another one of a small group of long-time cronies, you are probably never truly going to get any tangible or lasting benefits from even the most worshipful treatment of Kevin Trudeau, no matter how much of your hard-earned money you give him. It's something to keep in mind.

But hey, no worries. As Eric Idle's character demonstrated at the close of the 1979 Monty Python movie, Life of Brian, just about everything looks more cheerful if you can turn it into a song. So go ahead and celebrate Katie's friendship with his nearly lifelong buds; Cole Porter and I will get you started.

If you ever need a scam, here I am
If you need to sell a lie, I'm your guy
If you ever feel you need to hide your cash, I'll help stash
It's friendship, friendship
Grab the gold and spendship
When the marks are bitching 'bout our latest breach
We'll be on the beach!

~Cosmic Connie, 2020

 Just purse your lips and whistle!

PS ~ Bernie at GINtruth is blogging again. And he's on Kevin's case too. I'm glad he's back, because it was getting a little lonely in this part of the blogosphere.
 
Related on this Whirled:

• 31 January, 2020: Kevin Trudeau asks Judge Robert Gettleman for post-prison scam guidance
  Kevin Trudeau and his buddies seem to be actively plotting his post-prison career. But is all of this moot? Realistically, what will Kevin himself actually be able to do, especially since he'll presumbably be on "supervised release" for five years? Anything could happen, and at this point we can only speculate, but Trudeau himself did reach out early in January 2020 to Judge Robert Gettleman, with an inquiry about these very matters.
•  27 January, 2020: Eight misbehavin'? GIN is using imprisoned founder Kevin Trudeau to promote their Level 8 "training"
  Quid pro Trudeau: You scratch my scaly back, I'll scratch yours (and possibly stab you in it if I need to). GIN needs KT as much as (or more than) he needs them, and it shows. But that dynamic could change when Katie gets sprung from the clink.
• 18 December, 2019: Saint Kevin Trudeau becomes GuruKev as Facebook clamps down on his "celebrity" page
  There's nothing like throwing in a heapin' helpin' of McSpirituality to the scamcake mix you're making in preparation for your release from prison. Kevin Trudeau will probably never abandon the conservative Christian part of his base, but his rebranding as "Guru Kev" is blatant pandering to the more "sophisticated" marks who have a more worldly view of "spirituality." But don't be fooled. All of that holy talk is just another hustle.