TrumPyramid scheme lawsuit: full speed ahead
As reported last week (though understandably, the news got a bit buried amid reports of more pressing issues surrounding #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump), a federal Judge in New York, Lorna G. Schofield, has refused to halt an anonymous class action suit against Trump and his three most notorious adult kiddos, Don Junior, Eric, and Ivanka. The lawsuit alleges that DJ the Elder, DJ the Younger, Eric, Ivanka, and the Trump Corporation committed "various business torts" that included an illegal pyramid scheme. Matt Naham and Aaron Keller at the Law & Crime blog report:
The lawsuit, originally filed in Oct. 2018 as an anti-“racketeering enterprise” action, was later streamlined. The class sued on various state and federal charges–including “racketeering and conspiracy to racketeer” claims. The two federal claims were dismissed by the court after the Trump family filed for a broad dismissal in January 2019. But the case is yet living.The Trump Corporation legal team was able to get racketeering charges dismissed, but not the entire case, and they weren't even successful in getting a stay. And just last month, as also reported on the Law & Crime blog, Judge Schofield nipped a Trump family effort to force the matter into private arbitration. So it appears that the entire saga is likely to unfold in public. (No doubt Trump and the Trumpettes and assorted Trumpanzees will whine that this is all politically motivated, since Judge Schofield was an Obama appointee.)
The class action plaintiffs allege that the Trump family business promoted a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC. ACN, the plaintiffs said, was a “get-rich-quick scheme” that relied on Trump and his family “conn[ing] each of these victims into giving up hundreds or thousands of dollars,” in violation of various state laws...
...The plaintiffs claimed that the Trump family falsely endorsed and promoted ACN by insisting that the enterprise “offered a reasonable probability of commercial success”—even using The Celebrity Apprentice to draw them in...
...According to the lawsuit, ACN was paying the Trumps for the above-described exposure but this was not public knowledge.
As uploaded to Scribd by Law & Crime, here's a link to Judge Schofield's order giving the green light for the action to proceed.
I've mentioned this numerous times before on this Whirled, but since I'm nothing if not redundant (and I know I've said that before too), I'll mention again that I first learned about the Drumpf Scamworld connections years ago from the blogger who was ahead of his time, Jason "Salty Droid" Jones. This is from September 2013, and among other things (e.g., Trump University, The Trump Network), Jason mentions the ACN scam.
As Jason has pointed out numerous times -- and as I noted too during the 2016 US presidential campaign -- the Trump scampire's playbook wasn't and isn't unique. But since the Trumps are in a position to do a lot more damage than most Scamworld hucksters, it's especially important that their misdeeds continue to be publicized and litigated to the fullest extent possible.
Deadly cults
Speaking of Jason/Salty, for the past couple of years he has been far more occupied with lawyering for a good cause than with blogging, but he does pop in on occasion with an update, such as this one posted on May 7. Like Trump has often done, though ulike Trump he does it for legitimate reasons, Jason leads with a gripe about the news media.
...the news media is absolutely horrible. Horrible. The worst. Worse than lawyers… or, at least, co-worst.Indeed. But once in a while, Jason says, the news media get it right, a case in point being a recent episode of The Oxygen Network's Deadly Cults series covering the aforementioned and atrocious James Arthur "Death" Ray, who was responsible for the deaths of three people in a phony sweat lodge back in October 2009. Jason was interviewed for this episode. If you want to watch it, here are some ways to do it:
On that one thing myself and DJT can agree.
Case in point: Donald Trump is the fucking President. That bollox doesn’t happen without an absolutely rotten, hollowed out, conglomerated media (and the complicity of enough lawyers to fill a cargo ship from China). Trump is an obvious idiot… and an even more obvious conman. The only reason he’s anything other than a bankrupt former rich boy is that the media got played… over and over and over and over. Not because he’s good at it — he’s not — but because media organizations are lazy, selfish, and too easily identify with his pathological narcissism.
Celebrity as credibility is our national affliction.
What brought us Donald John Trump also brought us James Arthur Ray… and countless other dumbdumb world destroyers; faking it until they make it at faking it.
You're quite likely to be shocked," writes Jason, "even if you already know the story."
Meanwhile in Sportsworld, Tom Brady is still huckstering too
Six-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady appears to have joined the ranks of the corona-crapitalists, although he is apparently not making direct claims that his overpriced, non-FDA approved, homeopathic medley of vitamins -- called "Protect" -- are specifically a COVID-19 preventive. But unless you're looking at it from a crapitalistic perspective, the timing couldn't be worse, for COVID-19 cases continue to climb in Florida and in numerous other places throughout the US and the world. And as reported in the Orlando Weekly on May 18, 2020:
If you make it to the supplement's website, you'll find a lengthy pitch, aimed at athletes whose bodies may now be susceptible to "bacteria, viruses and outside threats."But promoting overpriced health frauducts and schemes is nothing new for Brady, as noted on this very Whirled back in May of 2016. That post centered around a $200.00 cookbook -- with a wooden cover, no less -- that Tom was pushing. And as also mentioned in the Whirled post, as well as by numerous others earlier than that (here, for instance), Brady also once promoted a drink called NeuroSafe that supposedly offered protection from concussions.
“Tough workouts, long days, and too much stress can leave you—and your immune system — burnt out. Research shows that everyday stress can limit the production of white blood cells while high-intensity training can reduce levels of key antibodies — leaving your body susceptible to bacteria, viruses, and outside threats,” reads the TB12 website, which seems to be going out of it’s way to say everything excerpt “Hey, take these while working out during the coronavirus outbreak.”
Napoleon Hell
I've had a half-written post about every selfish-help huckster's idol, Napoleon Hill, on the back burner for years. My post mentioned some though not all of the stuff that's in the article I'm about to share -- an article that itself is several years old but which a friend just alerted me to recently. Because I have repeatedly gotten sidetracked with other more timely topics, and will most likely continue to get sidetracked, I'll just take the snippet route for now.
Over the years I have argued on some selfish-help hucksters' forums that Hill is far from the hero he is made out to be, but I would invariably be met with snooty remarks about how nobody's perfect, and it's Hill's body of work that counts, and that perhaps separating the message from the messenger is the way to go (a point that I disputed here back in 2009), and if critics like me who are out to hurt people would focus on trying to help people the world would be a better place. Yet so many of those who look up to Hill (and/or his work) are equally if not more sleazy than he was. And so it goes.
Anyway, here's that link. Enjoy.
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