Kevin Trudeau: doubling down on his latest grift to maintain his "signature lifestyle"

Serial scammer and ex-prisoner Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled, has doubled down on his latest grift (which I first wrote about in December 2022) by releasing a new YouBoob misinfomercial. In it, Trudeau spends an hour-plus boasting about his massive accomplishments and incredible success (while reassuring his audience that he is not boasting, but just stating facts).

He talks about having had $200 million dollars worth of mansions in California, Chicago, New York, Florida, Zurich, and Sydney, as well as owning Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Ferraris, Porsches, and limousines, and having butlers, two full-time chefs, maids, full-time gardeners, and so on. All of his houses were fully staffed, he says, so if he went to Cali he had a staff of people waiting for him at the house even if he hadn't been there in six months, because even though he hadn't been at the house, he'd kept them on the payroll. He says he flew around in private jets, stayed in the biggest hotel suites everywhere he went -- suites where celebrities had stayed!

It's all in the service of convincing his audience that he is uniquely qualified to teach about success and money-getting, unlike many if not most of the gurus who make their living doing the same. Which brings us to the purpose of the video: to promote his upcoming BIG EVENT that will only cost you $25,000.00. (The preview pic on the video is deceptive, because it appears that the purpose of the vid is to promote a new book, when in fact he was just holding up one of several over-hyped books that he has perpetrated over the years. He does brag that he was the first person to really talk about recession, back when the Great Recession was cranking up.)

But back to the BIG EVENT, which, as noted above, will only set you back $25k. If you can't come up with that relatively trivial amount, it very likely means that you'll always be a loser, so you'd better do your best to find that money somewhere, somehow, because if you do, you will learn 30 never-before-shared-in-one-place secrets to removing the money blocks that keep the average schmo from becoming a success like Kevin. Actually there are 33 secrets, but at the BIG EVENT Trudeau is only going to share 30 of them, because the other three would make you much, much too powerful, and he needs to save those for a next-level, much more expensive grift get to know you personally before you can be trusted with them.

Woven throughout the vid are mentions of the seekrit organizations that Katie has belonged to or on which he has inside information, most notably the fictional "Brotherhood" that he flogged to sucker so many gullibles into his mega-scam, the Global Information Network (GIN) back in the day. So in case you were wondering, that part of his shtick is alive and well as Katie casts a wide net for whole new generations of suckers who have no clue that it's the same old grift.

Speaking of GIN, it appears that Katie is distancing himself, at least in this video, from the club that he founded back in 2009. The closest he gets to mentioning GIN is that at one point he holds up the CD set he created for the sole purpose of promoting GIN, Your Wish Is Your Command (erroneously stating that it's over 20 years old). He says it is being called one of the greatest success courses of all time by people who have gone through the training. But there's no direct mention of GIN. And he even says, also erroneously, that you can't even get the CD set today, because, "I mean who has a CD player, right?" Even so, he's still making bundles of money from GIN, which we'll get to later on in this post.

Watch the misinfomercial if you wish, but keep in mind that it's 1:06:13 that you'll never get back. If you'd rather not listen to Katie's annoying voice, just click on the "Show transcript" icon. That's what I did, after listening to a few minutes of the video here and there. I copied and pasted the transcript into a Word doc so I could easily read it in its entirety. Like most auto-generated transcripts it's not perfect, but the technology seems to have improved over what it once was, and the transcript is more than sufficient to reflect the content of the video.

About that big fine...
Meanwhile, although he earnestly claims otherwise, Trudeau is apparently still trying to find creative ways to avoid paying the rest of the fine that he still owes the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for repeated violations of consent orders related to one of his griftbooks, The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You To Know About. It was this matter that sent him to Federal sleepaway camp for eight and a half years (on criminal contempt charges). Years later, as an ex-prisoner but still on a tight-ish leash for the time being, he is still trying to convince the Feds that he doesn't have any money because the mean old government took it all away.

And the Feds still aren't buying it.

I had promised updates about this matter in a previous Whirled post back in November of 2022, but -- and I apologize for this -- I got sidetracked by politix again (a topic not unrelated to contemporary Scamworld and incorrigible scammers such as Trudeau). So I missed this January 26, 2023 report in Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times staff reporter Andy Grimm covered a daylong hearing, during which Judge Robert Gettleman declared Trudeau to be in contempt for failing to report to the court way back in the spring of 2022 when he was first sprung from the clink. At the time, Judge Gettleman said that he would decide later whether or not to have Trudeau locked up or to impose a fine on top of the original one. From the Sun-Times piece:

Trudeau made no payments while he was incarcerated, but he put up $1.86 million in recent weeks, the judge said, noting that money came from “gifts” of as much as $50,000 each from members of Trudeau’s “fan club.”...

...In addition to the $1.85 million Trudeau had raised from his fan club, his lawyer, Giel Stein, said that Trudeau has been making money by organizing and speaking at events, and he could pay back his victims sooner if he were able to travel outside the state.

Trudeau on Thursday agreed to empty his bank accounts of about $200,000, but Stein noted that the pitchman needs considerable income to be able to put on events, pay his taxes and maintain his signature lifestyle.

“The court has now $1.85 million reasons to believe he can [pay] and will continue to do so,” Stein said. “He can raise money by being Mr. Trudeau ... because that’s what people like and they’ll pay for.”

It may seem unbelievable to folks who can spot a blatant scam when they see one, and especially to those who were scammed by Trudeau and learned their lesson, but people are still giving Trudeau money, and apparently lots of it. And notice that bit about Katie emptying his bank accounts of about $200,000, along with the mention of his lawyer's statement that Mr. Trudeau needs lots of money to, among other things, "maintain his signature lifestyle..."

All of this, while many of his followers are probably struggling to keep the lights on and food on the table, but he's still trying to squeeze every last dollar out of them. Won't people ever learn?

An interesting part of the January hearing involved Kevin's latest ex-wife, Nataliya Babenko. Jason Meisner of the Chicago Tribune, also reporting on January 26, 2023, wrote that Ms. Babenko told Judge Gettleman that Trudeau had a stash of gold bars, and she added that she is "very scared" of him.

Trudeau has claimed in sworn depositions that he gave gold to Babenko during their marriage, which was annulled last year. But when an attorney for the Federal Trade Commission asked her Thursday whether that happened, she answered in a flat tone, “Never.”

She also denied Trudeau’s claim that her father had threatened to kill him. “Never,” she said. “This is outrageous.”

At the end of her testimony, over the strenuous objections of Trudeau’s attorneys, Babenko told the judge that facing her ex-husband in court was “excruciating” because of what he has put her through with his lies.

“So much abuse, so much oppression,” she said, as Trudeau sat at a defense table, looking right at her. “I’m very scared for my life ... from the day he has thrown me into this false narrative."

Babenko is expected to give continued testimony via Zoom at a later date, when Trudeau’s attorneys will get the opportunity to cross-examine her.

I'm rooting for Ms. Babenko, whose whole story has not yet been told. She has apparently been through hell, and I believe her claims that she feels threatened by her scalawag of an ex.

A followup hearing took place on March 9, as reported by Andy Grimm at the Sun-Times. That report has additional info about Trudeau's income, as well as his relationship with GIN.

Trudeau maintained that he turned over information about all his bank accounts and business ventures to a court-appointed receiver a decade ago, who then liquidated his assets. Since getting out of prison last year, Trudeau said he has become an employee of Global Information Network United — previously, Trudeau had controlled a company called Global Information Network — where he provides training materials and leads seminars for the groups members, and receives an annual salary of $150,000— which ballooned to around $1 million last year with bonuses.

Trudeau’s “fan club” members have donated money that Trudeau has used to pay for his lawyers and living expenses since his release from prison, as well as the bulk of the $1.8 million he sent to the FTC to date. Trudeau also emptied several bank accounts and his cryptocurrency wallet after the hearing in January.

So, GIN members, that's where your hard-earned money is going: to support this lifelong grifter -- just like in the glory daze of GIN. Nothing has changed. Maybe you'll wake up someday before you lose everything. And as for what's left of the GIN staff: my guess is that most of y'all are being paid pittances if you're paid at all, while the overwhelming majority of the grunt work is being done by Katie's army of "joyful volunteers." And super-high-paid "employee" Kevin is pocketing almost all of the money generated (GIN-erated?) by his boondoggle. He can claim that he's a mere employee if he wants, but for all practical purposes he still owns GIN. Again... nothing has changed.

And while all of this has been going on, the home page of The Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club is still all about the begging. That's the entire purpose of the "Fan Club" and its web site and Facebook page: to put even more money into Kevin's pocket. After all, he does have a signature lifestyle to maintain.

PS ~ For many years, Kevin Trudeau has been successfully fundraising off of his spurious narratives of heroism (he's bravely fighting for you, not himself!) and of martyrdom at the hands of powerful enemies including the US government. And #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, in the wake of his recent indictment, is using the exact same narrative to suck multiple millions of bucks into his own coffers. From attorney, former Federal prosecutor, and ex-republican Ron Filipkowski on Twitter:

Trump issues a plea for cash tonight to fight his indictment: “If you’re doing well because all the things I’ve done have brought you wealth and prosperity .. it would be really great if you can contribute .. Show the Left that nothing can destroy the greatest political movement”

That's straight from the master grifter/cult leader playbook. I'll have more about this in an upcoming post.