Some lifelong scammers just never give up, even
if their scam machine is running on fumes -- and that seems to be
the case with one Wallace Ward Jr. (aka Mark Hamilton, aka Mark
Scamilton on this blog) and his Neothink® scampire, which is
based on "secret" information and "forbidden"
knowledge.
Because I have been so distracted by the
disturbing trends in American politix, it's been a
while since I have posted updates about any of this blog's
featured scammers besides serial huckster Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka
Katie on this blog) and convicted murderer James Arthur Ray (aka Death
Ray). And actually, in both of those most recent posts -- the one
about Trudeau and the one about Ray -- there was more than a
hint of American politix as well as Scamworld, since,
unfortunately, the two areas have become increasingly intertwined over
the past few years.
In any case, I had recently been wondering about the current
activities of Scamilton, who for many years was one of Kevin
Trudeau's bestest bilking bros. I'll say right off that at this
point I don't know if Katie and Mark are still associated with
each other in any way; Scamilton seemed to beat a retreat into
the background years ago after it became obvious that Trudeau and
his mega-scam, the Global Information Network (GIN) were in real and immediate legal and financial peril.
But back in the day, specifically 2009 and for a few years
thereafter, Scamilton and his Neothink machine played a very
large part in launching and marketing GIN. More about that in a
little while.
Scamilton had inherited the Neo scampire from his daddy, the late
Wallace Ward Sr. (aka Frank Wallace), whom Katie reportedly met
during his first incarceration back in the 1990s. Kevin had been
locked up for fraud, and Ward the Elder for tax evasion.
Apparently the two hit it off.
The Ward/Wallace/Hamilton scheme has gone by
various names: Neo-Tech, Nova-Tech, Nouveau-Tech, and Neothink among
them. There have been numerous variations in spelling; sometimes
the names have appeared as two separate words, sometimes as one
hyphenated word, sometimes as one word with no hyphen. Under
Scamilton, Neothink has been the
predominant brand name. By any name, it has always been based
upon "secret" or "exclusive" or
"forbidden" information -- much like Kevin Trudeau's
GIN. No coincidence there.*
The Neo/Nova/Nouveau franchise has always centered
around several books of timeless "wisdom," some penned
by Ward the Elder, some by Ward the Younger, some written by one
or both under various pseudonyms. A few were presented as
poorly-written novels. (Speaking of novels, Kevin Trudeau
announced a few years ago that he was going to begin a series of
magickal mystical books to be presented as "fiction" in
order to make them more acceptable to the sheeple and to keep
him from getting in trouble with the government and other evil
forces, though he insinuated, in a nudge-nudge wink-wink way,
that they will actually present the true story of the prodigy
and extraordinary human that he markets himself as being. If you
need a laugh and a brief diversion, read all about it here.)
But back to Scamilton. When casually surfing the Net for updates
on him and his Neo-schemes, I came across a piece on the web site
of the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle. It's a March 2023 column by Dallas Morning News
Watchdog Desk columnist Dave Lieber, with the headline:
"89-year-old invited to join 'Secret Society.' What is
it?"
Lieber's 89-year-old mother-in-law had recently received, by
snail mail, a 10-page letter inviting her to join a "Secret
Society." The mother-in-law didn't fall for it, fortunately,
and she did have the widsom to pass it on to her son-in-law.
The 10-page missive did not ask for money, but merely requested
permission to send a free pamphlet. And if you know anything
about Neo-scam marketing, the next part in Lieber's article will
sound very, very familiar.
The letter informs Mom that she is one of the lucky few who have been targeted to join the secret class of leaders who quietly run our country. Please keep this confidential, it says. (So much for that.)
Using her first name throughout the letter, it praises her for possessing “some very rare, hidden traits.”
It informs that with its collection of famous people, billionaires, intellectuals and scientists, it’s considered by some to be “the most powerful organization in the world.”
Pretty impressive, Mom.
The letter writer doesn’t fully identify him or herself, but adds, “I don’t mean to brag, but I’m perhaps one of the most famous people in the world. If you own a TV, listen to the radio, browse the Internet, you will find me in a news story.”
The letter was simply signed, "Tom."
"I am the last man
standing"
Now, if David Lieber had been a regular long-time reader of this
blog, he would have known right off who "Tom" really
was. But almost nobody reads this blog, so instead Lieber had to
go to one of his colleagues to find out who was behind the
mysterious letter.
I asked Dallas Morning News researcher Misha Vaid to help me find out who’s behind this. She described the research as going down “a very fun, albeit baffling rabbit hole.”
She helped me find the wizard behind this enterprise. Mark Hamilton is his pen name, and his real name is Wallace Ward, who is 64 and lives in Nevada.
In an hourlong phone interview, Ward told me the free pamphlet he sends can lead the curious to buy his $139 book, which, in turn, can lead buyers to pay $299 for a 3,000-page book by him. He calls it his “magnum opus” and shares his life philosophy, which he calls Neo-Tech.
The company that prints his book printed phone books, so you get an idea of his book’s heft.
The Neo-Tech philosophy was started decades ago by his dad, who had the same name. He carries on his late father’s work.
In summary, it goes like this: The world, especially in business and government, is populated by liars and cheats. The only way to stop them is through truth and honesty.
To Scamilton's credit, I guess, he did acknowledge to Lieber that it's inappropriate to send solicitation letters to the elderly, and he vowed that he was trying to cull the mailing lists he buys to attract a younger audience. Alas, most of those lists are by and large populated by the elderly, so what's a fellow to do? From Lieber again:
“I haven’t been able to figure out how to market this online,” he confesses. “I’ve tried over and over again to target younger people, but I haven’t been able to make that work through direct mail at this point in time.”
In his prime, he sent out 20,000 letters a month. Now, he feels lucky if he can get 2,000 out each month.
Nothing I can find is illegal here, but its morality is debatable. The initial letter is filled with promises about joining a society that claims to help rule the world.
While many solicitations thrive online, this one, without a strong digital presence, is dying. Ward refers to “the good old days.” He says that in his endeavors, “I am the last man standing.”
If those claims are really true (and you have to take
everything a lifelong huckster says with a big dose of
skepticism), then it would appear that the former ties between
Wally Ward Jr./Mark Hamilton and Kevin Trudeau have indeed been severed.
After all, Trudeau's scam machine is very much an online thing,
and appears to be attracting not only younger rubes but
an expanding international audience to boot.
"I will see you on the beaches of the
world!"
But oh, back in the daze when Trudeau's GIN was a
mega-MLM (multi-level marketing) scam, Mark Hamilton cleaned up
more than anyone in the org except for Kevin himself. He made millions selling the "product," which wasn't actually a tangible product but was an expensive Level 1 membership in GIN.
In fact, according to court documents,
Hamilton had not one but two MLM downlines in GIN, one under his
real name of Wallace Ward Jr. and one under his pen name, Mark
Hamilton. I wrote all about it in September 2013. If you read that post you'll find links to some of my
previous posts about the Neoscam. (You'll also see that,
according to a November 2009 letter I quoted from Trudeau's
then-asset manager, Marc Lane, Mark Hamilton apparently had a
sponsorship arrangement with Trudeau's infamous International Pool Tour, or
IPT, which had supposedly failed a couple of years previously. I
wrote about the IPT at length in this April 2013 post, under the subhead, "The International Pool Tour.)
Trudeau and Hamilton were scratching each other's
backs big-time in those days, and, thanks in no small part to
Hamilton's legacy (and his Neo mailing lists, no doubt), GIN was able
to attract numerous folks who were already Neothinkers, some of
whom paid tens of thousands of dollars to be in KT's mysterious "inner circle." And some of these people were senior citizens. (Here's a link to a capsule history of GIN and
the wild promises on which the scheme was founded.)
Scamilton and Katie were clearly collaborating on the marketing of GIN in those early days, to the point that some folks thought GIN and Neothink were the same organization. In this May 2013 post I wrote about this, and included a link to a page, taken from one of hundreds of court documents, in which this statement appears:
26. Trudeau further states that he and another individual named Mark Hamilton reached out to their lists of purchasers of Trudeau's Natural Cures and Debt Cures books to get people to join GIN. At approximately 1 minute and two seconds, Trudeau then states "And because it was Kevin Trudeau, people joined, that's why thousands joined."
You'll notice that Trudeau shared his invaluable
"Natural Cures" and "Debt Cures" lists with
Hamilton. It was "Natural Cures" that shot Trudeau, via
infomercials as well as online and direct-mail marketing, to new
heights of fame in the early 2000s. "Natural Cures"
unfortunately also launched some formerly obscure but truly evil
scammers, such as phony doctor/cancer quack/neo-Nazi/alleged
predator Leonard Coldwell, to infamy
and wealth... but I digress.
In my May 2013 post I also provided screen shots of one of the
early GIN solicitation letters, dated November 7, 2009 and
headed, "From the desk of Mark Hamilton." In the grand
Neo tradition, it was done up in an old-school looking typewriter
font. Here's a direct link to page 1 of the letter, and here's a link to page 2.
The screen shots were originally shared by one of thousands of
folks who had received the letter by snail mail; for privacy
concerns I redacted the recipient's name. The wording is very
much like the "secret society" solicitation letters for
Neothink. Here's a bit from page 2:
Riches can be yours!
Secrets never before revealed can be yours!
The web site explains it all. Once you listen to the GIN Special Invitation recording, you will know what I am talking about. You will thank me a million times for thinking about you and personally giving you an invitation to join this never before structured kind of wealth membership organization.
But this is a LIMITED TIME OPPORTUNITY.
Listen to the Special Invitation on the web site. Go to [web site address] to sign up. Now is the time to act on this opportunity.
Money will flow like lava!
Millionaires will be made!
Join now and watch your dreams come true!
Join NOW, [NAME REDACTED], and I will see you on the beaches of the world!
Your Mentor,
Mark Hamilton
Author of Your
Nouveau Tech Heirloom Manuscripts
In the PS, Hamilton reiterates that you must act
NOW and that you must use the affiliate code Hamilton.
And as I mentioned above, "Hamilton" made millions from
GIN as a result. As did "Ward," of course.
I have to wonder about Scamilton's insinuation, in his interview with Lieber, that he is still
trying to attract a younger audience by direct mail. That's
clearly not working, so why spend so much time and energy on that
endeavor? After all, as he indicated, he does have an online
presence.
What does seem to be true is that he has been trying to market
his schemes online for years. For instance, in late 2013, after
the original GIN MLM was shut down by the courts and it was clear
that GIN would no longer be the gravy train it once had been for a very select few,
Hamilton doubled down on his Neo-hustling -- and those efforts
appeared to be largely if not exclusively online. I wrote about this in December 2013.
There's a new flopportunity in Scamworld. Or should I say, there's a "Neo-flopportunity." Now-jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's Ponzi-like Global Information Network (GIN) is imploding, and the MLM portion has been suspended, so the top earners and others are scrambling to find a new scam -- or in some cases, to dust off the old scams. One such top GIN earner, dustin' off the old scams and makin' 'em Nouveau again, is Mark Hamilton (real name Wallace Ward, Jr.; Whirled name Mark Scamilton). ...
...This seems to be the flopportunity in question: the chance to sell overpriced manuscripts of seekrit wisdumb, which are basically what the Neo-scampire has been selling for decades. In the past they old-school-marketed mostly to the elderly and under-educated, sending them "personalized" letters that told them they were Very Special People, and offering them special "heirloom editions" that had their name on the cover and everything. Now the Neo-scammers are trying to open up new markets, via an MLM...
...The copy on the landing page betrays, I must say, a certain desperation:How would you like to make a nice profit selling the in-demand Neothink® Manuscripts from the Neothink Society, being released to the public for the first time? Especially since this is an easy, turnkey system all set up for you to place on your website or send out by email? It costs you no money and only a few minutes to set up and get started. For over three decades, Mark Hamilton’s life-changing Neothink® Manuscripts have sold through the private-club Neothink® Society to specially-selected people. You may remember at one time receiving your invitation letter from the Society. For the first time, Mark Hamilton and his Neothink® Society are allowing his highly-coveted Neothink® Manuscripts to be sold to the general public.
And so on. Of course, that was 2013 -- ancient
history in Interwebz time -- and I have no idea how successful
that scheme was, nor how successful overall the online marketing
efforts by Hamilton and his proxies have been. But the point is
that Hamilton and his scampire do have a significant online
presence and they have for years. If their marketing has been as
unsuccessful as Hamilton indicated, they need to modernize the
products and maybe hire some better marketing folks.
I wish I could attribute Hamilton's claimed lack of success
(again, provided that he was being forthright with Dave Lieber)
to nothing more than a general smartening-up of the public in
recent years, and a lower gullibility quotient than in the past.
Stop snickering right this minute, because I know that this
argument doesn't really hold water, given the fact that Kevin
Trudeau and GIN are still attracting suckers with the secret
society/forbidden info/conspiracy narratives shtick -- and for
that matter, given the fact that there is a yuuge Trump cult that
has been sucked in by many of the same marketing strategies
Trudeau and Hamilton have used. ICYMI, I covered all of the above in my previous post.
Where Hamilton is concerned I think there's
another factor at work besides ineffective marketing strategies. Perhaps the main key to
Hamilton's and Neothink's relative obscurity, as opposed to Trump
and Trudeau and their respective grifts, is personality, or lack
thereof. For better or worse (worse, actually), Trump and Trudeau
are Personalities with a capital P, and therefore have been able
to build a cult of personality around themselves. They keep their
respective cults alive by exploiting all media at their disposal
to aggressively and relentlessly pander to their cult members'
vanities, longings, greed, fears, and anger, while presenting
themselves as saviors who can fix every problem.
By contrast, Hamilton, who has chosen to remain in the background
for the most part -- and did so even in GIN's heyday -- has zero
personality, and often comes across on his videos as a creepy
perv from a third-rate 1980s movie. So maybe his problem goes
deeper than mailing lists and advertising strategies.
Neostink web site's fake
history of Mark Hamilton
Nevertheless Hamilton seems to still be striving to portray himself as a hero and a servant of humanity. The site that currently
seems to be the main one for the Neothink Society is really playing up Mark Hamilton's contributions to
humanity. (Again, shades of Kevin Trudeau and his supposedly magnificent contributions to the advancement of the human race.) Here is the copy on the "About Mark Hamilton"
page:
Mark Hamilton wanted to tell everyone, but they would not listen. Their eyes would glaze over, for they were ensconced in what they had been taught by the powers that be. The “experts” would ridicule Mark’s ideas. The authorities would punish Mark’s ideas. His ideas were too different. In fact, his ideas threatened the existing power structures. He soon learned there could be no direct communication of what he knew. He needed to silently clear a new path.
So, his work began in secret. No one beyond his family would know for quite some time about his secret knowledge. Mark Hamilton worked long days, years, decades getting what he knew onto paper and then into action. As years became decades, he captured thousands of pages of Neothink® in his highly-guarded manuscripts. Finally, after many years, he decided it was time to form a protected, secret society of his select few, yet very passionate readers.
And those passionate readers grew to a couple million, reading his large Neothink® Manuscripts with entirely new ways of looking at the world. With the rise of the Internet, Mark Hamilton’s secret society took a lot of abuse from establishment-ensconced, misinformed people who heard out-of-context bits and pieces of Mark’s hidden ideas when some of his ideas began to leak. Of course, the establishment’s “experts” tried to discredit Mark Hamilton, and the authorities tried to shut him down.
After thirty-three long years, Mark decided to no longer keep his ideas hidden. Maturing from an ambitious young man into a determined middle-aged man, Mark feels the time has come to release his ideas to the world. And his passionate, secret- society readers agree. The country is scattered with Mark Hamilton’s Neothink® Clubhouses. And they are ready, willing, and waiting with open arms, hearts, and minds to teach you Mark’s life-changing Neothink® ideas and techniques.
And he gives you his entire life’s work — over thirty years of long days writing (and sleepless nights fighting establishment authorities) — all delivered to you in his massive and extensive volumes of literature. Mark Hamilton wants you to finally benefit from his deepest, secret knowledge. He has envisioned this secret knowledge reaching you and eventually the masses for a long, long time, ever since he was a young man and realized his secret establishment-shattering knowledge would enormously benefit everyone alive.
Since he was a young man, Mark Hamilton has pursued the goal of improving life for everyone…from his breakthroughs that turn your work from a burden to a joy, to his breakthroughs that turn our country’s leadership from suppression to a launching pad for universal wealth, health and peace. Mark Hamilton’s Neothink® breakthroughs bring unprecedented prosperity and wonderful emotions to the people.
There's not a peep about Mark's daddy, Wallace
Ward Sr. aka Frank Wallace, who started the whole thing decades
ago. And the claim that Hamilton "stayed in hiding"
with his "secret knowledge" for years and years and
then just suddenly decided to "release his ideas to the
world" is just pure bunk.
The Neothink site has more tall tales about Scamilton, including
that he built the Grand Canyon Skywalk even
after engineers said it was impossible (thanks to Neothink, of
course). From the What Is The Neothink Society page on the web
site:
Following your heart and living the life you were meant to have seems impossible. Through Neothink® and The Neothink® Society you will learn how to specifically do what Jobs so enticingly suggests: follow your heart for a life of immense passion, vision, and insane wealth. Neothink® is a new way of using our minds and enables us to do what before was considered impossible. Mark Hamilton built the famous Glass Bridge and put it out over the edge of the Grand Canyon, even after engineers said it was impossible. Through Neothink®, the Grand Canyon Skywalk now is an American icon for the whole world to enjoy and for the Hualapai Indian Tribe to rise from poverty to prosperity.
It appears, however, that Super Mark didn't actually build the Grand Canyon Skywalk all by his lonesome, as admitted even on some of his own propaganda. From an October 2016 Mark Hamilton/Neothink blog post:
Neothink Society founder Mark Hamilton is one of the financial backers of the Grand Canyon Skywalk. He was part of Grand Canyon Skywalk Development LLC, which created the walkway. The attraction is located on Hualapai Tribe land and is operated by the tribe. A horseshoe-shaped glass bridge suspended over the western rim of the Grand Canyon, the Skywalk gives visitors a bird’s-eye view of the canyon from a height of 4,000 feet.
Mark Hamilton, Neothink founder, got involved with the Skywalk project after seeing a rendition of the completed structure in a newspaper. Hamilton first fell in love with architecture after reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead when he was younger. After seeing the renderings of the Skywalk, he got in touch with the Skywalk’s designer, David Jin.
So at most, Hamilton helped fund the project,
most likely with ill-gotten gains from scamming old folks out of
their life savings. I suppose, then, that you could at least say
that Neothink® had something to do
with the building of the project.
The bottom line, given Dave Lieber's Dallas
Morning News report cited above, and the current Neo online
content, is that it would appear that Mark Hamilton is still
running scams, or trying to. Like Kevin Trudeau, that's all he
knows how to do, and in Hamilton's case it's a family tradition.
I'd be curious to know if, a year later, Hamilton has indeed
tried to cull his mailing lists of senior citizens' names, as he
promised Lieber he would do, and if in fact he has reduced or
ceased his marketing efforts to them.
Let me know if you have any info about Hamilton's
current activities and schemes, especially about whether he and
Trudeau are still involved in any projects together. Because
their marketing copy is so similar and has been for years, and
because they shared their most valued mailing lists with each
other in the past, and because they both clearly possess the
heart of a huckster, their divorce, if it occurred, must have been really traumatic. Drop me a line; I'm
always open to providing more updates.
* For a (long and circuitous but nonetheless informative) two-part Whirled post that provides background on the Neo scampire and its association with Kevin Trudeau's GIN, here's Part 1 (with a link to Part 2), from 2011. Part 1 in particular has details about the Neo/Nova/Nouveau tradition of marketing to vulnerable elderly people.
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