Pardon, schmardon: will tRump ever get around to Kevin Trudeau?

Imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled, has been pleading for many months with the Orange Oaf of Office, #NotMyPresident Donald J. tRump, to commute the ten-year prison sentence Katie is serving for criminal contempt of court related to false claims he made about his fatuous diet book, and to grant him a full pardon. I've written about this several times on this blog.

So far Katie's pleas seem to have fallen on deaf ears, despite his fans and friends inundating the White House with multimedia begging and whining and shameless sycophancy. One of the Free Kevin Trudeau contingent apparently received a form letter from the White House acknowledging some communication or other, but that seems to be the extent of it. And Katie and his pals perked up a bit when Herr Twitler pardoned loathsome civil rights violator Sheriff Joe Arpaio (whom Katie professes to admire), but so far Katie continues to languish in the government sleepaway camp (Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama) that he so fondly refers to as Camp Cupcake.

But look here, Katie and minions, maybe the time is ripe to step up the campaign. For tRump seems to be on a real pardon spree these days, with the latest-as-of-the-time-of-this-writing being conservative wingnut Dinesh D'Souza, a former intellectual turned troll who in 2014 entered a guilty plea for campaign finance fraud. In case you're not familiar with D'Souza, who is loved by conspiracy nuts and Obama/Clinton haters everywhere, Slate gives a brief recap of some of the highlights of his storied career.

Dinesh D’Souza is a right-wing writer and speaker who began his career as an ostensibly respectable intellectual but has since become the familiar kind of relentless alt-right goon-troll who suggests, for example, that the Charlottesville white supremacist rally was staged by liberals and that Barack Obama is a “gay Muslim.” (You can click here to read an interesting piece, pegged to a D’Souza book about how the modern Democratic Party owes its intellectual foundations to Nazism, about how he is able to market transparently ludicrous ideas persuasively.) In 2014 he pleaded guilty to circumventing campaign finance laws by funneling donations to an (unsuccessful) New York Senate candidate through straw donors. And now he’s getting pardoned by the president!

An opinion piece on CNN is just one of many noting a pardon pattern here.

The D'Souza pardon is all of a piece with two other presidential pardons made by Trump during his first 16 months in office. D'Souza, former Bush White House aide Scooter Libby and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio were all seen, by some elements within the conservative movement/Trump's base, as martyrs -- people unfairly persecuted by some combination of out-of-control Democrats and the "deep state."

"Bravo! @realDonaldTrump," tweeted Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. "Dinesh was the subject of a political prosecution, brazenly targeted by the Obama administration bc of his political views. And he's a powerful voice for freedom, systematically dismantling the lies of the Left—which is why they hate him. This is Justice."

D'Souza himself played into that idea with a tweet of his own. "Obama & his stooges tried to extinguish my American dream & destroy my faith in America," he tweeted. "Thank you @realDonaldTrump for fully restoring both."

Somebody call the waaahhhhmbulance!
Rolling Stone goes a little further into the issue, pointing out that this pardon is just the latest example of Herr Twitler abusing his pardon power.

Typically, someone seeking a pardon applies for one and the application is heavily vetted by lawyers at the Department of Justice. Trump just went ahead and did it. "Nobody asked me to do it," the president said of his D'Souza announcement. "I read the papers. I see him on television." The same applied for the Arpaio and Libby pardons as well.

"None of these pardons has gone through the vetting process and gone through the pardoning attorneys at the Department of Justice," Griffin says. "These have all been cases in which the White House has circumvented the conventional procedures and norms about pardons."

Each of these three pardons is red meat for the base. They've got the fingerprints of Trump's vindictive streak all over them. But above all, these pardons signal a growing willingness by Trump and his White House to use the power of the pardon in troubling new ways and for the benefit of political allies in legal trouble.

But it may not be just a political thing; there's a celebrity motif going on here too (including, notably, a Celebrity Apprentice theme), for Drumpf hinted today that he will also pardon Martha Stewart, who, though a Democrat and professed Clinton supporter, hosted the 2005 Celebrity Apprentice spinoff series, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. He also said he was seriously considering commuting the sentence of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is serving 14 years for corruption and, though also a Democrat, was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice in 2010.

And just yesterday Trump met in the White House with professional narcissist and personification of a hopelessly shallow culture Kim Kardashian, ostensibly to talk about "prison and sentencing reform," but mainly to hear her plea the case of a 63-year-old woman, Alice Marie Johnson, who was given a life sentence without parole for a first-time drug offense. I'm not saying that Johnson belongs in prison (she doesn't), or that Kardashian is wrong for embracing her cause (even predominantly useless celebrities are good for some things), but since she had Drumpf's ear anyway (and possibly his ogling eyeballs), I'm thinking that maybe she could have also tried to convince him that his support of the private prison industry is a really, really horrible thing. But I doubt that the conversation went that deep. As the writer of the New Yorker piece I linked to above noted:

What was most upsetting about Kardashian’s audience with Trump on Wednesday, then, was not its novelty. It was that, more than two years after Trump met with [Kardashian's husband Kanye] West, this type of meeting—this Boschian spectacle of horrors, this stand-in for the reflective, responsible work of actual public service—is, somehow, still happening.

While we're on the topic of horrible things, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is set to review Trump's pardon of the vile Sheriff Joe. If they uphold the pardon, it may go to the Supreme Court, and if it is upheld there... well, that could be another step towards the tyranny that wingnuts always feared under Obama but which is a looming reality under Drumpf.

But thinking about those things is kind of a downer, isn't it? (And to think that this Whirled was originally conceived as a humor blog...) Still, Kevin Trudeau's attempts to get Donald Trump's attention provide at least marginal comic relief in this grim reality show that we're all being forced to live thanks to a combination of ignorant voters, bigotry, hostile foreign meddling, and complicit news media who are taken in by celebrity. If Katie really wants to be freed and absolved by Cheeto Jesus, he needs to hitch his wagon to a real celeb.

And, sadly, former Apprentice contestant and long-time Trump brown-noser Troy McClain probably isn't an option. To begin with, as I've previously reported, several credible sources have indicated that Troy intensely dislikes Kevin, even though Troy benefited significantly from Trudeau's huge scam GIN (the Global Information Network). He continued to reap the rewards even after Kevin was sent to sleepaway camp and no longer had any involvement in GIN (on paper, anyway), and the GIN MLM scam had been pared down to a mere affiliate scheme. Troy, with the help of a few cohorts, had purchased GIN in 2014, and Troy was at the helm for a couple of years, re-branding it to something called "GINEvolve," though reportedly he was exceedingly unpopular among the remaining staff. But -- and I'd not yet reported this, and it's long overdue (mea culpa!) -- Troy departed GIN for presumably greener pastures late last summer when he and his cohort David Cohen sold their interest in GIN, and long-time Trudeau pals Blaine Athorn and Greg Kramer became the primary owners. So for several reasons, Troy probably isn't a guy that Katie could call on.

Still, he needs someone with some sort of celebrity connections that will capture the attention of the celeb-obsessed Thief Executive. It's not enough that Katie has been kissing up to Trump for years, and has expressed some of the right-wing, xenophobic views that Trump and his base seem to embrace. Katie's problem is that despite being a legend in his own mind and the minds of his addled loyalists, he is simply not quite enough of a celebrity to get the president's attention. If is serious about getting pardoned by Trump so he can go back to committing wide-scale consumer fraud with fewer restrictions than he has in Camp Cupcake, he needs to find himself a Kardashian or some equally insipid fame whore, and get that person to set up an appointment with Trump to plead Katie's case.

After all, as the writer in the article linked to in the previous sentence concludes, "Presentation is everything in the Trump White House, even for pardons." Maybe especially for pardons.

This post was updated June 1, 2018 to include information about the Celebrity Apprentice connections and about Troy McClain and GIN. ~ CC

Addendum, June 4, 2018 ~ It could very well be that Herr Twitler ends up pardoning himself before he gets around to pardoning poor Katie. "I am the State, and the State is me!" Tyranny much?
 
PS ~ If you haven't visited the Salty Droid blog lately because you despaired of ever seeing a new post there, you're in for a treat. Jason is blogging again, his latest being a nod to yet more Trump-related media mayhem.

PPS ~ For that matter, my UK pal Longdog is blogging again after a months-long absence, noting that the stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld, cancer quackadoodle and former Kevin Trudeau buddy Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, has once again changed his "credentials."

 PPPS ~ And while we're at it, an even more infrequent blogger, my husband Ron Kaye, recently wrote again on his RevRon's Rants blog. Show him a little love and send some comments.

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The "new" GIN: as summer tunes up, Scamworld hums on

Tempus fugit, y'all! I just noticed that June is more than halfway over, and I've yet to make a June entry on the Whirled, except for a June 5 update on my May 29 post about imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (plus a few remarks in the comments section on various posts). It's not that there's nothing to write about, because there is. There always is. I blame my lack of activity on a heat-induced torpor caused by summer bearing down upon my part of the planet. But a blogger's work is never done, so let's get busy.

Voldemort holds court
As reported earlier today by my friend Bernie at GINtruth.com, Kevin Trudeau's largest and arguably most successful scam, the Global Information Network, or GIN, has hit the ground running with its first pow-wow since the new owners took over. "And," Bernie writes, "it all starts with Chris McGarahan."

Ah, yes. Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan, long-time MLM huckster and one of the new co-owners of GIN (the others reportedly are Blaine Athorn, Troy McClain, Jeff Devine, and Greg Kramer). Chris is a loyal Trudeau buddy and was always one of the hard-sell spokes-thugs in GIN. (Here's an older "new" GIN page listing Chris as a "faculty member" -- it still lists Katie too, so is obviously not updated.) Numerous ex-GIN members have said they think that Chris is just as culpable in the GIN scam as Katie. But so far, everyone except Katie has gotten away with it.

Good for Bernie for providing this GINtruth update. I confess, though, that when I first started reading his post, I thought he was being far too kind to Chris just because he'd met him on a GIN cruise and Chris seemed to be a likeable bloke. Bernie called Chris' efforts to talk to the GIN members "commendable." I suppose that in light of the elitism of some of the New-Wage scalawags who were shining stars in GIN -- including Katie himself -- that sociability was somewhat noteworthy. But Bernie also noted that McGarahan practices what he preaches, and sticks with what works. From my perspective, what this really means is that McGarahan sticks with what works to extract money from people's pockets.
 
Indeed, numerous ex-GIN members have said that Chris was always one of the most aggressive pushers of the GIN Kool-Aid and was sometimes abrasive, nearly to the point of being abusive. And his being nice? Another one of my Facebook friends who has seen him in action said that making the rounds at tables was done begrudgingly; he was just working the room. My friend said, "At the first 5-star he even said that Kevin sent him to the bar to check up on people to see who was following Kevin's instructions to mingle and stay up late to network, and he was going to report back to him...I have seen Chris be very rude to people who didn't deserve it. He was always nice to members who followed his orders and upgraded, bought packages, and went to major events."

My friend added that Chris' "How To Go Platinum in 90 Days Seminar" was torture, "especially if you witnessed the aftermath." Yon Cole, Former dedicated GIN member, Scientology enthusiast, and current member of retired safecracker Perry Kiraly's GIN ripoff WIN, took notes at one of those Platinum seminars, and shared it on his mygin web site.
Other friends, correspondents, and ex-GINthusiasts have had encounters with Chris where he was extremely rude and/or even verbally abusive.

Yet Chris apparently had his charms, and what he did was quite effective. He drew them in with his own personal story, even though like many scam artists his backstory wasn't always consistent -- he reportedly told GIN members back in the day that he made his first fortune with Trudeau in the MLM scheme Nutrition for Life back in 1996, but his own web site indicates that his first huge gains were in Rexall Showcase, now Unicity. (Oddly enough, there's no mention of Katie or GIN on that page, which features a pic of Chris in pre-Voldemort days). Chris' bio, shared often at live events, also includes the common narrative of coming up on "mean streets" and whatnot. Yawn. As another friend of mine said, he had a scammer's personality long before GIN. 



Here is what a former GIN Level 6 candidate wrote to me recently:

The more I’ve thought of it, the more I see Chris as incredibly dangerous. He was always the one to sell at events, the one on stage who could get more people to buy more crap than you can imagine. And he was always called The Bearer of Good News because his offers came as 'deals.' He has a gift with crowds and bragged about that to us, as if we were part of the inner circle.

Lesson: Beware of nice blokes bearing gifts.

This person had also spoken with some GIN folks who had been persuaded to join MLM scam Vemma under Chris' son, Chris Jr., who seems to be one of the poster children for Vemma "success" (and, I'm told, drives a Vemma Mercedes). Chris Sr. has also been pushing Vemma, using his and some of Katie's other close buddies' "success" with the scam to lure people in. This screen shot (which coyly fails to mention the name of the scam) was taken on November 27, 2013, a few days before the GIN MLM ended:


Anyway, just after the GIN Leadership Cruise in January 2013, Chris Sr. reportedly told select people to stop upgrading in GIN. Yet Chris -- and the rest of the GIN leadership, such as it was -- apparently continued to urge others to join and upgrade, as if nothing were amiss.

According to reports, at one of his exclusive, invitation-only, $5,000.00 (excluding airfare and hotel costs) scam-shows in spring of 2013, Chris Sr. boasted that he had purchased an island in Belize with another, much bigger Scamworld player, Jack Canfield. Canfield, as you may know, is co-creator of the Chicken Soup series, star of the New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, and founder of the Trained Liars Cartel... oops, I mean, the Transformational Leadership Council (also known as the Transformational Leadership Council of Death).

I'll say one thing for the TLC, as they sometimes call themselves: at least they had the good business sense to kick founding member James Arthur "Death" Ray out of their org after the sweat lodge thing happened. But who knows, they might let him back in again now that he's out of the clink.

In case you're interested, according to the TLC official web site, Chris Sr. is not currently on the membership list. But I digress.

Chris Sr. reportedly told the attendees of his 2013 flimflamboree that in 2014, exactly a year from then, he was going to fly all of them down to Belize to "change their lives." Well, last month he sent out emails inviting attendees to a follow-up seminar taking place from "Friday July 25 through Sunday July 28." (Never mind that Sunday is the 27th.) This follow-up event is only $495 plus an extra $100 if you want to have dinner with Chris on Saturday night, "which you will," he assured his recipients.

There was apparently no mention in the email of Belize; only if you RSVP "yes" will you get directions to the wingding. Some of the invitees suspect that it's just going to be a three-day Vemma pitch. If anyone has any other details about this, or about Chris' supposed co-purchase of an isle in Belize with Chicken Soup Jack, drop me a line, okay?

Incidentally, the Voldemort wallet-drainer overlaps with the time that the Trained Liars Cartel will be holding its summer meeting, July 23-27 (location not announced on the TLC web site; for some reason they never announce the location publicly in advance). There's also a Death Ray "Live Group Mentoring" event in Seattle on July 25 & 26. And July 25 is the five-year anniversary of the day that Colleen Conaway, another James Ray vic, died at a Ray event in San Diego.

But, once again, I digress.

The Yellow Brick Road to nowhere
Speaking of Chris M the Elder, it seems appropriate to mention again that he's one of the folks who just last month was gloating over the claim that some GIN members "used their GIN training" to help raise $100 million dollars for the animated box-office bomb, Legends of Oz, Dorothy's Return. As you may recall, I wrote about this at length on my May 12 post (see "Good buy Yellow Brick Road? Well, not so much," as well as the various updates that follow, and several of the comments following the post).

Though some GIN members, most notably "co-executive producer" John A. King (a venture capitalist type who reportedly lives in luxurious digs in Florida; one visitor to his home said he served dinner on plates made of gold) were laying claim to raising the $100 mil, executive producer Greg Centineo, a non-GIN member, claims that he was the one who orchestrated the big raise. King was reportedly working under Centineo and was able to sucker several other GIN members into coughing up some bucks. Long before the movie's release, Centineo was boasting about the big money he'd raised; here's a mention on the bio page on his main site. And yes, I know I've mentioned and quoted this before, but it is so deeply worthy of revisiting and quoting once again:

In 2008, as the funds for Legends were coming in, his role in the operation grew. The investment presented multiple ancillary opportunities due to its being a multi-industry franchise, and people could see the potential that a typical live-action movie didn’t offer. Captivated and undaunted by Greg’s honest approach (“This is the greatest opportunity of a lifetime in which you will lose all your money.”), client after client bought in—and eventually bought in big—to what has now become a $110 million unprecedented global phenomenon.

As the first phase of the Legends project draws to a close, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-raised father of two reflects on what he calls his greatest accomplishment of his lifetime by far and his multi-faceted career. “As a leader, I was looked to for answers, and then as I matured, I came to understand that true leadership is about helping people ask better questions and letting them lead themselves,” he says. “I approached this project, building a serious community of investors the way I built everything else. Whether it was leading large constituencies, opening the coffee shops or educating people on money, I have learned to apply the same universal assumptions.

“In everything I have done in my life, I had the privilege of creating it with others and giving them a different paradigm of the world we live in.”

Uh-huh.

Alas, a week after the movie was released, Centineo was making excuses for its failure. It was, he 'splained, a conspiracy by the mainstream movie industry. Why, of course. A couple of days later, some of the "investors" who were required to contribute a minimum of $100k shared their take on the "conspiracy." 

But I guess that the Global Information Network's May issue of the GIN Report had already been published and distributed before it became known that the movie was such a stinker. A friend of mine shared this the other day:

Nice work, GIN!

I am still wondering how much Katie's asset protection lawyer and co-creator of GIN, Marc Lane, was/is involved in the Oz project. He certainly came to the defense of the movie's producers, his Chicago home boys the Carroll Brothers, on the discussion about this "investment" op on the 800notes.com site -- which has now expanded to 24 pages. People are royally pissed off about this thing. A couple of examples...

According to one participant who wrote in on June 15, the large entertainment site The Wrap is working on a story about the Oz investment scam and and wants to talk to investors. If you have information, contact Jordan.Zakarin@TheWrap.com.

New chapter, same old story
I think we already know where the GIN story is going: it's the same old scam under new ownership -- all of whom just happen to be Katie buddies. And I think Bernie made that pretty clear in his GINtruth post.

But at least now that GIN has been liberated from the receiver, they've taken down that disclaimer they had about the non-existence of Trudeau's big marketing lie, the fabled "GIN Council."

Speaking of which, in case you haven't visited the GIN site lately, you haven't missed too much. The MLM is still dormant -- for now, anyway -- even though the Legal Member Agreement has yet to reflect its absence. 

And... oops... I think GIN forgot to take this page down when the Affiliate program was discontinued.
https://www.globalinformationnetwork.com/Affiliates-Program/
Here is another page, which is more noncommittal...
https://www.globalinformationnetwork.com/Membership-Rewards/

Prior to the sale, the leadership had been talking about the possibility of restoring the MLM once the company was out of receivership; I wrote about that on this January 2014 post. And the "GIN United" group is still up on the Web. This was a group of GIN members interested in purchasing GIN, headed by members of GIN's Leadership Round Table (including Greg Kramer, who, as noted, is reported to be one of the members of the group who actually purchased GIN).
http://www.ginunited.com/our-plan.html
http://www.ginunited.com/endorsements.html

Moreover, as many are aware, the "initiation" fee has been even more deeply discounted from the old days; it used to be $1,500 if paid over time, but it was $1,000 if paid all at once, then it went down to $600, and now, "for a limited time only," it's $500. But if you're poor like Katie-in-a-cage* and can't even cough up half a grand...

...you may choose to pay the initial fee over time. We are currently offering a $250 payment plan for 6 months. This includes $100 towards the initial fee along with the $150 monthly Membership dues. After 6 successful payments, you will only be charged $150 per month for Membership dues. A credit card is required for this payment option.

Or, you can sign up as a free Associate Member (a membership that is only good for twelve months and will be automatically cancelled when your time is up). If you successfully sucker four paying members into joining under your personal Invitation Code, you will have enough Reward points to join GIN for free. Heck of a deal.

Most notably, after the receiver took over in August 2013 the site was pretty well wiped clean of its Trudeau presence, although the current descriptions of "benefits" -- particularly the "Lifestyle Experiences" -- are rife with mentions of events that took place while Katie was still at the helm.

As for the rest, it's the same old "you have to be there to understand it" b.s., promising exclusive, confidential, never-before-released information.

Some of the Member benefits are described on the Global Information Network website. Most Member benefits, however, are confidential and revealed only to Members in good standing. When you understand all the privileges and benefits you receive by being a Member, you will grasp that this invitation is truly the opportunity of a lifetime. If you have goals and dreams, if you imagine being financially secure, maybe you would like to start a business of your own, maybe you have a dream car you've always wanted, or you've dreamed of traveling first class to exotic locations all around the world...

we believe you could make more of your dreams come true with the Global Information Network than you could ever imagine. Imagine being your own boss and having total freedom and time to do what you want and when you want. Imagine being able to associate personally with almost anyone from around the world. Imagine having access to experts in various fields, VIP events, and knowledge and information that is not available anywhere else. You can now join a worldwide private group that can help build your success in life.

Yes. Just imagine. And the GIN "leadership" hopes you will keep on imagining, because apart from greed, envy, fear, desperation, longing, boredom, and a lot of hot air, imagination is one of the forces that keeps the Scamworld balloon aloft.

* Note: After months of vainly pleading pauper status, Kevin did finally come up with the $505 filing fee for his appeal; deets are on the June 18 update on this post.

Kevin Trudeau: passport pleas and a piss-poor movie

So goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Where the scammers and predators howl
They've planted me in the jailhouse
There isn't much to do now

Maybe you'll get a replacement
There's plenty like me all around
Predators hungry for money
Sniffing for marks, who are easily found.

With apologies to Bernie Taupin, Elton John, et al.


Even though he's behind bars, serial scammer Kevin Trudeau continues to provide entertainment for those of us who are easily amused -- even if he provides it unwittingly or in the most tangential way. But before we get to the rollicking fun, I should mention that as of the time I'm publishing this, people who object to the sale of the Global Information Network (GIN) assets to AXS Investment Group (or AXS Consulting, LLC) -- a group consisting of some of Kevin's bestest, most loyal buddies -- have less than an hour to file their objections with the court. Deadline is today (Monday, May 12, 2014) at 5:00 PM Central Daylight Time. I'll keep you posted.

Mama mia, Katie wants his passaporto!
Last week I found out, and shared on Facebook, that Katie wants his passports back -- both his U.S. and Italiano passports. Or his lawyer does, anyway. The lawyer filed a motion with Judge Guzman's court on Thursday, May 8. Maybe it's for sentimental reasons. Or maybe Katie wants to put them in a scrapbook or on a vision board. Except I think they probably don't have scrapbooking and vision boards at the MCC.

Click to enlarge.

The gummit has till tomorrow, May 13, to respond to this motion. Katie's lawyers will be in court this Thursday, May 15, at 9:30 AM to present Katie's passport plea before Judge Guzman.

Naturally we are having some fun with this on Facebook. My friend Bernie O'Mahony of GINtruth.com wrote, "Maybe he needs them in order to get from Cell Block B, to Cell Block D?" Tim Donohoe wrote: "In an unrelated motion, his lawyer has asked for his release from prison pending his appeal. Nothing to see here." In a subsequent remark Tim wrote, "Another idea is that maybe his lawyer needs access to some offshore accounts when his next bill is due."

I thought that there might be a specially infused seekrit magnetic strip in the passports that can override the biometry in that biometric safe in Zurich where all sorts of seekrit things are hidden. As you may recall, last year Katie told the courts that he couldn't surrender his passports because they were in that safe in Zurich, but a little while later the passports mysteriously turned up anyway in Chicago. But suppose they really do contain some magickal seekrit strip and can help open that safe. What manner of treasure may be hidden therein? Next up: court docs demanding that whoever has his $6,400 cufflinks return them to his lawyers immediately.

By the way, on that passport motion Katie's lawyer, Thomas Kirsch, got the date of his client's criminal conviction wrong. It was November 12, 2013, not November 7, 2014. November 7, 2014 hasn't happened yet. But I guess I am not too surprised that Kirsch would get that detail wrong; he was the one who bungled Katie's criminal trial by opening with that lame "cheesy moon" argument, and later on in the trial he and his team made the judge kind of mad.

UPDATE 13 May: The government responded with an opposition to Kirsch's motion. Here is a link to that document. The government points out that the usual procedure with convicted criminals is to return their U.S. passports to the State Department, and any foreign passports to Homeland Security. It hasn't been done yet but the government expects that to happen. It also points out that by the time Trudeau is out on supervised release, his passports will have expired anyway.

UPDATE 15 May: Motion denied. Judge Guzman agrees with gummit and thinks that giving the passports to a third party might constitute a security risk. Here's that doc. (Note: I incorrectly titled the document 05-15-14; it was actually filed on 05-14-14.)

I still have to wonder why the lawyers wanted the passports badly enough to file a motion. But maybe this is much ado about little; perhaps it is just a routine thing for criminal lawyers to file to get all of their clients' documents back from Pretrial Services. Or... maybe Katie needs his passports to return to Oz.


Good buy Yellow Brick Road? Well, not so much.
The long-awaited animated movie, Legends of Oz:Dorothy's Return, was finally released theatrically across the US on Friday, May 9. This project was one of the "investment opportunities" offered by a couple of GIN members to other GIN members. My friend John Foster, an ex-Katie fan, former founding member of GIN and author of a new book about his GIN experiences and the scam GIN was, wrote on Facebook, "Investors spent around $100 million and [the movie] is opening in 1800 movie theaters. If it makes money it will be the first GIN opportunity that was promoted that made money."

There was a lot of skepticism about this movie when the discussions came up on Facebook last year, and one reason for the skepticism -- beyond the obvious fact that the "investment" op was being offered within the framework of GIN -- was that the folks involved with the production firms, Summertime Entertainment and Alpine Productions, have been involved in some dodgy business deals and have had some complaints made against them (more on that in a moment). People were even getting spam phone calls from folks asking them to invest in the project. (Here is another link about that, from the same thread.)

But now that the project has indeed come to fruition, I would like to know if any of the GIN members who "invested" -- either the ones originally offering the opportunity to GIN members, or anyone else in GIN who took advantage of the "opportunity" -- will actually be making any money from the movie. My email box is open!

Of course they are buzzing about it on the GIN Facebook pages: "In case you are not aware, a group of GIN Members utilized their training to help manifest the money to partially fund this movie."

Um-kay. But will they make any of that money back? Or was that even their intention in the first place? Inquiring minds want to know. I don't even know how to begin to pursue this matter because I don't think I ever knew the names of the GIN members who were pushing it. Can anyone help?

Brief update: A person in the know sent me a message clarifying that the Oz movie had nothing to do with GIN (which I knew), but the connection was simply that there was one GIN member pitching the project from the time he joined. He was able to pull a little money from a few members but nothing major. My source noted that on a conference call last week, Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan (one of the members of the group who is buying GIN) apparently gave GIN credit for raising all of the money for the film production -- which isn't even close to true, but even if it had been...well, it was nothing to brag about. And that gives this story double snarkitude points: for the fact that the GINvestors are claiming credit that they don't deserve, as well as for the fact that the movie they're taking so much credit for is an embarrassment (see next paragraph). Nice job, guys! [NOTE: See May 13 updates and addenda below. ~CC]
 
In any case the GINvestors who pitched in a few bucks should be very proud of themselves, because the movie is just getting splendid reviews. That is, if you define "splendid" as being "[An] eyeball-gougingly ugly, charm-free animated musical sequel, which is inexplicably opening in thousands of theaters instead of going direct to video." Or a movie that feels "like the cheaply made knockoffs you find in a dollar store: garishly shiny, flimsy and not built to last." As another reviewer wrote, "The bricks are still yellow, but the road doesn't lead anywhere special."

My friend Kenneth, another ex GIN member, said he went to see a movie this weekend but the show he wanted to see had sold out for the show time he wanted. He inquired about other movies and was told that aside from Spiderman, which only had a few tickets remaining, Legends of Oz had only a handful of people in it. "Needless to say, people had no interest in it whatsoever," he noted.

THIS JUST IN: Record breaking lousy debut at the box office (even worse than Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil).

But it's all sweetness and light on the official pages: the one for Summertime Entertainment and for Legends of Oz.

Still, there were hard feelings along the way to production and release, as I suppose there often are in the movie biz. Someone wrote a nasty note to Ripoff Report in October 2012.

And guess who wrote the rebuttal? One Marc J. Lane, whose law firm represented Summertime's Ryan and Roland Carroll and the production team behind the film.

As you may recall from reading this Whirled and various court documents and forums, Marc Lane was the asset protection lawyer who, as it happens, was hugely instrumental in helping Katie create and structure GIN.

Marc participated in social media buzz about the film while it was in production last year.
He was responding to this March 2013 post on "The Royal Blog of Oz," an Oz enthusiast blog. (By the way, after the fanfare on that blog, the actual movie review by one of the blog's team members was kind of anti-climactic.)

Marc also participated in one of the discussions about the spam phone calls that I mentioned above. Here's another page on that scam phone call thread. (It's basically the same spiel he wrote on the Ripoff Report thread.)

But Marc has been curiously silent about the movie on Facebook since its release, but he has "liked" several Oz-movie related pages... among other things. My goodness.

I can't say that I think Marc is a bad guy. I mean, lots of folks like porn; I don't think that's really that big a deal as long as it all involves consenting human adults. Besides, maybe the porn site people are clients of his. Or maybe a mischievous member of his household got into his Facebook account and "liked" that naughty page. There could be any number of explanations.

And judging from some of his Facebook posts Marc has a social conscience, or at least wants to make it appear that he does. In fact, when it comes to several issues regarding social and economic justice he appears to be embracing a side that is contrary to that embraced by most of the one percent. I like that in a person. But I have to wonder what sort of "conscience" or moral compass allowed him to participate so extensively in helping Kevin Trudeau create a scammy scheme such as GIN. I'm told by those who seem to be in a position to know that Marc gave Kevin sound advice that was well within legal frameworks, but that Kevin chose to ignore a lot of it and did as he pleased, and that was what caused all the trouble. I'm only halfway buying that. Because, really... Kevin Trudeau? Well-known lifelong scammer? Seriously, Marc, what were you thinking?

At any rate, my understanding is that various investigations are still ongoing. I've alternately been told that Marc isn't out of the woods yet regarding the Trudeau investigations, and that he is out of the woods because he cooperated with the Feds and didn't do anything with criminal intent. That story is still unfolding. I know only small parts of it and have reported what I know.

But I would not be surprised to learn that Marc Lane may have somehow been involved in the push for GIN members to invest in that animated boondoggle. If anyone has any insights into this I'll be glad to add that info to this post, and of course you can remain anon if you wish.

The infomercial wizards of Oz
Speaking of Oz, which also happens to be another name for Australia, I wonder if the investigators were ever able to uncover any more of Katie's hidden assets Down Under, which the receivers were going on and on about last September.

And partly because my mind is jumping around all over the place today, but mostly because so many of these stories are interrelated in some way (because they are all part of the same, much larger and grimmer story), I'm reminded of another Oz character and Katie b.f.f., the late Rene Rivkin, who killed himself in 2005 and whose assets were also mysteriously hidden. He and Katie had a few things going together, for a while.

I think the authorities finally gave up looking for Rene's riches. But something tells me that if the right authorities did a little more digging, they might be able to find some more Rivkin assets as well as some more Katie assets -- in some cases, maybe even under the same rocks. [Although someone who knew Rivkin just told me that it's very doubtful if he had anything left, which may have been one reason he ended his life. Tragic story, there.] Anyway, I really should get off of my duff and finish that half-finished Rivkin post that's been in the hopper for a year or so. But I'll leave you with a pretty picture for now -- Rene and Katie and someone else (maybe one of you can tell me who it is?) in happier days. Rub-a-dub-dub!



Update: Someone just tipped me off that the other guy in the tub is the UK's Andrew Malcher, currently of High Street TV, "the leading multi channel retailer of direct response TV products." Here's a July 2012 article about him in the UK's Financial Times). From the article:

If the mark of a great retailer is not selling you what you want but selling you what you didn’t know you wanted, Andrew Malcher must be a great retailer.

And here's a November 2013 article about High Street and Alliance Health Care signing a lucrative As Seen On TV-ish agreement. High Street has also signed deals with Disney and Hasbro.

So Andrew is basically an infomercial mogul. My correspondent says he's a super nice guy.


More updates and addenda, 13-14 May 2014:
Return to Oz...
Since I published my post yesterday, I've heard from a couple of people. I inserted a brief update in the body of the original post above (in green text), but here's more.

One person wrote to me:

The name of the [GIN member pushing the investment in the Oz movie] is John King. He is listed as one of the Co-Executive Producers. If gin people raised more than $1M I would be impressed. There were a bunch who invested, but gin wouldn't have had anything to do with it other than John pitching it to people he met there.
The movie may stink but I wouldn't hold any negativity toward it because of GIN.

Another friend, an ex-GIN member, wrote to me, also mentioning John King, who was the head of his local GIN chapter:

He is an executive producer on the film. ...I got to know him and his wife pretty well.

He never pitched the movie to any of the GIN folks in [our local] group, as far as I know.  And he and his wife seemed like pretty nice folks.

Apparently he was in great despair, with a failing career and marriage (this is public knowledge as he said it on stage), when he came across Your Wish Is Your Command.  He truly believes that GIN and KT turned his life around.  As far as I can tell, he is not simply a sociopath, nor do I think he sought any gain other then typical commissions and the chance to go "Hollywood."

There WAS misleading info.  On stage he implied that HE had raised 100 million for the film.

In a subsequent email my friend wrote:

...We were all impressed by his Platinum status and by the fact that he had raised millions of dollars as a venture capitalist, under the GIN rubric, to "make" a movie. One takes a person for their word, or should.  And words can mean everything and nothing.  When someone states, "we just raised the most money in the history of independent films, $100 million, I just got word as we were boarding the ship"... and if that person is someone whose house you had visited, and whose friendship you wanted, why wouldn't you trust them?

Why, indeed? Well, at least my friend wasn't suckered into investing in this lemon. What I find interesting is that according to THIS article (which I also linked to above), Summertime Entertainment says they spent only $70 mil on production, and the author of the piece speculated that they may have been exaggerating because "smaller production companies often inflate budgets to make a production appear more legitimate." So where did that other $30 mil or so go? Well, maybe to promotions and parties -- who knows. If I were a GINvestor, though, I'd be asking some serious questions rather than crowing about this bloated cartoon on their Facebook pages.

Anyhow, as far as I am concerned, the Whirled angles specifically in regard to the movie remain the same:

1. Some GIN folk are taking undue credit for this flick
2. It's a stinker -- so those who invested and are so GIN-proud of it probably won't see any decent ROI... meaning that once again GIN fell flat as a networking op.

In other words: I am not the one who spiked this insipid punch with GIN. Various GINfolk did this themselves.

Then there is the Marc J Lane connection, however tenuous it may be. As noted on my post, Marc was hugely instrumental in helping Katie structure GIN to hide money from the Feds. It's all there in the court docs. Marc was also an attorney for the production companies responsible for the Oz debacle -- and he even wrote a rebuttal on their behalf on Ripoff Report, threatening to sue the anonymous complainant for defamation. It could, of course, all just be a big fat coincidence. Or it could be something as simple as a common hometown connection. Marc is a Chicago lawyer and Summertime Entertainment's Carroll brothers were born, raised, and went to school in the Windy City. Maybe they all knew each other from back in the day. As I said, I welcome insights from others.

By the way, the friend I quoted at length above also reminded me that a Trudeau entity called TruStar Productions, Inc. -- an enterprise in which Marc Lane was also involved -- had invested in a failed movie project called Hellbenders. It was noted in the Receiver's Third Report (17 March 2014), and I mentioned it on this blog post.

You can find a lot more about the Trudeau/Lane/TruStar relationship -- and their other business relationships -- in various court documents, such as Document #713 from Katie's civil case, filed on July 15, 2013, titled, "PLAINTIFF'S PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW." I've written about and inked to this before, but here's a handy link on the receiver's web site.

For more, check out this link and the individual name links on Advanced Background Checks. 

Not surprisingly, on Marc's Wiki page there is no mention whatsoever of Trudeau or any of the Trudeau entities, or of Marc's involvement in this high-profile case. A shame, that, since Marc worked so hard on his client's behalf, including trying to get data under the Freedom of Information Act regarding some of the ongoing investigations of the various Katie companies. Here's some interesting correspondence from 2011 and 2012. It's in .txt format and you'll need to scroll down to the bottom and work your way up.
 
I have put all of this on my Whirled and have included links in order to raise legitimate questions and encourage others with more resources than I have to continue the investigations.

At any rate -- getting back to the current cinematic flop -- here are some more links. This one handily lists all the major folks involved in the Oz project:
http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/legends-of-oz-dorothys-return/5071489.article

Here is John King's Facebook page. He doesn't seem to be very active, except for a few nods to the Oz project, which currently dominates his cover photo and profile pic:
https://www.facebook.com/john.king.14019338

Here's John King's IMDB link, which links back to the IMDB page for the project: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6359182/

Here's John King's stik.com link: http://www.stik.com/king_john2

And here is a link to Elevate Entertainment, one of whose principals claims to have been involved with John's "110 million dollar private equity raise" for the Oz movie.

Natalie King - CEO
After graduating cum laude with a degree in Finance from Jacksonville University, Natalie moved to Los Angeles to work with Executive Producer Greg Centineo and Co-Executive Producer John King on a 110 million dollar private equity raise for an upcoming movie Franchise titled Legends of Oz - Dorothy’s return. It is set to be released worldwide in May 2014...

...Natalie enjoys bringing her analytical and creative side to develop powerful content that will reach a diverse audience.

But wait... there's more! Other peeps are claiming credit along with John King for raising some of those millions for the Oz thing. Here's one Franco Rosado, who describes himself as a "Youth Empowerment Specialist," on Linkedin:

Excited to be brokering our first motion picture deal with Mr. John King and Summertime Entertainment COMING SOON - MAY 9TH - OVER 3000 THEATERS LEGENDS OF OZ, DOROTHY RETURNS (3D Animation Film) MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! We raised the $5 million needed for our film! Stay tuned for more to come! Franco Rosado CEO, Deep Sea Innertainment Youth Empowerment Specialist [email and phone number redacted ~CC]

So I'm sure there's a whole tangled story here. I don't know much about the film biz, but what I do know is that many movies go through a long and sometimes contentious process in their journey to release. So no doubt there were a lot of the normal Hollywood egos and financial struggles, which ordinarily would not interest me all that much. But when there is even a marginal Scamworld connection --- when, in other words, it intersects with my beat in some way -- you can bet your last flying monkey that I will jump on it, especially if it's a slow news day.

By the way, here is the link to page 1 of what is currently a 15-page, five-and-a-half-year-long thread about the efforts to get people to invest in the Oz movie (I linked to a few pages in this thread above). http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-818-909-6800.

AXS of evil: GIN sale pending

Note: This post was originally published on 17 April 2014. Several important updates have been made since then; they are below the original post, so be sure to read everything. ~CC

Remember what I've been saying all along about there being
no neat and tidy endings
in Scamworld?

Well, after months of speculation and flying rumors, it seems there's a sale pending for jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's huge scam, the Global Information Network, or GIN. Yesterday GIN sent out an email (screen shot courtesy of Bernie O'Mahony at GINtruth.com):

Seems there's this group called AXS Investment Group, with Troy McClain, longtime Trudeau buddy/cheerleader and hustledork in his own right, at the helm.

I wonder what AXS stands for. Could the "A" be for Athorn, as in Blaine Athorn, an even longer-time Katie buddy and co-huckster? (Here's an April 24, 2013 Whirled post with a bit of Blaine and Katie's history.) Some speculate that Athorn is indeed involved, along with two other slimy Katie buds, Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan and Jeff Devine of the Hybrid Group money-funneling operation... oops, I mean EVENT PLANNING COMPANY. Other buzz has it that Jeff isn't part of the purchase group but that Greg Kramer, of GIN Store fame, is.

My understanding is that as a private investment group, the AXS of evil is not under any obligation to reveal the names of all of the parties involved. So at this point I have not been able to confirm for sure if Athorn et al. are involved; the only name on the "official" announcement was Troy's. I'll let you know when/if any more documents become available for public consumption. But given that Athorn's nose has been up Katie for decades, it would be surprising if he didn't have his fat little hand in the pie somewhere, somehow.


At any rate it goes without saying that a lot of people will be pretty ticked off if this sale, which of course is subject to final approval by Judge Robert Gettleman, goes through. As I understand it, the court has wiped away the liabilities so any purchaser(s) will be buying GIN free and clear (at least from a monetary standpoint; courts don't directly address matters of karma).
 
In case you don't recall who Troy McClain is, he was one of Kevin's cheerleaders, and one who was pushing hard to keep people from leaving GIN in droves in the latter days. He's apparently most famous for having been on the comically repulsive Donald Trump's "reality" show, The Apprentice. Troy was the country boy that everyone fell in love with, according to Troy. He failed three times as project manager, and got fired on Week 12 of Season 1, original air date April 1, 2004. He was fired mostly because he sometimes used unethical business practices during the interview process, and partly because he only had a high school diploma. 

The Jan. 12, 2014 update towards the end of this Whirled post has a bit about him, as do some of the comments.


Troy was/is a proud member of the GIN "faculty."

Troy has been very close with the GIN United group of GIN"leadership" and Katie buds, who have been talking for months about purchasing GIN.

And here's Troy in 2011, shilling with old-school hustledork Ron Ball on behalf of Katie and GIN. I think this one is pretty disgusting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgr9UjW1Ops


And here he is around the same time, lying to people about how easy Katie's version of the hCG diet is (he seems a little coked-up, but maybe he just had allergies):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WRIkLBhegY

Besides the KT Radio Network web site URL on that video, there's an hCG web site URL that, when you attempt to follow it, redirects to http://hcgchicago.com. According to that site, the "hCG support team" is led by one Thomas Drost, M.D., N.D., F.A.C.S., and his wife Lisa Drost, N.D. An alert reader pointed out to me that Dr. Drost is also a hemorrhoid doc who treats hemorrhoids and cures anal fissures in DuPage County and Chicagoland. Funny. On that 2011 KT vid I linked to above, Troy yammered on a bit about he LOVES to go fishing and always has. He gabs about both literal and metaphorical fishing. So... Troy is a fisherman. Dr. Drost is a fissure man. This opens up a whole new world of interesting Photoshopping possibilities. But I digress.

Here's more about what a superstar and master brander and co-brander our Troy is. http://theitfactorradio.com/alycia-kaback/tune-check-factor-features-troy/

And here's more about why you should hire Troy for all of his expert expertise.

Anyway. You get the drift. Troy seems perfectly poised to be a front guy who will take GIN to the next level of scamming. (His web site does say he specializes in "turnarounds.")

And besides, Katie has been on his client list for a few years now; note the "Natural Cures" and "Stand With KT" (his original legal defense fund) logos in the lineup below:

I see new infomercials in the making, with Troy as one of the spokes-hucksters. Maybe they can even get some really big names in Scamworld to join in the fun. It remains to be seen whether or not the GIN MLM/"affiliate" program will be reinstated; I do know that several of the prospective purchasers were very interested in exploring this possibility.

It also remains to be seen how or if the SciWINtologists, led by former GINtervenor and ex-con Perry Kiraly (and Scientology fan Yon Vetter Cole) will be involved. When their Plan A to snatch GIN from the clutches of the receiver failed in court, they began focusing in earnest on Plan B, and have been trying for months to cobble a GIN ripoff called WIN, or World Information Network. In the process they probably ran up a huge attorney bill, so expect some Shimkos to still be hovering around somewhere. But they have been kind of silent for the past several weeks, although Yon did send me a private message on Facebook explaining exactly why he is NOT a Scientologist. I told him to tell it to the blog. He said he might, but hasn't yet. [NOTE: See April 20 update below. ~CC]

The heads of another failing GIN ripoff, the IMBS-ing U MasterBaiter's Society, are already telling folks to write to the judge, though.


In his blog post about this pending sale, Bernie made note of this bit from the announcement email:

AXS and its management team will now be actively working hard to make our club the best it can be with the commitment to never over promise and under deliver.

Spoken like a true Scamworld scammer. "We promise not to screw you; trust us!"

At this point it seems entirely possible that even the hopelessly caged Katie might still have a hand in the club, even from behind bars. (Unless Judge G says no to the sale, of course -- but another group of Katie pals could always step up to the table.) The point is that Trudeau's legacy lives on. And despite the many folks who will be outraged if the sale is finalized, there are also many, many people who still love Katie nearly to the point of worship, and think that his conviction and sentence are gross injustices, and want more than anything for his legacy to continue through GIN. As I've noted on this blog before, the GIN "leadership" are going to have to find a way to pander to both the Katie lovers and the Katie haters.

But one way or the other, it seems that GIN is still alive and kicking.

As I said... no neat and tidy endings. There rarely are, in Scamworld.
Update, 20 April 2014:
We didn't have to wait long to see what the SciWINtologists are up to. They are apparently going ahead with their plan to compete head to head with GIN. Time to stock up on more popcorn and beer! This was sent out early Easter morning:

From: [email address redacted]
Sent: 4/20/2014 1:41:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: WIN Update 04-19-14

April 19th 2014

WIN Update:

Dear WIN Members & Supporters,
March 31st concluded the time line of the Private Placement Memorandum and we did well.

The launch of WIN’s Website is currently on target for early May.

An introduction video was professionally filmed on April 10th and should soon be completed and up for viewing and release to everyone for use in the promotion of WIN. The video outlines what the club is all about as well as the benefits and value of membership.

After months of consulting with WIN’s MLM attorney Thayer C. Lindauer, WIN has completed a sponsorship compensation plan Member/Affiliate program that I think will excite nearly everyone.

A few of the highlights of the Member/Affiliate program are:

Commission eligibility requires only one non-affiliate member in good standing personally sponsored in your downline; period. Not one per month – one non-affiliate member; period (and it doesn’t matter when that member was sponsored in as long as they’re in good standing you are commission eligible).

High percentage commission’s payback on the first four levels:
L-1: 20%, L-2: 20%, L-3: 5%, and L-4: 5%.

Our MLM attorney has thoroughly vetted this sales program for compliance with MLM rules & regulations and has authorized its use on a worldwide basis.

Upon the launch of the WIN site the Member/Affiliate program will be up and running.

To further start WIN’s site launch off right and in honor of former GIN Members - for thirty days from the date of launch the membership fee of $1,000.00 will be waved.

To join and become a member, initiation of your monthly dues of $150.00 is all that is necessary. To take advantage of the waved membership fee you will simply use the sponsor/affiliate code WIN or the code of the WIN Member that sponsors you in.

To all former GIN members that had downlines, and plan to participate in WIN’s Member/Affiliate program, now is the time to begin calling your downlines in preparation for the launch of WIN’s Website. Once the website is launched you can sign up using the WIN sponsor code. You will then be given your own code to sponsor Members under you. If any Member of your former downline inadvertently uses the WIN code and actually wanted to be and requests to be back in your downline that request can be granted.

Additionally, all former GIN member training levels achieved will be honored in WIN if you join within the 30-day period from launch. There will be additional testing requirements to acquire the equivalent Pin Level in WIN but no charge for the upgrade.

Lastly, negotiations with the Wynn Hotel Resort in Las Vegas http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/ are underway to do WIN’s first major event there. Details will be forthcoming.

Finally, WIN’s official Facebook page is up and running. Click on: https://www.facebook.com/WINFDN?ref=hl to connect with us. WIN’s official Linkedin and Twitter page is also under construction and will soon be available.

Thank you and have an excellent day,
Perry Kiraly,
Executive Director, World Information Network

With a convicted felon at the helm, WIN members who miss GIN should feel right at home. 

Update, 21 April 2014
Here is the court document filed today, regarding the terms of the proposed sale of GIN. Proposed sale price is $200k, with a few terms and conditions, including, for a period of one year, payments equivalent to 8% of the member dues for existing members, and 4% for new members. Favorite Whirled wag Tim Donohoe noted, "Essentially they are paying for a mailing list of suckers and paying the FTC a commission on everyone who stays suckered or gets suckered into GIN in the future." (At least for a year, anyway.)

Tim mused, "Not a bad deal for an up and coming scammer." Yep.

But as I noted above, if the sale is approved, the purchasers will not be purchasing any liabilities incurred by Kevin Trudeau's mismanagement. There may be some lawsuits filed by disgruntled ex-GINfolk, not to mention some justified ill will. But they won't have much luck getting any of their money back, since the court has wiped away the liabilities. And as I've said, there are still plenty of folks who love Katie.

What the purchasers will have is the intellectual property, including those all-important mailing lists. The various GIN ripoffs such as IBMS and WIN are probably seething with envy over the lists alone. There's still a chance that the purchasers can make money with the new, rebranded GIN. People seem to have an endless need to feel "special," and they'll pay dues to feel special, particularly if they think they can make some money from selling other people a chance to feel special. And the prospective purchasers have indicated that they will explore the possibility of starting up a new affiliate program. Hold on to your wallets.

As I've noted before on this Whirled, there is a bit of historical precedent here. Landmark Forum grew to a worldwide multi-million dollar company after the sleazy Werner Erhard (supposedly) sold the intellectual property that was est. So the people who are crowing that the prospective purchasers of GIN are making a bad business decision don't really know what they're talking about.

Meanwhile, Katie struggles to get his appeal going. He's claiming to be too poor to afford the filing fee, so he filed a form stating that he's a pauper. I saw the court docs the other day and shared them on Facebook. ABC7 (Chicago) picked up the story too.

UPDATE: Motion denied on April 24. The judge isn't buying that Trudeau is a pauper and can't afford the filing fee (click to enlarge).


Update, 24 April 2014
So apparently there was a GIN Conference call on the evening of April 23, 2014. My friend John Foster, one of the Founding Members of GIN and author of the new book, Kevin Trudeau's Road Kill Victims "He" Doesn't Want You To Know About (I'll be writing about it soon), informed some of us on Facebook that the call was "to announce the new GIN club owners, now the Five Amigos, Blaine Athorn, Chris McGarahan, Jeff Devine, Greg Kramer, and Troy McClain. The new GIN saviours."

So it appears that the buzz that Bernie and I had been hearing for months, and had heard more about recently, was pretty much spot-on. Apparently both Jeff and Greg are part of this deal.

Of course, the sale is still subject to final approval by the court. The receiver was scheduled to have formally appeared in Judge Gettleman's court today to present the Receiver’s Motion for Entry of an Order (A) Setting Hearing for Approval of the Sale of GIN Club Assets and (B) Approving the Form and Manner of Notice (which I linked to above, but here it is again). I'll post any updates but there's nothing on PACER yet as of this writing.

Meanwhile, the begging continues for caged Katie
As expected, Trudeau is going to appeal that ten-year prison sentence, but that costs money. So his good buddy in the UK, Lee Kenny, current "owner" of Natural Cures, used the NC platform to send out a begging email. Here it is in its entirety, with the usual Cosmic annotations:

Can you make a miracle happen for Kevin Trudeau?
For those of you who’ve been following the case of Kevin Trudeau, original author of the Natural Cures books, you’ll probably be aware that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his infomercial for the Weight Loss Cure book.

Reports of a former congressman having to be hauled out of court after showing outrage, tells you all you need to know about the fairness of the sentence.

What will you watch on TV tonight?

As you watch TV this evening and see the incredible before & after shots of the latest Diet or Fad, or hyped-up claims for some life changing vacuum cleaner, spare a thought for Kevin, but also for any other would-be advocate for Natural health or process that bucks the system.

Money, Money, Money
Like in any case there are appeals that can be filed, but after 10 years the Attorneys still need paying, research needs to be thorough and maybe, just maybe his legal counsel can find a way to release him much sooner. The lawyers must go back and review every word said in the case and research the law to its fullest.

Now Kevin is a resourceful guy.

If it were up to Kevin, He’d write a book or some marketing for a firm who could pay him what its worth and he could use that cash to defend himself. Unfortunately though every penny he could earn would not be his own, it would be turned over to pay the crazy $37m judgment. So his friends have created something to try and help him raise funds for his next round of legal challenges. [Actually, on a vid last June he babbled a bit about how he pretty much knows he is going to prison, but will take the time to write a book while he's there. I wrote about it on this June 7, 2013 post. So don't give up on the book dream yet, Lee, even if he doesn't complete it in time to fund his appeal. ~CC]

Los Angeles 10th May:
There will be a huge rally in honor of Kevin in Los Angeles on Saturday 10th May. All of his close friends, well-known speaker and many others will be on hand to help raise money on Kevin’s behalf for his continued legal defense. No contribution is too small and every little bit will help in the quest to free Kevin!

Can’t Make Los Angeles?
There are no other planned events, the deadlines mean the lawyers either get on this or not, so if you can’t attend, then any donation would be greatly appreciated. You may have already given in the past, but if you feel like Kevin improved your life in any way, and you can afford to, then it would be wonderful to have you support Kevin one last time.

I wouldn’t ask you to do something I wouldn’t do.

I’ve known Kevin a long time, just over 15 years in fact. I know his good and his bad points and I know this is not a fair fight. Whether people agree with what he has said, no-one can feel that 10 years is a just sentence for what he said in an advertisement.

As many of you know Court records have shown that I’ve donated a 6-figure sum so far from my businesses towards these legal fights. [See info below. ~CC] Not because I owe Kevin anything legally but because I believe in him and what he stood for. I don’t tell you this to brag, believe me there are days my businesses could use that money, but to demonstrate that this is a cause worth supporting.

Donate Now
If you’ve read Napoleon Hill’s books…
The similarities between the inmate that Napoleon Hill describes in his Laws of Success books and Kevin are incredible. No he’s not a saint, but his personality will lead him to use the time he has to help others.

Through friends and email (Who’d have thought email was possible in these circumstances!) Kevin has been sharing his high, lows & pearls of wisdom on Facebook continuing to help people and think of others, even whilst incarcerated. [Ha! Those 'pearls of wisdom,' written by Katie's proxy, smell more like the 'nuggets' in my cats' litter boxes. ~CC]

So if you can, here’s the website to make a donation. http://ktlegaldefense.com/KT_Legal_Defense/Welcome

If you can attend, you’ll get tremendous value. Sharing a common goal with some wonderful speakers and of course with the other attendees too. If you can’t attend, please do consider donating anyway, it will be very much appreciated.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best Wishes
Lee Kenny
Owner & CEO: NaturalCures.com

PS - Once you contribute and are confirmed you will be sent our hotel discount link)
PPS – I just heard that the people operating the Website are closing it after the event, so this will be your last chance to help other than sending money directly to Kevin’s attorneys.

Funny. I had just mentioned Lee Kenny the other day on a thread, wondering what he was thinking or doing since the sentencing, and mentioning what a "deal" he got when he bought Natural Cures for $100k (as reported by former GIN CFO Michael Dow in a May 2013 deposition).

As you may know if you've been following this saga, Lee has been pretending to be cooperative with the courts, but apparently the receivers ultimately gave up on getting any useful info from him about hidden money. But more importantly, as I also recall from court docs, and as I wrote about last August, Natural Cures was set up in the first place to feed KT's legal defense fund. Here is a direct link to some August 2013 court documents that clearly state when and why Natural Cures Health Institute (NCHI) was set up.

So this all makes sense. And Lee's claim that he has already donated six figures from his own pocket towards Katie's legal defense... well, that seems a little deceptive.

Of note, Lee has also used the Natural Cures platform more than once to send out email promos for his and Kevin's $997 Baccarat scam (also mentioned a few times on this Whirled). I wonder if all of that dirty money goes to Katie's defense.

The terms on the current KT Defense Fund page are simple: Everything goes to pay Kevin's "management and legal fees," and all amounts are strictly nonrefundable.

I still believe that the ten-year sentence is a little harsh, particularly in light of the fact that convicted killer and star of The Secret James Arthur Ray served less than two years for killing three people (and hasn't even been called to account for a fourth death at another event). And now he's back in the Scamworld pool, teaching people how to "turn crisis into opportunity." Kevin wrecked many lives, but as far as I know didn't kill anyone.

Even so, he's a serial scammer, and most likely incorrigible. And I feel for the well-meaning people who are suckered into continuing to throw money at him, believing that they are somehow fighting the good fight.

Update, 26 April 2014
This "Message from the Receiver" was sent out by GIN to the GIN mailing list on the evening of April 25 (click to enlarge). The receiver will appear before the court on May 27 to seek the judge's approval of the sale of GIN's assets to Troy, Blaine, Chris, et al. (AXS). Protestors have until May 12 at 5:00 PM CDT to file their objections with the court. This should be interesting. I wonder if any of the sleazes and lunatics running the GIN ripoffs will bother to protest. Of course I'm not suggesting that everyone who protests this sale is a sleaze or a lunatic. I think the sale is a bad idea myself. But Scamworld runs on bad ideas, and for the most part the government and the courts turn a blind eye.

In addition, the receiver finally has finally uploaded the April 16 court document regarding the sale. Here is that link. And here is the link to Robb Evans' Kevin Trudeau page.

Update, 5 May 2014
More documents in the Kevin Trudeau civil case; filed on April 28, 2014. These are regarding the pending sale of GIN to AXS Consulting, LLC. Here the receiver explains in more detail than in previous docs why they want to sell GIN to AXS and not to others. Also, as discussed previously, they want to sell GIN "free and clear." (Hence the document title: RECEIVER’S MOTION FOR ENTRY OF AN ORDER APPROVING SALE OF GIN CLUB ASSETS FREE AND CLEAR OF ALL LIENS, CLAIMS AND ENCUMBRANCES.) As mentioned previously, the deadline for filing objections to the sale is May 12, and a hearing will be held, and the sale presumably finalized, on May 27.