Serial scammer Kevin Trudeau is in trouble again (or still)

This post has been updated.

Well, that sure didn't take long.

I know this will come as no big surprise to anyone who has been even marginally keeping up with the saga of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, who was recently released from federal prison after serving about eight years of a ten-year sentence, but... he's in trouble again. Or rather, he's still in trouble over a matter that never actually went away: the millions of dollars that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) says he still owes on a nearly $40 million judgment from years ago; and the FTC's belief -- which I happen to share -- that he has untold wealth hidden offshore.

On Thursday, November 17, Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled) appeared in court before Judge Robert Gettleman, as reported in various Chicago-area media, such as ABC-TV Channel 7 (reporting by investigative reporter Chuck Goudie), and the Chicago Sun-Times (by CST wire reporter David Struett). He's due back in court on November 30, and has an FTC deposition on December 9. I'll try to retrieve some documents from PACER and share them with you.

Apart from the big question about possible (probable) hidden wealth, both the ABC7 and Chicago Sun-Times piece report that Trudeau appeared to have violated his order to notify the court when he was released from prison. From the Sun-Times:

Prosecutors said Trudeau had ignored the order. “I think they wanted this to go away,” FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen told the judge.

Trudeau’s lawyer, Giel Stein, said it was a “misunderstanding” and apologized. “He’s deeply regretful he did not show up at the end of his home confinement,” Stein said.

But I'm not buying it, especially since Katie took the time and trouble to actually write a letter to Judge Gettleman back in January of 2020, seeking clarification about what he needed to do, and what would be allowed to do, once he was released. I wrote about that here; that post also contains screen shots of the original judgment/sentencing document that outlined the restrictions Trudeau would face upon release. Even if he never received a direct answer from the judge, the matter would still have to have been on his mind. My guess is that he just blew it off, figuring he could get away with it.

As for the issue of hidden wealth, apparently there's new evidence. From the Chicago Sun-Times again:

At issue are two boxes of new evidence provided to the FTC by Trudeau’s now-ex-wife. The government wants to use those documents in Trudeau’s upcoming deposition, but the defense lawyers asked to review them for possible violations of attorney-client privilege. The judge ordered that attorneys on both sides review the documents and report back to him.

Prosecutors also allege Trudeau hid millions of dollars overseas and plans to flee there. The new evidence comes from information from Trudeau’s ex-wife’s testimony in their divorce proceedings, prosecutors said.

I imagine those divorce proceedings were... very interesting. From what I've heard, Katie's ex is well rid of him.

According to the news reports, Kevin really wants to start traveling the world for "business." But for now, he's grounded in the Chicago area. Oh, dear, if only he could just jump on that big luxury cruise ship he's been dreaming about, and sail away... Except, of course, the ship doesn't exist yet.

Kevin bites back
Naturally, Katie had something to say about his latest troubles, and he said it on the Kevin Trudeau Fan Club Telegram Channel on November 18, the day after his court appearance. Here's the direct link, if you have 15-plus minutes to waste.

If you'd rather not waste your time, I'll recap it for you here. Kevin spends the first part of his message 'splaining why it makes no logical sense for him not to have paid that $37 million years ago if he'd had the dough, thus avoiding a prison sentence. He repeatedly says that he didn't then and doesn't now have the money, and laments that it is impossible to prove a negative, so what's a poor boy to do?

Now, if you were just listening to this without the benefit of knowing Trudeau's past history, that would all sound quite reasonable. But in the years prior to his trial and conviction, he had a notorious history of claiming to be poor, while he still continued to spend lavishly on himself. It's not unreasonable for the government to believe he still has money somewhere, since he repeatedly lied about it before. While it's true that the government seized as many of his assets as they could manage to get, the question that they asked back in 2013 and 2014 has never gone away: was there more? Investigators believed then and still believe that there is more, and I think they are right.

What also sounds more than reasonable, on the surface, is Trudeau's claim that it "makes no logical sense" for him to have not paid the big fine when first ordered to do so, or at least when the threats to lock him up began, thus avoiding what ultimately turned out to be a years-long prison sentence. Again, however, you have to look at the past, and here I don't have specific links because so many of them have apparently been wiped from the Web. You'll just have to trust my long-term memory.

For I do recall the defiance that Trudeau expressed on many occasions, starting back when the fine was considerably smaller than nearly 40 mil. Even as he was telling authorities that he didn't have the money to pay up, he was also telling his followers, via videos and on his radio show and more than likely at live events too, that he was refusing to pay on principle, mostly having to do with fighting government tyranny and so forth. He was, he repeatedly assured his followers, being a brave fighter not only for his own First Amendment rights, but for the 1Arights of all of us. Meanwhile, he continued to enrich himself from his various scams and schemes.

As well, he repeatedly violated consent orders that he had signed with the FTC, which only increased penalties and his own legal jeopardy. Subsequently, when called by the gov on one violation or another, he would always claim innocence, saying that he absolutely, positively had no intention of violating anything, and that he was doing his level best to cooperate fully. That was his losing argument in his criminal trial, in fact. Yet all the while he was playing the innocent, he continued with his defiance act, using it to burnish his hero/martyr narrative. He kept this up until there was no turning back. As they like to say on social media these days, FAAFO.

As the Telegram spiel continues he spends some time in motivational master mode, offering advice on how to handle adversity and gabbing about how the special training he offers can help anyone do just that. He also, as per usual, takes a few moments to peddle some of the overpriced frauducts that he sells through the Kevin Trudeau Fan Club website and Facebook page.

But the main purpose of the message -- and once again, this will probably come as no shock -- is to beg for money, and he mentions the link to the donation site a couple of times. Katie warns that his lawyer bills could possibly rack up to millions of dollars. Frankly, I'm surprised any lawyer took on his case, after he reportedly stiffed so many previous attorneys, but perhaps it's possible that the attorney named in the news stories, Giel Stein, is working pro bono, which, if that's the case, would negate the claim about millions of bucks in legal fees.

If you follow the embedded link in the previous sentence, you'll notice that some of Mr. Stein's listed accomplishments include defending big pharmaceutical companies, big insurance companies, and government agencies, so... maybe not the best choice for a lawyer for a defendant who's been loudly speaking out against all of the above for decades? That should be interesting.

In any case, legal fees are pretty far down on the list of the Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club's list of what your donations will be used for.

Your Contributions made to The Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club (ContributeToKevin.com) therefore will be used to pay for these things and more (this is just a partial list of possible uses):

• a place for Kevin to live and all his living expenses (utilities etc)
• furnishings for Kevin’s residence
• food
• nutritional supplements
• computers; cell phones; internet services; mobile phone service
• personal care items
• medical and all other insurances
• dental care, haircuts, eye care (contacts and glasses)
• car; insurance; petrol (gas); parking; maintenance
• clothes
• travel: transportation, hotels, meals 
• lawyers and other professional services
• subscriptions
• secretaries, assistants, transcribers, researchers, social media managers, booking agents, drivers, security, etc.
• and many other possible uses of the funds donated

Trudeau wraps up his Telegram message with his usual spiel about bad things happening to good people, and assures his fans, "Suffering is an option I choose not to take."

Of course. His go-to option is grifting, though over the years he has proven time and time again that he's not above playing the suffering victim in efforts to get leniency from the courts or to manipulate people into giving him money.

They've heard it all before
I think the prosecutors and Judge Gettleman are too smart to fall for Kevin Trudeau's excuses. And good for the ex for handing over that evidence. But if I were the investigators, I would also be scrutinizing the "success club" that Kevin founded back in 2009, the Global Information Network, or GIN. Back when Trudeau was officially running it, GIN was a huge scam that sucked millions of dollars out of thousands of rubes (see the link in the previous sentence for a capsule history of the scam), but technically GIN was not the reason he was charged, tried, convicted, and locked up. Even so, to this day a number of former GIN members would love to see Kevin Trudeau be held accountable for GIN; absent charges/trial/conviction/incarceration, they would simply like have their money back. That will almost certain never happen.

By the way, I've made this point and shared this link several times previously, but it bears repeating that Jason "Salty Droid" Jones strongly disagreed with the prosecutors' assertion back in 2014 that a ten-year sentence was sufficient because, according to them, no one who bought Trudeau's weight loss book was financially ruined. They may not have been ruined by the purchase alone, but for many that book, like Trudeau's numerous other loss leaders, was a gateway drug that did lead to financial and/or emotional ruin. But that's a whole other story.

Under court order, GIN was sold in May 2014 to a group of Trudeau's close buddies, and though ownership has shifted since then, to my knowledge it is still owned by pals of his, chiropractors Dr. Tom and Dr. Ted Morter, and career huckster Blaine Athorn. Reportedly Kevin is not legally allowed to be benefiting financially at all from that enterprise. My understanding is that he's not even supposed to be calling the shots, though I suspect that he's been "shadow running" it for some time now, perhaps in violation of the terms of his probation.

At any rate I think it would be wise for the investigators to look into GIN's finances -- if that's possible -- to find out if, for instance, the proceeds from the club's live events, and from some of their other income sources, are being funneled to Kevin through the official donation site or other more hidden outlets.

The inevitable recap of the larger issues
I've discussed these issues at some length in previous posts, so this is mainly for the benefit of new visitors. First off, whether Kevin Trudeau should be locked up again, if he fails to satisfy the government's and the court's demands, is a larger question that I do actually believe is pertinent, and some who are new here may be surprised that I'm not firmly in the lock-him-up camp. I've said many times before that in general, I don't believe nonviolent criminals should be locked up (those who incite violence, such as Donald Trump and numerous other republican politicians who are directly responsible for the violent January 6, 2021 insurrection, are another story, however).

Regarding Trudeau, the blunt truth is that being imprisoned never stopped him from scamming. Moreover, locking him up now almost certainly won't lead to the recovery of hidden assets. It would be punitive, and perhaps would be poetic justice or karma, if you believe in such things. And locking him up could limit his huckstering activities, but again... it won't keep him from grifting, either directly or through his loyal proxies. The bottom line is that the government would probably be no closer to reaching its stated goals of retrieving the money still owed, presumably so the remaining refunds to those who bought Trudeau's wacko diet book, The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You To Know About, can be issued. I discuss the incarceration issue in a January 2022 post, under the subhead, "Did prison change Kevin Trudeau?"

In other words, I recognize that there are nuances to this story, as there are to most stories. But the gist of it is that Kevin Trudeau is, has always been, and almost certainly always will be a scammer -- and my opinion on that issue is anything but nuanced.

Secondly, some may be asking why this obvious crook is even still important in the larger scheme of things. Isn't he so... yesterday? Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll just direct you to the aforementioned January 2022 post again (under the subhead, "Why this still matters, after all these years"). Here's a snippet:

...one major reason that I think Kevin Trudeau is still important, apart from my concern that he has spent decades cheating people out of their hard-earned money, is that he is flagrantly symptomatic of a nearly out-of-control trend of misinformation/conspiranoia crapitalism.

Of course Trudeau was in many respects far ahead of the curve, since he has been trading in "information that 'They' don't want you to know" for decades. Most of that "information" has consisted of misinformation, distortions, exaggerations, lies, repackaged selfish-help/McSpirituality content, or, in some cases, cherry-picked data about issues that have been addressed by far more responsible consumer advocates, whistleblowers, and muckrakers. But the nebulously evil "They" were the perfect scapegoat for Trudeau's marketing strategies...

And as I wrote at the end of that post, "Caveat emptor."

Stay tuned for further reports.

Update, December 6, 2022: Jason Meisner at the Chicago Tribune reported on Trudeau's November 30 hearing. The government is still considering "coercive incarceration" (which has never worked in the past to get Trudeau to cough up the dough, but whatever).

At a hearing Wednesday, [FTC attorney] Cohen revealed newly discovered emails that he said show Trudeau was seeking to ship and store 300 pounds of gold bars and other precious metals in Switzerland in 2013, the same time he was crying poor to the court.

The FTC has also learned that around the same time, Trudeau hired two law firms in Switzerland to research what impact pending lawsuits in the U.S. would have in Switzerland as well as the logistics of legally changing your name in that country, Cohen said.

Of course, Trudeau is once again stalling for time.

Trudeau’s attorney, Giel Stein, accused the FTC of jumping the gun, saying Trudeau “is acutely aware of the consequences here” and only wants to know how much he still owes so he can figure out how to begin repaying it.

Stein also said it made no sense to put Trudeau in jail before he’s given the chance to answer questions under oath about his assets at a deposition, which is scheduled for Dec. 9.

Judge Robert Gettleman, though clearly fed up with Trudeau's lies and his stall tactics, declined to incarcerate Trudeau immediately, setting a December 15 hearing to sort things out. Meanwhile, Trudeau's lawyer, Giel Stein, says he wants to question Trudeau's ex-wife under oath about “eight suitcases of materials that (she) absconded with” from Trudeau’s storage facility in Zurich, Switzerland. Sounds like the defense is trying to blame the ex for Trudeau's crimes.

More updates to come.

Loony Lenny takes credit for serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's imprisonment

Waaaaaay back on January 31 of this year (this sure has been a long year so far, hasn't it?) I published a long-ish post about a letter that serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, wrote to the Honorable Judge Robert Gettleman, the judge who had presided over Trudeau's civil court battles for years. My post was in response to a January 26, 2020 report in the Chicago Sun-Times about the matter.

Specifically, Trudeau asked Judge Gettleman to give him a rundown on how much money Trudeau still owes for his misdeeds, and to whom he needs to pay that money when the time comes, and what he might legally be allowed to do to make a living upon his release from prison.

Quite a few months later, the Sun-Times piece apparently drifted into the awareness of Katie's former b.f.f., fake doctor/cancer quack/right-wing ranter/conspiranoid Leonard Coldwell (most recently highlighted on this Whirled for his covidiocy), who is often late to the party when it comes to the events of the day. Late or not, you can bet that LoonyC had something to say about it. On June 5, 2020, he puffed out his little chest and Facebook-posted the link to the Sun-Times article, along with this comment:

Biggest conman ever we got him 10 years in Prison. You mess with me you go away.. And Trudeau its [sic] not even over yet I am not done with you.

Oooo, scary, right? Katie would most likely be quaking in his prison-issued slip-on shoes, if only he were able to see Facebook, which, by all reports, he absolutely is not.

A couple of Coldwell's Facebook followers took the bait, begging to know what had happened between Coldwell and Trudeau. One follower wrote of being on a Global Information Network (GIN) cruise in 2011, when it seemed that Kevin and "Dr. C" had been the very best of friends.

But so far Lenny hasn't responded to the queries.

Well, Coldwell follower who asked the original question -- and anyone else who either doesn't know the story or is simply in the mood for a recap -- here's a capsule history of Kevin Trudeau and Leonard Coldwell. Let's just say that a lot has happened since 2011. I've written many thousands of words about the matter on this blog over the past eight years or so, but I know your time is valuable, so here you go.

A tale of two scoundrels
Leonard Coldwell (born Bernd Klein, though he legally changed his name in Virginia in 1998) left his native Germany for the US in the late 1990s, for reasons that have never been entirely clear. And in case you are wondering, he has never been a real doctor in any sense of the word, either in Germany or in the US, even though the foundation of his "career" has been his self-claimed expertise in health issues, particularly cancer. (Here's a long-winded look at his "credentials.") Once in America, Coldwell struggled for a few years to make it as a motivational speaker/natural health "expert." But, according to information provided to me by someone who was in the very best position to know, he wasn't very successful and was often on the verge of financial disaster -- that is, until Kevin Trudeau promoted him and his body of "work" in Trudeau's first Natural Cures book. That was a true turning point for Coldwell. The extent to which Leonard Coldwell owes his "success" (such as it is) to Kevin Trudeau cannot be overstated.

Or as my pal Jason "Salty Droid" Jones so eloquently put it in his first blog post about Coldwell in August 2012:

In spite of [his] impressively fake :: fake credentials … Leonard Coldwell was never able to make much of himself...

...Then came Kevin Trudeau circa 2005. Trudeau was using a popular lead gen book :: infomercials … and every other trick in the Scamworld book “they” don’t want you to know about to separate people from their money … writ large. Trudeau made fake doctor Lenny Coldwell his B-team bitch :: that changed things for Coldwell … and they’ve been together unhappily ever after.

With leads coming in from KT’s bullshit :: Coldwell could focus on manipulation and exploitation … which is far easier than generating the initial leads. Lenny needs easy jobs :: because he’s dumb … and he sucks at stuff.

A Salty Droid Dateline 60 minutes 4 PHDs exclusive investigation has revealed that Leonard Coldwell set up remote servers with family in Germany in order to process email leads generated by Kevin Trudeau’s fraudulent activities. Leonard would reply to emails as “Dr. Hohn” {who is a real person … and actual doctor} … and refer victims to his own products.

Such elaborate measures were prolly required because America’s Federal Trade Commission was crawling up the ass of Trudeau’s operation. I suspects they even sniffed out this fake Dr. Hohn situation. But they suck :: so they accomplished jackshit … and Trudeau and Coldwell scam on unabated....

Of course notoriety works both ways. Coldwell was most likely making much better money than he'd ever made because of his association with Kevin Trudeau (or, as Jason described it in a 2014 post, "swimming in Kevin Trudeau's wake with [his] mouth wide open") -- but on the other hand, neither Jason nor I would have ever heard of Coldwell, or written about him, if not for that association. I had been blogging about Trudeau for years before I'd heard of Coldwell.When Trudeau launched his huge GIN scam in 2009, he brought Coldwell right along as one of the club's main shills, eventually making him one of its sanctioned speakers. In exchange for agreeing to perform at a certain number of live GIN events per year, Coldwell was given a yearly salary of $200,000, in monthly payments of nearly $17,000 a month. (Here is the portion of his contract that he has shared publicly.)

Granted, that salary is far from being extravagantly large in the public speaking biz; actual A-list celebs and VIPs, which Lenny never has been and never will be, can command tens of thousands of dollars, or even hundreds of thousands, for a single appearance. In other words, Coldwell's claims that he is the "World's Highest Paid Speaker" are... a bit exaggerated. At any rate, his GIN gig was supposed to be a ten-year contract -- a fact that Coldwell later used as a foundation for his gripe about being cheated, conveniently overlooking the fact that most contracts are rendered null and void if either party violates the terms of said contract, which Coldwell seems to have done on several occasions. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As part of the perks of the "job," Coldwell got to fly first-class or business-class to GIN events, stay in the best hotels, go on all of the lavish GIN cruises, stuff himself at the buffets and get drunk on expensive booze, and take every opportunity to promote his own shtick (often violating the spirit of his contract) -- and all on Kevin Trudeau's dime. Well, technically, it was on the dimes of countless suckers who poured money into the GIN coffers in hopes of somehow becoming as fabulously wealthy and successful and deliriously happy as Kevin was always claiming to be, but in any case, it was all comped for "Dr." C.

In addition, Coldwell was, by his own admission on a teleconference call on October 14, 2012, given a downline for GIN's massive multi-level marketing scheme, which formed the basis of GIN's huge and fraudulent money grab. (I wrote about that in this January 2013 post; see under the sub-head, "Axes of evil"). Coldwell didn't earn the downline, and in the teleconference call he claimed that he didn't seriously work it. But he did apparently work it in his own way, such as by posting various promos for GIN (and of course for himself). The point is that while so many other rank-and-file members spent so much time and energy and money to earn and work their own GIN downlines, Lenny's was just handed to him.

All in all, it was a great gig for a formerly struggling and unknown fake doctor.
Coldwell did apparently gain a following within GIN, and later claimed that he was the very soul of the organization. (On this Whirled, we begged to differ.) In the glory daze of what was later shown to be a completely contrived bromance, Trudeau and Coldwell spent a lot of time publicly stroking each other off, figuratively speaking. Trudeau promoted Coldwell as his "personal physician in Europe." He fake-interviewed him in videos like this one to promote Coldwell's shtick. Coldwell relentlessly promoted Trudeau, or at least he promoted GIN, touting it as the best way to wealth, success and happiness. On various promotional propaganda Coldwell and/or Trudeau claimed to have been good friends for more than 20 years. It all was so lovely, and so phony, while it lasted.

For various reasons, though -- partly financial but mostly personal, from what I have been told by folks in a position to know -- the bromance collapsed. One major factor was that GIN was bleeding money, and Kevin needed that money to cover his legal fees and his lifestyle (more on that below). He had to cut expenses, which included cutting the number of live events and, apparently, getting rid of speakers who had become dead weight. Reportedly there were also complaints about Coldwell's behavior at some of the live events. And reportedly Kevin's own ego was a factor; he didn't like sharing so much attention with Coldwell, who, though full of shite, was undeniably entertaining and knew how to get a crowd riled up. Kevin himself implied that Coldwell's shtick was getting redundant.

And then there was the fact that, as mentioned above, Coldwell was apparently using GIN to promote himself in a manner that violated his contract with GIN. (He later claimed that GIN offered to settle with him, or "saddle," as he spelled it on his Facebook post about the matter, though who knows, he may have been talking about horseback riding or some perverted pony play.) 

In any case, Coldwell's separation from GIN was emphatically not because he had just suddenly "discovered" that GIN was a scam and Trudeau a scammer, as he later tried to claim. Coldwell most likely would have gladly stayed on the GIN teat for years longer, but Trudeau fired Coldwell from GIN in the spring of 2012. It was shortly after the GIN Dream Weekend in Vegas in April 2012.

Coldwell's first responses to being booted out were tentative and rather restrained (for him, anyway), though undeniably rambling and incoherent, with insinuations that there might be a chance of reconciliation, or at least a chance of saving GIN, with Lenny at the helm of the salvation effort. (I provided links to his "let's save GIN" posts when I first wrote about them, but his ramblings on that topic have since been deleted.) But it soon became apparent that reconciliation wasn't going to happen, and that GIN had booted Coldwell out for good -- and that's when he began a series of increasingly vitriolic attacks on Trudeau's character and the scamminess of GIN. 

As it happened, and as I indicated above, I'd already been writing about the scamminess of GIN and Trudeau for several years, but nobody reads this blog so it didn't make a dent in the scam; I just thought I'd mention it again. At any rate, due to a combination of members' ignorance of, and their willful blindness to, Trudeau's scammy past, Coldwell was able with some success to brand himself to disillusioned GIN and ex-GIN members as a heroic whistleblower.

He really got their attention with a ruse that he kept up for months: a spurious claim that he had initiated a class action lawsuit against GIN/Trudeau and that anyone who'd lost money in GIN and wanted to join him could most likely get all of their money back and possibly more. All they had to do was send him their name and contact information. He dangled the lawsuit as a come-on to get people to sign up for a "Life After GIN" event/boot camp in Charleston, South Carolina, promising he would give attendees detailed information and updates about the lawsuit, as well as another opportunity to get in on the cash grab. People did sign up, and paid good money to attend, though quite a few reported being disappointed when there was very little said about the lawsuit at the "boot camp."

Not surprisingly, like pretty much every lawsuit threat or actual lawsuit in which he has been involved, absolutely nothing ever came of this "class action suit." But no doubt Coldwell was able to beef up his mailing list considerably, which was of course the whole idea

But it was the whistleblower ruse that Coldwell exploited most enthusiastically. His cohorts in this undertaking were former GIN member Abe Husein, who gained considerable media attention for himself by hollering about how he had been cheated by GIN and fooled by Kevin's grandiose promises (though Abe himself had tried to cheat the system); and former GIN marketing huckster Peter Wink. (In early 2013, Coldwell and Wink formed their own version of a GIN scam, the ill-fated IBMS Masters Society, which is still limping along, though noticeably Winkless).

Meanwhile, Kevin Trudeau had been in legal trouble with various government agencies for many years because of his deceptive/fraudulent marketing practices. (This was after he had served a couple of years in a federal prison for credit card fraud, back in the early 1990s.) The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in particular had had its eye on him for a very long time. He'd been to court numerous times, had been fined, had paid fines, had signed consent orders in which he promised to cease his deceptive practices, and had repeatedly violated those orders.

At the time Trudeau launched GIN, he was in pretty deep, with a multi-million dollar fine and a civil case and later a criminal case looming over his head. In fact many of the millions of dollars that gullible GIN members were pouring into the GIN coffers were going straight to Trudeau's lawyers. Much of the rest of it was going towards the noble cause of subsidizing Trudeau's lavish lifestyle.

But it is important to know that both the civil and the criminal cases centered on Trudeau's deceptive marketing for a diet book, The Weight-Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You to Know About. It was this matter specifically that ultimately resulted in a criminal contempt conviction and his ten-year prison sentence. It had absolutely nothing to do with Kevin Trudeau "messing with" loony Lenny Coldwell.

The ten-year sentence was decided upon by the judge who presided over the criminal case, Ronald Guzman. Judge Guzman had originally wanted to sentence Trudeau to 20 to 25 years in prison, based upon federal sentencing guidelines that took into consideration Trudeau's two previous felony convictions and the size of the fraud in the diet book case. (These sentencing guidelines were carefully explained in numerous court documents and also reported in the media at the time.) Judge Guzman eventually agreed with prosecutors, however, who claimed that a ten-year sentence would be sufficient since nobody who bought the diet book was financially ruined simply by having bought the book. In other words, and it can't be stressed enough: LEONARD COLDWELL HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KEVIN TRUDEAU'S TEN-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE.

No doubt Coldwell provided information to authorities that may have helped nudge the cases along, but so did countless other people. Back in the pre-trial days, the FBI was visiting ex-GIN members and former GIN principals left, right, and sideways. I even got a call from the FBI during the post-trial, pre-sentencing phase, and I have never been even remotely involved with Trudeau or with GIN, except to blog about them. In the end, though, Trudeau received a sentence that was far less than the maximum allowed by law and than the presiding judge had originally wanted to impose. If Lenny wants to take credit for Trudeau's prison sentence, he needs to accept responsibility for its relative leniency.

* * * * *

So that's the story, in a nutshell (emphasis on the "nut" part), about what happened between Leonard Coldwell and Kevin Trudeau. Trudeau is in prison not because he "messed with" Coldwell but because he thumbed his nose at various authorities who had been trying for years and years and years to get Trudeau to stop scamming consumers. And for a few years, Coldwell himself was complicit in Trudeau's scams. Moreover he is still, to this day, selling GIN CDs on his IBMS web site (at $99.00 a pop!). So he is anything but a hero in the Kevin Goes To Jail narrative. 

But it's not surprising that Coldwell would try to inflate his own role in this narrative -- he has a long history of grossly exaggerating his own significance, after all, not just about his "accomplishments," but specifically regarding GIN and Kevin Trudeau as well. So I think that it's important for those who want to know the real history to search for answers outside of Coldwell's social media fever swamps.

And I think it's also worth pointing out that despite all of the time and energy Coldwell has put into denigrating Kevin Trudeau, he will never have nearly as many fans as Trudeau has, and will never enjoy anything even close to the level of hero worship that Trudeau, even though he's been imprisoned for years, continues to inspire. I am pretty sure that at some level Lenny knows that, and it must be galling.

Bottom line: I don't think that Kevin Trudeau has very much to fear from his former "personal physician in Europe."

Kevin Trudeau asks Judge Robert Gettleman for post-prison scam guidance

Pity the poor imprisoned serial scammer whose release date from a Federal Prison Camp is "soon" -- though more than likely not nearly as soon as he would like, despite his strong implications to his fan base that freedom is just around the corner for him. Especially pity him if he has all sorts of grandiose plans for new ways to get people to give him money once he gets out of prison, and is even partnering with a "legitimate" organization on the outside to set the groundwork for future money grabs -- but he's at a loss as to just what he can get away with and avoid being re-caged. He can't ask his high-priced lawyers because gosh, he still owes them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they're not speaking to him anymore, and besides, they didn't keep him out of prison anyway, so screw them.

What's a poor perplexed flim-flam man to do?

In case it isn't painfully obvious, the imprisoned serial scammer to whom I'm referring is Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this blog, whom I've been writing about almost constantly for over a month now.

And I'll tell you what Trudeau did in order to try to clear up his puzzlement about his post-clink career options: he wrote an email to Judge Robert Gettleman, who presided over his long-running civil case, turned it into a civil contempt case, and guided it towards becoming a criminal contempt case, the latter of which was presided over by Judge Ronald Guzman. Judge Guzman is the one who actually handed down the 10-year sentence, but Judge Gettleman has been a key player in Katie's legal saga for many years.

I didn't find out about the email to Judge Gettleman until earlier today, or I would have added the info to my previous post, in which (among several other issues) I speculated about Trudeau's post-prison fate. I shared my opinion that to a large extent his future was pretty much in the hands of the Hon. Judge Gettleman, at least in matters pertaining to the case that landed him in prison. Clearly Trudeau sees it that way as well, judging by the questions in his email to Judge Gettleman, as reported in a January 26, 2020 article in the Chicago Sun-Times.

The email arrived for U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman early on a Friday afternoon. Its author opened with eight simple words:

“This is Kevin Trudeau. You may remember me.”

There is little chance Gettleman forgot. Federal prosecutors accused the fraudster, onetime TV pitchman and author of “The Weight-Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About” of brazenly defying Chicago’s federal courts for more than a decade.

But Trudeau, 56, has quietly been serving a 10-year prison sentence for contempt of an order from Gettleman. Now, though the U.S. Bureau of Prisons says Trudeau is not due to go free until May 2022, he wrote in a Jan. 10 email to Gettleman that he “will be released in the near future.”

And he claims he doesn’t want to get into any more trouble.

“I am writing to you to ask some specific questions about what I can and cannot do when I am released,” Trudeau wrote. “As you can imagine, I never want to be held in contempt again.”

He followed the comment with a smiley face.

Well, Katie hasn't been serving all that quietly, but I'll give the writer a pass on that small detail. That writer is Jon Seidel, federal courts reporter for the Sun-Times. It's his job to keep his eye on the court dockets, and if I'm reading him correctly, Trudeau's email was placed on the docket on Thursday, January 23.

Now, it's been quite a while since I've pored through the lengthy Trudeau dockets myself; at the height of the court battles in 2013 and 2014, and even for a while after that, I downloaded and read hundreds of pages, blogged about what I'd read, and uploaded numerous documents to Scribd -- not just the dockets but also a variety of motions, responses, pleas, and even a few transcripts. (This is a link to my posts tagged, "Kevin Trudeau court cases, but it's probably not comprehensive.) I'm currently trying to reactivate my PACER account just to see what I can see, but meanwhile we'll have to go with Seidel's reporting and my reporting about his reporting. Fair enough?

Seidel, who is clearly cognizant of Katie's messaging style, wrote that the January 10 email was "classic Trudeau."

He quickly brought up Nelson Mandela — quoting the late South African leader — and he told the judge, “when I come back to society, you will see a wonderful happy and peaceful new man, ready for a new life with only gratitude and love in my heart.”

Yup, yup, yup... we've heard it all before. Katie has been working up that mythic tale of faux-redemption and spiritual McMiracles since his MCC (Chicago lockup) daze. (And besides Mandela, he has also frequently evoked Gandhi and other historical figures.)

Apart from talking about what a Changed Man he is and taking a potshot at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding those diet-book refunds, the main purpose of Trudeau's email was to ask Judge Gettleman specific questions about his payment obligations and his career options after his release.

He asked how much money he is still expected to pay the court, how he should expect to make payments — “the receiver took every penny I had, and confiscated and liquidated everything,” he said.

Finally, he asked, “when I am released from prison, am I allowed to earn money or must I still turn over 100% of all the money I would earn to ‘someone,’ and if so who?”

He also asked if he could start a business, earn royalties or speaking fees, or receive “donations and gifts.”

He said his attorneys won’t give him advice, “as I still owe them over $200,000 in legal fees.” Following the advice of counsel didn’t work out too well in the past anyway, he said.

“So I come to you directly,” Trudeau told Gettleman, “as YOU are the ONLY source that can answer these questions, as only you KNOW the answers.”

He added that based upon all that's happened, he has become "quite radioactive."

At this time I have no idea whether or not Gettleman has responded to Trudeau -- I'm guessing not, but I don't know for sure -- but it's no surprise that the email ended up in the public record anyway. That's just the way this stuff works. And in fact, over the years quite a few personal communications about his cases have been entered into the public record, there for anyone with a PACER account to see. I'm sure that I haven't seen nearly all of them, but I've seen and posted about some of them.

What I do know, and have written about -- and Seidel mentioned it in his article as well -- is that Judge Gettleman has called Trudeau a liar, and that in 2015, when the judge was talking with lawyers about attempts to collect judgments against Katie, he said that they hadn't collected nearly what they should have, but perhaps would do so someday. Gettleman also added, "And when he finishes serving his time, he's going to have to come back here and explain that to me."
 
That was then, this is now. As I noted in my previous post, I don't know how much money Trudeau still owes, and his email to Gettleman indicates that he doesn't know either.

* * * * *

This recent attempt to reach out to Judge Gettleman isn't the first time Trudeau has tried communicating with the judge via email. Some of you may recall that back in 2010, Trudeau was sentenced to 30 days in jail for harassment after he urged his fans to write to Gettleman begging for mercy for Kevin. He published the judge's email address, which in all fairness had previously appeared on at least one public site, but then again, on that site it had not been posted in the context of urging thousands of deluded followers of a scam artist to flood the judge's in box. (Here's one of numerous links about that incident; I've blogged about it too but can't find my own link at the moment.) The judge's computer and BlackBerry were flooded with hundreds messages from the minions, some of them threatening. No doubt that made a lasting impression on Gettleman.

One part of me thinks that the judge owes Trudeau an honest answer to his current questions about what he's allowed to do following his release, despite the distinct possibility that Trudeau has no serious intention of mending his ways but is merely trying to convince Gettleman that he wants to be a good boy from now on. I can't help thinking that while he's trying to maintain a facade of being respectful and compliant, Trudeau is also plotting ways to slip the surly bonds of government reach and sail off somewhere to enjoy those assets that many of us think are almost certainly hidden in various far-flung places. Even so, he should be given as accurate an answer as is possible, just so it's clear that the court has met all of its obligations.

But there's also a big part of me that thinks that perhaps Trudeau's seemingly being left in the dark about these basic questions is some sort of poetic justice for hiding the truth for years from countless followers -- particularly ex-GIN (Global Information Network) members -- about what he was doing with their money; about who really owned GIN (he did, of course, though the club was promoted either as being "privately owned" or being "owned" by the membership); and about the fact that the "GIN Council" was a big lie; and so forth. Secrecy was a big thing in GIN, and I'm guessing that it still is, given the fact that the current leadership is composed of long-time Katie buddies.

 
F'rinstance, I'm willing to bet that most current GIN members are just as much in the dark about the total actual cost to reach those advanced membership levels that the club touts as members were back when Trudeau was at the helm. Even though the web site does reveal the cost to join GIN, and the monthly fee, that's just for Level 1. There are no dollar figures listed, at least not that I can see, for higher levels.

But I'm guessing it still costs extra to upgrade to each level, just judging from the fact that the chart on the Share GIN Bonus page indicates that members get a percentage of the upgrade fees that are paid by the folks they refer. And more than likely, the membership levels grow progressively more expensive. GIN is not an MLM anymore as it was at the height of the Katie daze, but it appears that there are still monetary incentives to refer as many new members as possible to the club, and to encourage them to stay in the club and upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.

In any case I don't think one can go far wrong by assuming that Trudeau himself remains, as Judge Guzman said upon sentencing him back in 2014, "deceitful to the very core." Still, in theory, I think that he deserves to have the parameters of his post-release job ops spelled out. Maybe that will finally be determined when he is released. Meanwhile, we may be able to get a pretty good general idea just by taking another look at an existing document.

The original sentencing order 
Some of the conditions of Trudeau's release were, of course, stipulated at the time he was sentenced in March of 2014. In addition to 10 years in prison, Judge Guzman sentenced him to "supervised release," i.e., probation, for five years following his release. In this September 2014 blog post I posted several links to court documents, including a link to a very long document (actually several docs in one), that I had uploaded to Scribd.

Included in that long doc is a copy of the judgment signed by Ronald Guzman on March 17, 2014. Here is a direct link; the judgment document begins on page 137. There are several other items that may also be of interest if you want to know more about the case or if you just want to refresh your memory.

But if you don't feel like plowing through all of that, here are screen shots of all seven pages of the original judgment. (As always, click to enlarge.)

Signed, sealed delivered: here's page 1 of the original judgment,
handed down on March 17, 2014 and filed in the court on April 3, 2014.

The actual sentence is spelled out on page 2, while most of the conditions of supervised release
are on page 3. Notice that only a couple of items are checked as applicable on the top part of page 3,
but it appears that all of the standard conditions below that part apply.
More conditions are listed on pages 4-5.

Aw, gee... it appears that Katie can't go to casinos any more (see page 5, under "Special Conditions...").
But maybe his cronies can continue to market his big Baccarat scam.

Notice Item F on page 7: "Special instructions regarding the payment of criminal monetary penalties" --
It appears that Kevin Trudeau's question in his January 10, 2020 email to Judge Gettleman,
regarding who he has to pay, is answered in this judgment,
but that the actual amount he owes cannot be answered until the time of his release.

My own opinion regarding what Trudeau should and shouldn't be allowed to do upon his release will probably come as no surprise to you if you've been following this blog for any length of time. Knowing his long history, and judging from the content that, through various proxies, he has been pouring out onto the Internet since he's been locked up, I don't think he has changed in any significant way; instead he has merely enhanced his hero/martyr narrative, making his story more compelling to credulous people in the service of picking their pockets. And no matter what he does and how much of an altruistic or holy spin he tries to put on his messages, I remain convinced that Kevin Trudeau has been, is, and always will be all about the hustle.

NNATE: Katie beats a (legal) dead horse, while Loony Lenny rants on

I've modified some of the text in this post to clarify some points about the Court of Appeals decision.
~ CC, 18 January 2017
 
As you may know if you've been following this blog for a few years, one of my favorite slogans, and a constant theme that runs throughout many of the posts, is: "No neat and tidy endings," or NNaTE, as my friend Julie Daniel abbreviates it. In Scamworld, as in most of real life, there are very rarely neat endings to any story, or to any scam as the case may be. Some stories and scams just go on and on and on.

So perhaps a group of three appellate court judges were being a tad optimistic when they began their December 29, 2016 opinion, regarding some business interests of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie) with the suggestion that their decision marked the close of a very long chapter. As the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this month:

Even getting sent to prison for a decade in 2014 by a Chicago judge for lying didn't shut the smooth-talking pitchman up, or put an end to his seemingly inexhaustible legal battles.

But now — 18 years after he was first pursued by the Federal Trade Commission for his fraudulent claims — Trudeau's case is finally toast, U.S. Court of Appeals judges are praying.

"This decision marks the end of litigation about Kevin Trudeau's frauds — or so we hope," Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote in an opinion published last week.

The decision wasn't whether or not to keep Katie in prison, where he is serving ten years on charges of criminal contempt related to deceptive claims in infomercials for his diet book, Weight Loss Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About. That conviction and sentence have already been appealed, and he lost the appeal last year around the time of his birthday, as reported on this blog.

Never a quitter, Katie took his fight all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States -- or, rather, he tried to. That was a wash too. As far as I know, SCOTUS didn't even bother with an explanation as to why they didn't care to hear his case; they just issued this:

But the December 29 decision concerned one of Katie's dozens of companies, Website Solutions, which along with his other assets whose existence was known to the court, was put under receivership in 2013. At some point Website Solutions hired their own law firms to represent it in responding to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) demands to turn over business records, and those firms later demanded that they be paid from the receivership funds. The district court determined that because Website Solutions was, as the business records revealed, indeed part of Trudeau's assets and therefore subject to receivership, any and all profits from that business must be used for restitution to the customers who'd been scammed by the weight-loss book.
 
After the receiver had collected about $8 million it submitted a plan to the district court to distribute the funds to victims. The court approved the distribution plan, and also determined that Website Solution's law firms -- Hogan Marren Babbo & Rose, Ltd.; and Faruki Ireland & Cox, P.L.L. -- were not entitled to compensation from the receivership estate. All that money was slated to go to victims, not lawyers. The law firms appealed the denial, and their appeal was in turn denied on December 29.

I found it amusing that the appellate judges also suggested a couple of strategies that Website Solutions' law firms might have used to at least give themselves and their client a fighting chance. From Bloomberg BNA's January 5 article on the matter:

The court noted that neither the firms nor Website Solutions sought court approval for the firms’ engagement or their “proposed course of conduct,” and that ultimately their actions were more obstructive than helpful to the receiver’s efforts.

The court also pointed out that the firms may have sought recovery of fees related to complying with the receiver’s discovery requests under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 45(d)(3)(C)(ii). That section permits a court under certain circumstances to order reasonable fees for complying with a subpoena request.

Some folks sure waste a lot of money on lawyerly incompetence; have you noticed? When it happens to good people that's an outrage, but when it's a scammer whose money is squandered, it's really kind of funny..

From the Caselaw site, here is a link to the text of the December 29 decision.

And if you'd like a PDF, here's a link to that.

You can of course find links to many earlier Katie legal documents on this very Whirled -- docs related to his civil, criminal, appeals, and bankruptcy cases -- but if you don't feel like wading through old blog posts, try this link to find previous documents related to Trudeau's appeals. Just search for "Kevin Trudeau" and you'll find a few decisions that in their own way helped pave Katie's road to Federal sleepaway camp.

I should note, as I have on previous posts, that whether it has finally come to a close or not, the entire 18-plus years of legal actions by the FTC (and, later, the U.S. Attorney) against Kevin Trudeau were for various and sundry frauducts and flopportunities, but not for the biggest scam of all, the Global Information Network, or GIN. As I've written before, thousands of people were bilked out of millions of dollars during GIN's heyday, and although a reading of some of the many court documents makes it pretty obvious that Trudeau's actions regarding GIN had some influence on the judges' decisions, the court actions that sent Trudeau to prison were not directly related to GIN at all. People who were scammed by GIN and unable to get a refund a few years ago, but are still expecting some sort of compensation, will probably have a long, long wait.

Of course this doesn't mean that there won't be any lawsuits about Katie's mega-scam, so for that and other reasons those circuit judges were justified in adding, "or so we hope," to their speculation that their decision marked an end to Trudeau-related litigation. For if there's one thing you learn on this beat, it's that you just can't keep a good scammer down, and indeed the Chicago Trib article I linked to above noted as much:

On Facebook last week, Trudeau's backers continued to solicit donations to his legal defense fund from his 29,000 followers, promising them they could "DOUBLE YOUR MONEY."

And in a pre-Christmas message presumably relayed through supporters from his cell at the Montgomery, Alabama federal prison camp, Trudeau told his fans he would "share 2 secrets that will give you success in every area of your life."

If they followed his advice, the convicted fraudster, formerly of Oak Brook, wrote, they would "vibrate frequencies that will allow you to create the life you want."

The article also mentioned Trudeau's boasts about predicting Donald Trump's victory, a matter that I wrote about last July (back when there still seemed to be a chance that Trump might lose). The Trib writer duly noted that Trudeau had written that he was confident about a Trump victory because "the overwhelming energy of the people is consistent with Trump's vibration."

Not this people, I hasten to add, and not tens of millions of other people, but I quibble. Not surprisingly many of Trudeau's fans are also Trump fans, and some have expressed hopes that Trump will pardon Trudeau once he gets in office. The Trib writer noted that one of the folks on the short list for Trump's Supreme Court pick is none other than Diane Sykes, one of the judges who signed off on the December 29 decision. Of course that doesn't rule out a presidential pardon. Turds of a feather, you know...

And speaking of not being able to keep a good scammer down, you can't keep an incompetent one down either. On a January 4, 2017 post on Katie's Facebook page, one of Katie's surrogates wrote:

Kevin has a legal right to a defense fund. The Law firm that has been defending him is Winston and Strawn LLP. Proceeds from the fund go directly to the LAW FIRM.

As you can see either by following the link above or looking at the screen grabs below, a few folks responded, mostly with words of support, on the day the post was published, or shortly thereafter.



But early today (January 16), little Lenny Coldwell, cancer quack, fraudster and bigot extraordinaire, jumped in (under one of his phony names, "Eyn Rand") to slam Katie and promote himself, repeatedly and semi-literately.


FYI, Lenny can't write under his main Facebook profile at the moment because once again he has been suspended for hate speech. But as he often does, here he demonstrates the old saying about pots and kettles. And once again... NNaTE.

Kevin Trudeau v Robb Evans: the lies of taxes are upon you

I might as well finally break in the merry month of May on this Whirled, since the month is already almost half over. Gosh, where does the time go? Since I'm on deadline with a project and occupied with other matters of consequence, this will just be a brief update about imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, who likes to be called KT, but whom I like to call Katie. In my previous blog post on April 20 (scroll down to "Selling GIN from the clink"), I caught you up on, among several other things, some of the civil court action (Case number 1:03-cv-03904), sharing with you that Katie has been whining to the court because the court-appointed receiver, Robb Evans, hasn't been filing taxes for all of Katie's bidness entities on a timely basis, and also hasn't filed a status report in a heck of a long time. I gave you a link to that fine whine, but here it is again in case you haven't seen it yet or want to review:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/262276155/Trudeau-Civil-Case-Document-879-and-Exhibits-Trudeau-Motion-to-Compel-Receiver-to-File-Tax-Returns-and-File-a-Status-Report-04-01-15

On May 12, following the receiver's response, the Chicago media finally decided to join the party; this is from the Sun-Times, and this is a CBS Chicago bit that sources the Sun-Times story.

Both stories quoted Katie as saying, "I have been stripped of all ego, arrogance, defiance and pride and for this I am very thankful, as it has made me a better person."

Well, let me tell you, I was shocked and dismayed to discover that some of you people are laughing at this. Poor Katie. Don't you cynics think it is at all possible that he has truly changed? Don't you remember that Christmastime McMiracle he experienced while still partying and whooping it up at the MCC in Chicago in 2013? Don't you think it is possible that it was a true miracle and that it changed him forever from the inside out? You don't believe such a thing happened with our Katie?

Me neither.

But really, it's okay if you laugh. Katie himself was just talking about ha-ha moments on his Facebooks the other day (thank you to my dear friend Julie Daniel for pointing this out to me). Here you go:



And I was so inspired by Saint Katie's message about the value of laughter that I had to hear the Monkees sing about it.

But I'm going to give you more than a Monkees' song, and more than the Chicago media gave you. I'm going to give you links to the latest court docs regarding Katie and the receiver and all of those un-filed tax returns and whatnot.

1. First, there's the RECEIVER’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE RESPONSE INSTANTER (which is pretentious legalese for "immediately"), a motion in which the receiver also asks the court give Trudeau extra time (well, one day extra) to file his response to the response. This motion and the attached Exhibits were filed on April 29, 2015, in response to Trudeau's insistence that the receiver file the proper tax returns for the Trudeau entities. The receiver argues that it has not filed tax returns for entities over which it either has no control, or for which Trudeau or his agents have not turned over the records. In response to Trudeau's demands for a new status report, the receiver explains the reasons for decreased frequency of status reports. Here is that link:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/265231640/Trudeau-Civil-Case-Document-882-and-Exhibits-Receivers-Motion-for-Leave-to-File-04-29-15-PDF

2. Then on May 12, 2015, Trudeau's lawyers filed a reply brief -- and it is brief, relatively speaking -- in support of Trudeau's original motion to compel Robb Evans to file tax returns and to file another status report. There's some good snarking in this one. Here is that link:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/265233499/Trudeau-Civil-Case-Document-885-Defendant-Trudeau-Reply-Brief-in-Support-of-His-Motion-05-12-15

There is still nothing new on the criminal case, court doc-wise, anyway. Trudeau's appeal (regarding his conviction and ten-year prison sentence), which was heard in February, has still not been decided. At the moment I have a feeling that Katie's time in the cage will not be as prolonged as many may have hoped.

I will have more soon.

PS ~ For those of you who are wondering about the profoundly stupid defamation lawsuit filed against me (and a few other defendants; I also wrote about that on my April 20 blog post, under "Cosmic Connie and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad lawsuit"), there's not really any new news to report at the moment. It appears that where this suit is concerned the plaintiff is, for all practical purposes, in hiding, as is often the case with him, so things are kind of on hold for the time being. Meanwhile, I'm still responding on a timely basis to whatever is thrown my way as a result of this totally groundless case. I'm not in hiding, and I hope to have some real news soon.

Meanwhile, I suggest we all take the Monkees' advice, and... LAUGH! And if you need any more inspiration for laughter, look no further than this. Ho, ha, ha, ha!

PPS ~ Leonard Coldwell v Connie Schmidt et al.: Case dismissed; details here. And you can view the original Complaint and the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal here.