Wead it and reap: selfish-help author/Christian fundie/right-wing political hack pens new book that kisses some yuuuuge orange butt

It isn't every day that politix, Scamworld, and the modern-day theocracy converge on this Whirled. This is one of those daze.

The convergence comes in the form of some very good news for Donald John Trump devotees who are disgusted by the spate of anti-Trump books that have been published since their Mad King ascended the throne. Selfish-help author Doug Wead, who has deep ties to both Amway and hypoChristian fundamentalism (more on that below), as well as to right-wing politix, is set to release a new sure-to-be-a-bestseller book on November 26 titled, Inside Trump's White House: The Real Story of His Presidency.

Apparently this is one of the boldest political books ever written, or at least the boldest book ever written about Trump, because it doesn't rely on "anonymous sources." From the promo blurb on the book's Amazon page:

After dozens of books and articles by anonymous sources, here is finally a history of the Trump White House with the President and his staff talking openly, on the record.

In Inside Trump's White House, Doug Wead offers a sweeping, eloquent history of President Donald J. Trump's first years in office, covering everything from election night to the news of today. The book will include never-before-reported stories and scoops, including how President Trump turned around the American economy, how he "never complains and never explains," and how his actions sometimes lead to misunderstandings with the media and the public. It also includes exclusive interviews with the Trump family about the Mueller report, and narrates their reactions when the report was finally released.

Contains Interviews with the President in the Oval Office, chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, Jared and Ivanka Kushner, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric and Lara Trump, and White House insiders.

Color me impressed! The Trump family and Trump's most loyal minions are willing to go on the record about how wonderful Trump is and how much he has accomplished and how wrong all of the critics are about this deeply misunderstood man. What bold risks they are taking to get the true story out to the public, as opposed to those off-the-record cowards and anon sources who had nothing more to worry about than having their careers wrecked, their lives ruined, and their physical safety threatened by vengeful Trumps or egregiously offended Trumpanzees.

But let's look more closely at that claim, quoted in the promo blurb above, that Donald Trump "never complains and never explains." Never complains, huh? Hey, Doug, have you forgotten that Trump is constantly ranting and raving at his fascist rallies, or rage-tweeting, or angrily shouting about something or other during those impromptu press ops just before he boards a helicopter? Even before he was elected he'd become notorious for griping about being treated unfairly.

And Donald Trump "never explains?" More than any other president in recent memory, he spends more time "explaining," in the form of rationalizing and defending, his goofy words and reckless or ill-advised actions, and of course defending himself from his many critics. He even defended the size of his penis on national TV, back during the 2016 campaign.
 
Among other revelations in Doug Wead's new book, as reported today in Axios, is that murderous North Korean despot Kim Jong-Un actually views Trump as a father figure. Apparently Wead got that particular tidbit from noted psychology expert Jared Kushner, who reportedly told Wead: "It's a father thing... You can see from these letters that Kim wants to be friends with Trump, but his father told him never to give up the weapons. That's his only security. Trump is like a new father figure. So, it is not an easy transition."

All righty, then!

Wead was apparently allowed to read several of the letters exchanged between Kim and Donnie, and in one of them Kim addressed Trump as, "Your Excellency." My first thought was that this is just Kim trolling, and being passive-aggressive, but Wead seems to believe otherwise.

Ahead of his latest book's release, the author himself weighed in on Fox News.

What I discovered inside the Trump bubble was quite different from what had been reported. No, Melania and Donald were not estranged, they were tender lovers, who playfully teased each other. On almost any subject -- North Korea, China, Mueller -- the president brought up her name.

Publicly, the whole family talks about what a privilege it is to serve the country, but privately they have no illusions about the horror they are going through. The president sometimes eases the tension by teasing the first lady, saying, sarcastically, with puffed up importance, “Melania, honey, look at this incredible journey I have brought you on.”

“It’s like a joke between them,” Lara Trump told me. “Everyone is attacking all of us and she’s smeared for no reason other than pure jealousy and he says, ‘Hon, isn’t this amazing?’

“And she’s like, ‘Oh yeah, thank you so much.’ “It’s hilarious. I love it.”

In other words, "I REALLY DON'T CARE. DO U?"

And later in Wead's Fox op-ed, there's this...

Donald Trump is the sixth president I have interviewed and I came away impressed. Some will say that he is only lucky. He was lucky to win the nomination and the election. He was lucky to see what every great economist in the world had missed about the GDP, lucky at finding jobs that no one else could find, lucky at bringing back hostages that other presidents had left languishing in foreign prisons, lucky at achieving energy independence, lucky at defeating ISIS so easily.

Trump is, arguably, the first president in 40 years to avoid starting a hot war. You can say he is lucky. I say he is great.

Oh, yes. Herr Twitler did indeed win the election... and he bested the world's greatest economists in figuring out how to grow the GDP... and he created jobs "that no one else could find" (and here's another link about that)... and he is absolutely the greatest hostage negotiator ever, in contrast to Obama, who was a total do-nothing... and he almost single-handedly achieved US energy independence... and of course we all know that his defeat of ISIS was easy-peasy.

And good for Trump for being "arguably the first president in 40 years to avoid starting a hot war," unlike that warmonger Obama, who almost got us into a hot war with North Korea. (Trump prefers trade wars, which he has assured us are easily winnable. Not to mention his love of dick wars, which of course bolsters America's standing in the eyes of the rest of the world. Not that the rest of the world's opinion matters, of course!)

But seriously now. Wead hasn't merely kissed the Mad King's ass; he has opened wide and swallowed it whole.

* * * * *

Long-time Whirled visitors with especially long memories may recall that we met Doug Wead briefly on this blog eleven years ago, when I opened one of my posts about Scamworld elder statesman Bob Proctor with a quotation from Wead, praising Proctor as a "master thinker."

“Zig Ziglar may be the master motivator, Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup for the Soul, the master story tellers; Anthony Robbins may be the guru of personal development, but Bob Proctor is the master thinker. When it comes to systemizing life, no one can touch him.”
~ Attributed (by Bob Proctor) to Doug Wead, former Special Assistant to the President of the United States


I've known for a long time that Scientist Bob Proctor is a deep thinker, but reading the above quotation from author, philanthropist and former Diamond-level Amway salesman Doug Wead just confirms it. "Well, gee, Cosmic Connie, is Wead really a reliable source?" you may be asking. To which I can only respond, "If you can't trust a person who betrayed the trust of a future President of the US by secretly recording conversations and then publishing them, whom can you trust?"

And that last sentence may bring up some older memories still, of the time when Doug Wead secretly taped then-Texas governor George W. Bush for three years without Bush's knowledge or permission. Previously Wead had taped the Bush family with their knowledge and permission, in the service of writing a very flattering book about the Bushes, which was based largely on these taped conversations and was published in 1988. But the seekrit taping took place later, between 1997 and 2000. From Wikipedia:

The release prompted some hostility from members of Bush's inner circle: Bush's wife, Laura Bush, said in an interview, "I don't know if I'd use the word 'betrayed,' but I think it's a little bit awkward for sure"; while Bush evangelical ally James Dobson said he was "shocked by [Wead's] breach of trust". Bush himself did not comment.^[16] The tapes' release also provoked negative reaction from some commentators, such as Bill Press, who called Wead "scum", and Bill O'Reilly, who called Wead "the lowest form of debris in the country."^[17]

You might think that when a theocrat like James Dobson accuses someone of engaging in a "breach of trust," and a right-wing darling such as Bill O'Reilly calls him "the lowest form of debris," that person's career as a sycophant of right-wing royalty would be doomed. You might assume he would at least be tempted to hang his head in shame and just go away quietly.

But Wead is from Scamworld, and "shame" simply isn't in the Scamworld purview. Wead continued cranking out books, including a political hack job called, Game of Thorns: The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy, which purported to be the never-before-told inside story of what really happened in the 2016 US presidential election. On Amazon the book seems to have received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but as is often the case, it is the negative ones that are the most revealing, such as this one:

Cornelius C. Walsh
1.0 out of 5 stars
If you hate Hillary, You'll Love ThisJuly 24, 2017
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Same old, same old. Didn't get more than 20 pages in as the background focused on old, old anti-Clinton issues and very little on events/issues related to contemporary and election related issues. Great for Clinton haters but really not what I was looking for.

But clearly, it was what the Trump devotees, who almost without exception are Clinton haters as well, were looking for.

If you want additional background on Doug Wead's evange-a-scam creds, as well as his past forays into politix, you'll find plenty in this February 2005 piece from the (sadly now-defunct) Village Voice. From that piece:

Unless you were an Amwayer, you wouldn’t know that Lennon Ledbetter, a tall young man in a dark suit who served as the emcee of Wead’s campaign kickoff rally, was one of Wead’s Amway business associates in Arizona. Or that Wead campaign aide Billy Childers, who introduced Ledbetter, is the son of a prominent Amway friend of Wead’s who lives in North Carolina.

More important, you wouldn’t know that John Godzich, who runs an Amway-like organization in France and also builds American-style houses there, is someone Doug Wead met years ago through Amway, and that Godzich, himself a newcomer to Arizona, is a major source of money for Doug Wead’s political ventures—much to the ire of some Arizona Republicans. You wouldn’t know that Godzich is the older brother of Pastor Leo Godzich, the leader of the drive against Phoenix’s proposed gay-rights ordinance and associate pastor at one of America’s largest churches, Phoenix First Assembly of God, whose pastor is Tommy Barnett. This business of clues has been used by Doug Wead before. During the 1980 presidential campaign, he wrote a quickie book entitled Reagan in Pursuit of the Presidency. Timed for publication just before the GOP National Convention, it was a campaign-trail journal capped by a Reagan campaign speech before a wildly cheering crowd in Charlotte, North Carolina. Doug Wead himself introduced Reagan to the crowd. There were countless standing ovations. At one point during Reagan’s speech, the assembled masses erupted into “God Bless America.” Must have been quite a speech, right? Not necessarily. If you were an Amwayer reading the book, however, you knew exactly what was going on. Reagan was at an Amway rally, where practically everybody gets standing ovations.

For that matter, in an April 2013 Whirled post about serial scammer and ex-Amway star Kevin Trudeau's bankruptcy, I cited a 2004 opinion piece linking Amway, Republicans and That Old Time Religion. Under the sub-head, "The Bush Family & Religious Heathens," the author wrote:

Several members of the media have looked into the relationship between the two Bush Presidencies and members of the extreme Religious Right Wing. After reading up on that gang, the only thing I know for sure, is that there is not a single honest person in the whole bunch.

First off, let's take a look at evangelist Doug Wead, a divorced Baptist Minister, and former Diamond distributor, who is still a regular speaker at Amway conventions

Wead was the first President Bush's liaison to the Christian Right and he later served as Special Assistant to the President in the first Bush White House. Time magazine referred to him as "the man who coined the phrase the compassionate conservative." ...

...At one time, Wead and his ex-wife Gloria, were both Diamond distributors, sponsored by Dexter and Birdie Yager. Wead earned large sums of money by speaking at Amway functions throughout the Yager organization.

Wead and another kingpin, Jean Godzich, eventually branched out and set up an Amway in France. In 1986, the French government began investigating it and decided the company was a dangerous mind-control cult, and a fraudulent business. Amway France terminated the distributorship of Godzich, from whose group most of the complaints had originated.

So what do Wead and Godzich do next? They set up a new MLM in France, called Groupement or GEPM. Its product line consisted of Amway products, its business structure was identical to Amway France, and its cultic activities were just as blatant as they were in the first operation.

After receiving numerous complaints about GEPM, French authorities moved in to shut it down, but this time it issued criminal arrest warrants, 13 for the company’s distributors, and 2 for Godzich and Wead. Godzich took all the cash and fled the country and Wead never returned to France.

This man is the same Doug Wead, who 2 years later, would become a White House Aide to the first President Bush, and spiritual adviser to the second. God help us!!!

God-if-there-is-one help us indeed. All I'm really trying to say here is, if you insist on reading Doug Wead's Trump book, go ahead. Let me know what you think about it, positive or negative; my blog is always open to comments. But even if you're a Trump fan, you might consider the possibility that Wead, like the principal subject of his book, is not exactly what the journalists would call, if you'll pardon the word, an unimpeachable source.

Related on this Whirled:

• November 2016 -- More about Scamworld, Amway, and Trump: Politix and Scamworld on an extended honeymoon
• May 2016 -- When it comes to serial scamming, Wead and Trump are turds of a feather: Donald Trump's Scamworld playbook isn't unique
• December 2013: More about the destructive and cultic aspects of multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes: from December 2013 -- Tin Promises: How MLMs Can Tear Lives Apart, Part 1 of 2 (link to Part 2 is included)

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

James Arthur Ray Death Lodge Eighth Anniversary: Never Forget

Death, it seems, has dominated the news even more than usual for the past several weeks: there is the death and destruction caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria (and we're holding our collective breaths about Nate as I write this); and, of course, there is the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas a week ago today.

I don't expect the mainstream -- or even most of the independent -- news media to remember, much less focus upon, deaths that occurred years ago on a much smaller and less dramatic scale; after all, the journos and commentators can barely keep up with all of the mass shootings in America, much less the deaths caused by the arrogance and reckless actions of a sociopathic selfish-help "leader." But here in this obscure little outpost of the blogosphere, the deaths of three people in New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality guru James Arthur Ray's phony "sweat lodge" in Sedona, Arizona will never be forgotten.

It was on this day, eight years ago, that Kirby Brown and James Shore perished as a result of their heavily manipulated/coerced participation in Ray's torture chamber. Nine days later a third participant, Liz Neuman, passed away as well, without ever awakening from a coma.

As I've written in previous anniversary posts, I knew none of them, though some of the family members are now my Facebook friends. But I think of them every year at this time. Mostly it is with sadness but also with anger, because the man whose recklessness was responsible for these three deaths (four, if you count Colleen Conaway's death at another Ray event in July 2009), served a prison sentence of less than two years for the Sedona deaths. (He served no time at all for Colleen's death, and wasn't even charged, to say nothing of tried or convicted, although my understanding is that there was a civil settlement.)

But James Ray goes merrily on his way, scrabbling to reclaim his elevated spot in the selfish-help pantheon while spinning Sedona as his own personal tragedy. As I wrote here last year:

...these days, James Ray is exploiting the Sedona tragedy and his time in prison for his own purposes, still parading as a success guru but with a new hook: he uses the pain and loss of others to portray himself as the hero who has walked through fire.

He may have walked through fire, figuratively speaking, but he did not die by fire, literally, as did James Shore, Kirby Brown and Liz Neuman.

He may have lost a lot, but he is still alive and capable of writing unmitigated crap such as, "In the process of losing everything...I actually found myself."

That theme -- redemption through profound loss -- is the one that Death Ray is still flogging.

Kirby Brown's family, trying to pick up the pieces and create something good and useful from the horror that James Ray bestowed upon their family and on so many others, continues to promote their non-profit, Seek Safely, whose purpose is to educate people about how to safely participate in the self-help industry. Check it out.

Others are doing their part too. As you probably know if you've been hanging around here for any length of time, one of my favorite blogging colleagues, who wrote in great depth about the James Ray nightmare, is Salty Droid, aka Jason Jones. He is a practicing lawyer again, and as I noted here, is using the law to go after destructive and potentially dangerous Scamworld players, e.g., MLM giant Herbalife, a company that, as he explained last month, he first began thinking about in 2009...

… when Liz Neuman died in James Arthur Ray’s fake sweat lodge. Liz got her first tastes of Death Ray’s self-help poison while attending Herbalife related events.

The deadly fake sweat lodge {that killed three people and seriously injured many others} was the culmination of James Ray International’s “Spiritual Warrior” weekend :: a deeply manipulative $10,000 event … the most expensive in a never ending sequence of events that Ray dubbed the “Journey of Power.

These events are dangerous :: weaponized fraud … and they permeate the scam industry. Every wretched festering scamhole I’ve climbed down has contained one of these escalating event sequences at the heart of the harm … anchoring victims to the bottom of Lake Misery.

Here is a direct link to the extended version of the Herbalife lawsuit (Rodgers et al. v Herbalife).

(Jason is also representing, pro bono, a blogger, Christina Hinks of the MommyGyver blog, who is being targeted and harassed by billion-dollar fashion MLM LuLaRue. According to the Truth In Advertising site, LuLaRue seems most upset by the blogger and other critics calling it a cult. Well, MLMs very often are cults in a sense, and it seems to me that the more cultish they are, the more likely they are to sue you for calling them cults or even hinting that they might be (consider the example of LGAT (large group awareness training) giant Landmark, f'rinstance...). Anyway, you can read Jason's take on the LuLaRue case here.)

I have neither a nonprofit nor a law degree, but as always I will continue, as I have for the past eight years, to do my part to make sure that people never forget what happened on October 8, 2009.

For insights into the sociopathic behavior of James Ray, and how it led up to Death Lodge, see this post, written on the first anniversary of Sedona. Also read Connie Joy's book, Tragedy in Sedona. There's also a public Facebook group, James Arthur Ray is a Felon.

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Salty Droid (With Pants): off to a great start by suing Herbalife

I have bad news and good news.

The bad news, and it's pretty bad, is that (1) Leonard Cohen, who would have been celebrating his 83rd birthday today, is still dead; and (2) Herr Twitler is still the #NotMyPresident.

The good news, and it is very, very good, is that my favorite scambusting blogger, Salty Droid, aka Jason Michael Jones -- who was admitted to the Ohio bar last year and has begun practicing law again -- has, in partnership with Miami litigation firm Mark Migdal & Hayden, filed a class-action lawsuit against multi-level marketing (MLM) scam giant Herbalife, alleging civil racketeering (RICO) violations.

Here is a direct link to the 83-page complaint (1:17-cv-23429), which was filed in the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, on September 18, 2017.

Salty/Jason first announced the lawsuit against Herbalife on his blog the day the complaint was filed, and he posted a followup yesterday.

As for the rest of the media, which jumped on coverage of past legal actions against Herbalife, they seem to be a little behind the curve on this one. The Truth in Advertising site reported the lawsuit yesterday, however, and did a good job of summarizing the case and the issues.

And the Valuewalk investment blog mentioned the lawsuit on September 19. The writer noted that Herbalife stock was "about flat today," indicating that investors weren't too worried. He added:

Herbalife will either distance itself from those distributors or take over their defense. So they’ll either be condemning their conduct or endorsing it. Other high level distributors will have to worry about whether they will be added to the lawsuit.

The other big difference between this and Bostick [a previous class action against Herbalife] is the new complaint alleges a RICO conspiracy – a corrupt enterprise consisting of the company and many top distributors – and it alleges that their sales-event methods violate the FTC order as well as other fraud statutes.

But the mainstream business and financial press don't seem to have paid it much heed as of now, at least if the Google search results as of today (September 21, 2017) are any indication. Oh, well, give 'em time.

The September 18 complaint focuses on Herbalife's live events, specifically, their Circle of Success gatherings across the country. While many might think that live events are rapidly becoming obsolete -- what with Skype and other technologies that are considerably cheaper and much less of a hassle -- live gatherings are still very much a part of Scamworld. Wrote Salty in his September 18 post:

These events are dangerous :: weaponized fraud … and they permeate the scam industry. Every wretched festering scamhole I’ve climbed down has contained one of these escalating event sequences at the heart of the harm … anchoring victims to the bottom of Lake Misery.

He pointed out that the fatal faux-sweat lodge that killed three of James Arthur Ray's followers was the culmination of a "deeply manipulative $10,000 event..." Moreover...

Many scams :: like the one I raged about here in 2013 {owned and operated by the now President of the United States of America} … are nothing but events.

And I can add, based upon my conversations with many ex-members, that events were what kept so many faithful followers of currently-imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau drinking the GIN (Global Information Network) Kool-Aid for so long. (Not that Trudeau is actually serving his sentence for the huge GIN fraud -- he's locked up for criminal contempt related to infomercials for his diet book -- but my point is still valid.) The live GIN events -- which included lavish cruises, weekend gatherings at fine hotels, and countless regional events that focused on aggressively manipulating attendees to upgrade to higher membership levels and teaching them to become more aggressively manipulative recruiters themselves -- were carefully and expertly crafted to foster the delusion that GIN members were part of an exclusive, elite group... but that they could only achieve true success and happiness and fulfillment by continually pouring money they didn't have into GIN's coffers, which turned out to be nothing more than a personal piggy bank for Trudeau.

Live events were also how Trudeau's former b.f.f., fake doctor/cancer quack/semi-literate conspiracy peddler Leonard Coldwell, tried to recreate GIN (after being fired by Kevin) through his IBMS Masters Society, but Lenny and his former partner and bro-in-harms Peter Wink (another former Trudeau employee) never had the drawing power that Kevin Trudeau enjoyed. The IBMS events were pretty much a flop, with ever-dwindling attendance, and the "club" ultimately failed in the United States. (Lenny is apparently trying to recreate the magic in Germany now, but I predict it won't last, and can say with near-certainty that even now, it isn't nearly as successful as his Facebook boasts would indicate.)

And, of course, live events have been a very big part of the Herbalife fraud. A little over a year ago Herbalife agreed to a $200 million settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that required it to change its compensation system from being based on recruitment to being based on actual product sales to real customers. But, as the current RICO complaint notes, the FTC didn't address the Circle of Success events, which are described in the complaint as "the single most effective fraud in the arsenal of Herbalife and its top distributors."

The event system lures and ensnares people such as Plaintiffs with the guarantee of significant income, a better lifestyle, and even happiness – all to be easily attained through event attendance.

Yup... just like in GIN.

Meanwhile, in related Scamworld news, the family of Herr Twitler's Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, is reportedly pushing Congress to pass a rider that would limit regulatory oversight of MLMs, presumably to make life easier for her family's company, Scamway, and help them avoid some of the troubles suffered by Herbalife. The rider would curb the ability of the FTC to investigate whether MLMs like Amway are pyramid schemes.

Jason et al., y'all have your work cut out for you. But your class action against Herbalife is a great start. Keep it up.

And by the way, here again is a link to Jason's Salty-Droid-With-Pants web site, JonesAtLaw.com. Eat your hearts out, Culbertson&Ass.

PS added 23 September, 2015: Here is a link to the extended version of the complaint against Herbalife, with all exhibits attached.

Related on this blog:
Tin Promises: How MLMs Can Tear Lives Apart
Part 1 and Part 2

Secrets of the great pyramids

John Oliver has some hilariously spot-on things to say about those pyramid schemes known as MLMs, including but not limited to the infamous Herbalife, as well as Youngevity. Here you go:

Herbalife CEO Michael O. Johnson

Granted, this was a far from comprehensive examination of the scourge of MLM, but it did cover some basic truths in a largely humorous way, without being unsympathetic to the victimized. And as Salty Droid has done in greater depth over the years, Oliver focused on the ways that some of the most economically and socially vulnerable demographics are being targeted by ubiquitous giants such as Herbalife.

I would have liked to have seen a mention of now-imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's Global Information Network (GIN). In its glory days GIN scammed thousands of people out of millions of dollars, without even offering a tangible product that would have allowed the notorious phenomenon known as "garage qualifying" (in which participants buy their way into a certain position in the compensation plan by purchasing hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of product, which ends up unsold in their garages). The "product" for sale in the GIN MLM back in the day was a $1,000 Level One membership in GIN. But since that old GIN MLM is no longer operating at those monetary levels, I can understand why the producers would have wanted to focus on more current and higher-dollar scams.

All things considered, I think Oliver's effort is a worthy addition to the critical and cautionary content regarding MLMs. I hope it finds a wide audience.

Related on this Whirled:

• 29 April 2016: True Spanish lies: A scam in any tongue is still a scam -- Herbalife, Youngevity/Livinity and the ways they exploit Latinos
  
  
• 22 December 2013: Kevin Trudeau's pyramid continues to crumble -- The FTC declared Kevin Trudeau's Global Information Network (GIN) MLM to be an illegal pyramid scheme. (Note: The old MLM was discontinued in November 2013 but it rose again in a more modest form under GIN's new owners.)
  
  
• 9 December 2013: Tin Promises: How MLMs Can Tear Lives Apart (Part 1 of 2) -- Natch, the link to Part 2 is included.
  
  
• 16 July 2012: Back in Time with the big sick machine -- A little history, but not enough to hurt you.

True Spanish lies: A scam in any tongue is still a scam

For some time I've been aware of -- and have blogged and Facebooked about -- the fact that certain Scamworld sociopaths in the US love to hate on "the illegals," by which, traditionally, they most often mean Hispanic/Latino immigrants from Mexico and Central America. More recently the hucksters have been hating on Syrian/Muslim immigrants as well, warning that the Muslims are taking over Europe, raping all the women in their path, and that the US is next -- but by no means have these vociferous xenophobes let "the Mexicans" off the hook. Some have been griping for years about the influx of undesirables from South of the border.

For instance, there's currently imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, who, as reported in this June 2011 Whirled post, came down hard on the "Mexicans" a few years ago. In November 2012 my pal Salty Droid also paid tribute to Katie's apparent racism (or at least Katie's pandering to racists, which is just as bad).

And on the Fourth of July, 2014 (cue patriotic music), former Trudeau b.f.f. and alt-health/cancer quack/fake doctor/conspiracy theorist/racist Leonard Coldwell, linking to the aggressively nativist NumbersUSA site, wrote about how he is proud to be "AND [sic] AMERICAN." He wrote that "they" (the New World Order and Obama and all enemies of freedom) "want to destroy our national pride, our way of life, our language and our culture by flooding us with these illegal immigrants." By "our" language I assume he means English, which he is doing quite an effective job of destroying on his own, but I digress.

More recently, LoonyC shared this on Facebook, linking to yet another article that attempts to indict all "illegals" for the crime committed by one. Obama is blamed too, of course; it wouldn't be a proper Loony rant (or in this case, Loony-approved rant) without vilification of our president.

 
Then of course there is GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump, and if you don't think he belongs in a discussion of Scamworld, read this. Apart from that whole "build a wall" shtick, Trump has made himself very not-loved by Latino voters by running off at the mouth about illegal "Mexican" immigrants being diseased criminals.

Here's a recent Facebook posting from the aforementioned Loony Coldwell, citing an article regarding yet another Trump tweet about "Mexicans."

Of course the scammers, including and perhaps especially Trump, mostly insist that they're not, not, NOT racist, and that they have nothing against "Mexicans." It's just those lazy, diseased, sexually predatory illegals they don't like. By way of proving that he's not racist and actually likes Mexicans, for instance, Kevin Trudeau said, back in 2011, that he admires Che Guevara and likes guacamole. Things haven't gotten any better since then. If anything they're worse, and If you call someone who's clearly racist out for being clearly racist, the least violent response you can expect is to be jeered at for being "politically correct" and a "libtard."

But for even the most racist scammer, one yuuuuge thing trumps (so to speak) white Western Euro-purity, and that one thing is, of course, money. And any scammer worth his or her salt has realized by now that the Spanish-speaking market is enormous and potentially very lucrative -- and damned if they're going to let a good cash op pass them by.

Accordingly, Kevin Trudeau's scampire has been peddling some of his info-frauducts in Spanish for years, both online and via infomercials. I'm sure the company currently handling those info-frauducts would gladly accept moneys from the undocumented, no questions asked. For that matter, I bet that Katie's legal defense fund would be similarly open-minded.

Leonard Coldwell, brave guardian of the English language and American culture, brags that his "mega bestselling" books are being translated into Spanish, but I'm guessing that he won't be demanding proof of citizenship status before taking money from those people who are helping to destroy said language and culture.

And despite his apparent racism, and the fact that he has shot himself in the foot business-wise with his racist remarks about Latinos, Donald Trump would gleefully welcome the Latino vote and has said he's confident he'll get it if he wins the nomination, because, he asserts, "Latinos love me".... though thousands of Latinos nationwide apparently disagree. (Illegal immigrants have no voting rights, despite what the wingnuts would have you believe.) Regarding "illegals," Trump has little room to speak, given his own business practices. And he knows as well as anyone else that if all illegal immigrants were suddenly deported, the US economy would implode.

Although there's no way of knowing for sure, I have little doubt that had Trump's more blatant Scamworldly enterprises such as Trump University and the Trump Network been longer-lived, those scams would have penetrated deeply into the Spanish-speaking market. As it is, Trump is currently dealing with a class action lawsuit over the alleged fraud that was Trump U, and he blamed the fact that the suit wasn't thrown out on the hostility of a "Spanish" judge.
 
[Update 29 May, 2016: Important development in the case of Drumpf and that "Spanish"/"Hispanic"/"Mexican judge.]

But as Salty Droid indicated in his posts about Trump U and Trump Network, linked to in the first sentence of the paragraph above the update (and you should read those posts, if you haven't already), Trump has proven himself to be a fan of network or multilevel marketing, or, as Salty put it, "the MLM fraud vortex of doom." Which is as good a way as any to segue into this point: If you think the MLM industry is sitting on its hands when there are potentially so many millions of Spanish-speaking victims to suck into that vortex, you simply haven't been paying attention.
 
Brown folks' money is just as green as white folks' money.
A long-running theme on Salty's blog is the destructive force that MLMs have been in the lives of so many people. I published a two-part guest post about the matter myself in December 2013. (Here's the link to Part 1.)

One of Salty's most frequent targets has been the mega-scam and pyramid scheme Herbalife, which he addresses yet again in his post of April 26.

I'm sure he'll have more to say about this subject soon, in light of his yet-to-be-completely-told tale of stowing away on a scammer sea cruise last fall, and of the recent release of a documentary about the Herbalife scam, Betting on Zero, which made its debut at the recent Tribeca Film festival. For the time being he has embedded a heartbreaking thirteen-minute bilingual video that poignantly demonstrates how a scam is still a scam, even in a loving tongue.



There is also a thriving Herbalife wannabe called 90 for Life, which is the unholy child, spawned in 2012, of Youngevity (founded by long-time frauduct peddler and former veterinarian Joel Wallach) and Livinity (founded by Barb and Dave Pitcock, who cut their huckster teeth with Kevin Trudeau back in the late 1990s). I've mentioned all of these folks on this Whirled previously, and here they are again. Loony Coldwell and his ex-bro Peter Wink were even involved in 90 for Life for a while, under the company name Coldwell Brothers LLC, until Loony blew his little balding top at Barb Pitcock some time in 2013, and that was that.

But more to the point here, 90 for Life, which peddles a large line of overpriced nutritional drinks and supplements and potions, launched its big Hispan-o-scam a couple of years ago, and front and center in that scheme was another longtime Katie bud (and frauduct/flopportunity peddler, Scamworld circle jerker mutual admiration society member, apparent xenophobe and Trump lover) Fred van Liew. who has also been mentioned here a few times.



"I am heavily invested in this project to open the door to the Huge Spanish speaking community throughout the world, as well as the US and Canada," said Fred in 2014. And here's a May 2015 upload of Spanish Financial Freedom with Dave & Barb Pitcock: "The most effective system for building wealth ever created."

I only recently found this upload and felt a need to join in the conversation, but so far it's just a monologue and not a conversation. I seem to run into that problem a lot. On the other hand, that particular video has only had 206 views at the time I'm writing this, so there's that.

But... if you've seen one scheme, you've seen 'em all. As Salty wrote in his April 26 post about Herbalife:

Everything they do :: everything they say :: everyone they hire … it’s all about perpetuating a lie that facilitates some of the world’s richest people str8 stealing from some of the world’s poorest people.

Every distributor I’ve investigated :: every lead generation method :: every retention method … everything … fucking all of it … lies

Yep, that about says it all. A good rule for financial, emotional and perhaps even physical survival is this: If some smirking, overfed huckster approaches you blathering about a new opportunity to realize the American dream... solo di no.

Pouring a little Salt on Scamworld slugs

I'm going to close out the steamy month of August with some good news: For the time being, my pal Salty Droid is back on his blog. It's something for Jason to do while awaiting the emergence of SaltyDroid Phase II, a phase that I speculate will not be good news for scammers but will be really good news for many other people.

In his new post Jason/Salty mentioned, among other things, the defamation flawsuit in which he and I and several other entities were involved earlier this year as defendants. I hope that in a subsequent post or posts he continues to elaborate on the profound stupidity of that suit and on the hilarious exchanges he had with plaintiff Leonard Coldwell's lawyers. I've told the basics from my side but I suspect that Jason has much more to tell. It seems clear that he really knows how to bring out the crazy in scammers and their lawyers, but frankly, in this case there was a lot of baseline crazy to work with in both the plaintiff and his formidable legal team.

Jason also thumbed his nose at Donald Trump (speaking of loathsome litigious blowhards, which we were, because Leonard Coldwell is a loathsome litigious blowhard, and so is Donald Trump). Wrote Jason:

Donald Trump is ahead in the polls for the presidential nomination? What the what? I wonder how many terabytes of audio exist of Utah’s boiler room cartels boiling down Trump’s “university” leads into quivering masses of bankruptcy and despair?

Indeed. In 2013 Jason published several eye-opening posts about Trump's MLM scam connections -- this is one of my favorites -- and I hope these posts get a much wider audience as we get into the 2016 presidential campaign. Not that the haters who love The Donald will really care that in addition to being an egotistical blowhard/arrogant one-percenter/endless fount of hate speech, Trump is also a Scamworld player. But some who are on the fence about him might take notice.

There's another Trump connection that is of particular interest to this Whirled: the current head of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's big scheme the Global Information Network (GIN) is Troy McClain, CEO of the AXS Investment Group (of Trudeau's good buddies) that purchased GIN last year. Troy first rose to infamy as one of the more arrogant contestants on Trump's "reality" show, The Apprentice. He has gotten a lot of mileage out of that and proudly quotes Trump as saying that it's guys like Troy who make Murica great.

On his latest blog post, Jason also did a drive-by at the excessively scammy MLM Vemma, which of course he'd previously reported on at length.

The FTC just gave the full smack down to Vemma! Fun. Empty-heart condolences to my BFF Anthony Powell. Back to Herbalife maybe Anthony? Or how about doTerra … I hear it’s all the rage? #pyramidpimp moves on …

Vemma has been shut down, but apparently only temporarily. Even so, this is news because the Federal Trade Commission rarely takes such radical (read: responsible) action against a multi-level marketing company. But I wouldn't be surprised to see Vemma rise again in a marginally less exploitative version. Historically the FTC has been extraordinarily lenient with MLMs. And MLMs continue to do their insidious work of destroying people's lives (at worst), or, for many millions more, falling far short of the hype -- and all under the guise of "dream building."

The good news is that Vemma's shutdown, however transient, will no doubt put a damper on the efforts of some of the scummiest scammers in Scamworld -- not just the aforementioned Anthony Powell, but also long-time Kevin Trudeau buddy (and current GIN co-owner) Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan and perhaps especially his Voldemort-in-training spawn, Chris Jr. (Here's a pic of Voldy Junior stylin' the style, from this searing piece of journalism published in July 2014, when Junior was still flying high on the Vemma fumes. A scintillating snippet:

Q:  As a young entrepreneur, what are some of your favorite brands that you love wearing and that actually helps you feel more like an entrepreneur?
CM:  HUGO BOSS.  Couple of factors with that one, the word boss if you are an entrepreneur resonates with you.  One of the main reasons (if not the main reason) people start businesses or become an entrepreneur is because they want to be their own boss.   Then when I first heard the name Hugo Boss, the only reason I bought the clothes is because it said boss on the tags. Hugo Boss really has a fine line between high quality but not out of control prices.  You can look really sharp without spending thousands of dollars.  I wouldn’t have known any of this and would have spent a bunch of unnecessary money if I didn’t connect with a stylist and have been guided through what to do.)

Speaking of GIN, I'll wrap up this August wrap-up with a mention of a rumor that I just heard about the 2015 GIN Family Reunion, which is (appropriately) being held this year at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.



Sorry, kids, but comments are disabled for that vid. (Here is the YouTube link.)

Being the savant about dates that I am, I couldn't help but notice that the big party will be held the week after the sixth anniversary of James Arthur Ray's infamous Death Lodge, which happened on October 8, 2009. And this is relevant because the rumor I heard is that Ray will be a speaker at the GIN Disney event.

True or not? I don't know yet. But, as reported here last year, Ray info-packets were reportedly being passed out to registrants at the previous Family Reunion. And Ray's products were formerly featured in the GIN store (which apparently is in the process of being revamped and will be password-protected). As well, Trudeau publicly defended Ray after Death Lodge happened, and Ray had his marketing people promote Your Wish Is Your Command (the upsell for GIN) even while Ray was still serving his much-too-short prison sentence for cooking his followers to death. More recently, other GIN loyalists/leaders have promoted Ray (see this post, under "GIN promotes killer"). So really, I suppose it is just a matter of time before James himself is paraded live before the GINfolk at a real GIN/AXS event.


Again, I don't know if the rumor about a Ray appearance at the GIN Family Reunion is true -- either the details haven't been finalized or GIN is keeping them under wraps because they fear (justly) negative publicity -- but I am following up on it now. If you've heard anything, please do let me know. If the rumor does turn out to be true, then how pathetic is it that while Kirby Brown, James Shore, Liz Neuman and Colleen Conaway are still dead, Jimmy Ray gets to go to Disney World to help celebrate the fact that he and GIN are still alive? It's a small Scamworld, after all. 
 
And it's a world that very much needs a Salty Droid in any of his phases.

PS ~ In case you are at all puzzled about the title of this post, here ya go.

Tin Promises: How MLMs Can Tear Lives Apart, Part 2 of 2

This is the conclusion of "Roger Willco's" story about his life on the fringes of multi-level marketing (MLM) culture. If you haven't read Part 1 of this story, I suggest you do so first.

Sometimes, involvement with MLM -- and the self-help/motivational/LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training) culture that both supports and is supported by MLM -- can have tragic consequences. More than finances and relationships can be decimated; sometimes, on occasion, lives can be lost. In all fairness it is not a common occurrence, but it happens enough to be noteworthy...although even one occurrence would be too much.

We've seen tragic extremes in recent years with selfish-help guru and star of The Secret James Arthur Ray (who has been covered more than once on this blog and, in much more detail, on Salty Droid's blog). And tragedies have occurred with lesser-known gurus and LGATS as well, the link in this sentence being just one example.

Disastrous consequences have been a part of LGATs ever there have been LGATs. Group such as est (later The Forum, then Landmark Forum/Landmark Education, now Landmark Worldwide) have had their share of fatalities and injuries over the years, although one has to be careful how one frames these incidents, since Landmark, somewhat like Scientology, is notoriously litigious. The 70s-style "encounter groups" that were held in venues such as Esalen also spawned their share of tragic tales. One problem then as now has been that egregiously under-qualified "leaders" have been allowed to guide vulnerable participants through grueling emotional processes, sometimes leading to traumas or even psychotic episodes that the "leaders" have been utterly unequipped to handle.

Sadly, most people don't see or acknowledge the potentially dangerous side of LGAT culture or MLMs, any more than they see or acknowledge the cultish insidiousness that Roger documented so well in Part 1 of this narrative. When tragedy strikes, some will blame the victim, and others will rationalize the incident as an aberration, perhaps an unavoidable one.

I am impressed by Roger's even-handed treatment of the story below. He blames neither LGAT nor MLM, and certainly does not blame the victim or the victim's loved ones. He acknowledges the victim's mental illness and does not blame any external factors for that illness. At the same time he is forthright about what he sees as the roles that LGAT and MLM may have played in the tragedy.

It was difficult for Roger to write this story; he is still processing it, still trying to make sense of it. I am grateful to him for allowing me to share the story here.

I am also grateful to Roger for wrapping up his narrative by offering some solid pointers on how you can protect yourself from well-meaning (or not so well-meaning) people in your life who may be earnestly offering you the next great opportunity to finally live the life of your dreams. It is Roger's hope -- and mine as well -- that reading his story can help you see that those golden promises these people use to lure you are all too often forged of tin. And sometimes things made of tin have sharp edges and can hurt you.

One more point, since this has been a frequent topic on this Whirled of late: If you've recently been separated, either willingly or unwillingly, from serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's Global Information Network (GIN) MLM -- which was suspended on November 30, 2013 -- and you are now even remotely tempted by the siren song of ex-GIN principals who are offering you still more golden promises (in the form of, say, a chance to get in on a private phone call about The Next Big Thing), please make it a point to read this story, and Part 1, again. And then read it again, if you have to. It will be a far better use of your time than listening in on that phone call.

Epilogue: Tin Promises
Turn Deadly
by "Roger Willco"
© 2014, all rights reserved • Used by permission

The MLM culture I experienced included a symbiosis with self-help and prosperity cults, which seem to orbit its periphery in order to exploit a population made vulnerable by its already-suspended ability to think critically. The MLM events I attended often featured motivational speakers who encouraged listeners’ involvement in these cults. The pursuit of material wealth was central to MLM’s message; and high-level distributors pushed neophytes to read books and listen to audio programs authored by cult gurus. The relationship between MLM and cults seems to be a vicious circle. MLM promotes self-help and prosperity cults, which in turn, promote MLM. Some critics refer to this unholy syndicate as "The Big Sick Machine".

In our later years together, Danni had become so consumed by her appetite for self-help and prosperity-focused books and CDs that she accumulated sizable libraries of them. Always a student, Danni did her hour-long morning fitness workouts to the accompaniment of her CDs; and our hours on the road were serenaded by her chosen gurus’ voices droning nonstop over the car stereo. Danni called it our "university on wheels"; but for me, it was a disappointing change from her delightful and well-informed commentary about the natural and man-made wonders she noticed on our travels in happier times. I’d always been fascinated by Danni’s ability to identify any crop growing in a field a half mile away, describe its growing season and the weather conditions necessary for it to flourish. When it came to nature, she was a virtual encyclopedia.

Seminar madness
Four years into our relationship, Danni decided to participate in a "personal-growth" seminar offered in a distant city by an organization her MLM associates heartily endorsed. In late-night phone calls to me while she was away, she recounted a highly regimented schedule from early morning until at least nine o’clock at night and sometimes until eleven; and that regimentation extended to meals and bathroom breaks. Much of the curriculum Danni described made sense. However, I found the absence of trained and licensed psychological counselors at the exercises involving deep personal disclosure and other challenges to emotional vulnerability disturbing.

I was also concerned about the virtual deification of the program’s leader among his followers. It was the same sort of reverence MLM participants seemed to have for their companies’ founders. After her return home, Danni began to receive CDs from the seminar’s producers through the mail. They consisted of motivational messages from their guru and his inspirational interviews with various prosperity gurus and MLM leaders.

Danni went on to attend three more seminars in the next twelve months to complete the series. Again, she described legitimate fear challenges that made sense to me. However, the schedules were highly regimented from early morning until late at night, just as they were in the first seminar.

Shortly before she attended her final seminar, I went with Danni to one of the program’s half-day introductory workshops. Throughout the workshop, I recognized the same sort of psychosocial deprogramming I’d experienced twenty years earlier in basic training at the beginning of my hitch in the U.S. Army. I saw firsthand the indignity imposed on attendees by an authoritarian facilitator—a tall, fit and stern-faced young man I’ll call "Adolf". Wearing a well-tailored grey suit and marching purposefully up and down the center aisle, he barked orders to his assistants and to us. The only things missing were shades and a flat-brimmed campaign hat tilted forward atop his shock of blond hair. I can’t recall that he cracked a smile at any point in the workshop—all in all, not my idea of a fun time.

At the end of the workshop, Adolf gave a recruiting pitch for the first seminar, complete with the fee "discounting" that is so familiar to anyone who’s experienced similar workshops. I don’t remember the claimed dollar value of the seminar; but it was in the thousands. By the time Adolf finished his spiel—"This course is worth $xx,xxx. How many of you would sign up today if we offered you this outstanding opportunity for $x,xxx?" —the fee had "dropped" to $500. Were I to observe a similar workshop today, I would recognize many clues that would suggest the organization was a cult. However, I hadn’t yet learned enough to realize I had briefly stepped into the cult netherworld.

I understand that the necessary purpose of military training is to ultimately reprogram new soldiers to follow orders without question, to overcome fear, and to make it possible for them to participate in the horrors of combat without intolerable guilt. However, I wondered what reprogramming participants in this series of self-help seminars underwent. Aaaah . . . but that was a secret.

Danni came away happy with the overall experience and with noticeable changes in her attitude—some that seemed good and some not so good. She was more self-confident; but she had also become recalcitrant in her refusal to accept any information coming from outside her cultural bubble or which countered her MLM-prescribed biases. Danni’s ability to think critically about anything coming from inside her bubble seemed to be completely wiped out. One positive was her inclusion in an accountability group, established in the first seminar. The group initially conferred by phone every week. However, that fell apart after just a few conferences. Regrettably, Danni was also $12,000 poorer for her adventure.

Start them young...
A few months later, Danni’s 17-year old son, Ethan, signed up for the first in the cult’s series of seminars—this particular one tailored to adolescents. He too came away happy that he’d attended and convinced he’d gained a lot from it.

Fast-forward four years. Ethan was doing exceptionally well in college. He was brilliant, talented, athletic, highly motivated and self-directed—much like his mother. Amid all this good news, came one piece of bad news. Ethan had begun exhibiting episodes of bizarre behavior that prompted his dad to have a psychiatrist examine him. The doctor’s diagnosis was "high-functioning schizophrenia". Ethan was never able to accept his disease; and tragically, he declined treatment.

Note: I don’t for a moment think that his years-earlier encounter with the self-help cult was the cause of his illness. Schizophrenia is an organic disease of the physical brain, not an environmentally induced disease of the intangible mind.

It wasn’t long after Ethan’s struggles came to light that Danni and I terminated our relationship. We had stayed in touch; and a year later, we were working to salvage our long-standing friendship from the wreckage of our failed relationship. I had relocated to a nearby community where I was rebuilding my life. My anger had resolved into a determination to help others avoid the devastation I’d seen victims of that industry suffer; and my motivation had turned from vengeance to compassion.

One evening, while relaxing after a day of writing and online research, I received a call from Danni. In a trembling voice, barely understandable through her agonized sobs, she told me what she could of a story that broke my heart.

The prior weekend, Ethan had been invited to help staff an initial mini-seminar sponsored by the same cult he was confident had helped him so much in the past. It was held several hundred miles from where Ethan lived, so he stayed in the local sponsor’s home.

Sometime mid-seminar Ethan phoned Danni, upset that he’d violated his obligation to participants by sharing too much about his own personal struggles. In subsequent calls to her over the next several days, he told her that he was [obsessively] studying the cult-founder’s written manifesto. Apparently, no facilitator, seminar staffer or his host realized that Ethan was in emotional crisis. They simply didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to recognize it.

After the seminar, Ethan returned to his home near the university he attended. By midweek, his continuing bizarre behavior had alarmed his long-time girlfriend. She phoned her dad, who owned the house in which they were living; and he came over to tell Ethan he’d have to find someplace else to live until he got some psychiatric help.

Danni received another call from Ethan that morning in which he told her of his unraveling situation. She was out of town for the day; but she reassured him with an invitation to move in with her until his circumstances stabilized. That call would be Ethan’s final communication with anyone in his family.

An hour later, a friend of Danni’s, Joanne, arrived at Danni’s house to feed her menagerie of birds and cats. As she let herself into the house, she noticed Ethan sitting on the front room sofa, reading aloud from the cult guru’s manifesto as if delivering a sermon. As a puzzled Joanne wished him a good morning, Ethan, without acknowledging her greeting or saying another word, set his book on the coffee table, pulled a small-caliber revolver from his backpack and pressed its muzzle against the right side of his upper neck. Joanne, now panicked, ran back outside and to the house next door to call 9-1-1. At almost the same moment the spring-loaded screen door slammed shut with a bang behind her, she thought she also heard a second report that sounded to her like it could have been a gunshot.

Minutes later, police found Ethan, slumped onto his left side on his mother’s sofa, his legs askew and dangling to the floor. He wasn’t breathing. His book was open, face down on the coffee table—almost as if he had intended to pick it up again, and his handgun lay beside him on the sofa cushion near his empty right hand. The officers found a nearly bloodless gunshot wound just below and behind his right ear. His handgun’s deadly missile had obliterated his brainstem and Ethan had died instantly.

So ended the life of an amazing young man, full of promise, full of care for everyone whose life he touched, and loved by all who knew him. Hundreds attended Ethan’s memorial, listening to his grieving friends and brothers tearfully recount his delightful personality, his intellectual curiosity, his openness, his honesty and his ability to think outside the box.

Months later, Ethan’s closest friends and family gathered once more—this time aboard a borrowed yacht. They silently sailed on a gentle breeze into the deep waters of the ocean Ethan so loved. They ceremoniously scattered his ashes on the water’s surface, consigning his physical remains to the sea and locking their memories of him forever in their hearts.

Questions left unanswered
Ethan left no written communication explaining his decision to end his life. As is always the case, his family and friends sought some—any—explanation for his unexpected passing. Estranged from Ethan’s family and alone with my grief, I began my own analysis of what might have led to Ethan’s decision to leave a life that had become for him, too painful, for a more peaceful place.

My opinion is heavily colored by emotion and should by no means be considered anything more than that of an acknowledged layman. I’m just someone with a penchant for logic who loved Ethan and is trying to understand why he died. However the circumstances involved, from the beginning of my life with Danni to the end of Ethan’s life, lead me to conclusions which more than any other, make sense to me.

There’s no question that Ethan’s untreated psychosis was the ultimate cause of his suicide. That fact cannot be obscured by the other circumstances surrounding his death. There was nothing his family or friends could have done to prevent it. Ethan’s choice to refuse treatment was his alone. This written story is available to Danni; and if she ever reads it, I want her to understand that this reality is incontrovertible. No person on this planet—not even Danni—had the power to change Ethan’s tortured thought processes without his permission.

Beyond that all-important recognition, it seems apparent that Ethan’s final psychotic episode began while he was staffing a self-help seminar the weekend before his death. In my opinion, Ethan’s cult-related activities’ proximity in space and time to his suicide point to its contribution—at least as a triggering factor.

None of us who knew and loved Ethan could have predicted his life would end this way. Maybe he didn’t really have to die. Maybe Ethan died, in part, because of the dangerous mind-bending stress that self-help cults impose on their followers without appropriate knowledge and expertise.

The unacknowledged and deniable link between MLM and self-help cults isn’t intuitively recognizable . . . it all seemed harmless enough to me at the time. However, there’s an observable and documented connection.

MLM is allowed to flourish because agencies of our state and federal governments charged with protecting the public from fraud have abdicated their responsibility to understand and counter the economic and social tolls the MLM industry exacts from its victims. Because it flourishes, mind-control cults do as well.

Our government regulators fail to act because they are in reality us; and we as a nationwide community, choose to tolerate these predatory enterprises. Until we stop tolerating their malignant abuses, the MLM industry will continue to feed pernicious mind-control cults with ready victims. One thing is certain: The consequences of our tolerance reach far beyond the economic and social costs to victimized members of our community. The chain of contributing factors to Ethan’s suicide extends all the way to us—Americans whose love of freedom sometimes leads us to forget our responsibility to prevent exploitive abuses of our blood-bought liberty.

That is why I’m making this very private story public. It’s a story my conscience won’t permit me to leave untold. I’ve changed the names of victims, kept undisclosed the identity of perpetrators and altered details of Ethan’s suicide to protect the privacy of innocent people who’ve already suffered far too much.

However, this story couldn’t be more real. The tragedy of what happened to Ethan and Danni, and the pain Ethan’s family and friends suffered at having to tell him "goodbye" much too soon doesn’t have to be a complete and total waste. If their story can help persuade a reluctant public to put an end to the MLM deceptions that all too often entice our innocent neighbors onto a disastrous path, at least some good can come of it.

The path begins with glittering golden promises. However, it’s also a path which at least 99% of the time leads to financial loss . . . a path which if followed farther, leads to financial and social ruin, revealing the golden promises of MLM as counterfeits made of tin . . . and a path which can end in devastation. In Ethan’s case, those tin promises were ultimately deadly. Maybe Ethan didn’t have to die . . . but he did; and from where I stand, it looks very much like we, as an unenlightened community, let it happen.

Peace … Out [Ethan’s favorite sign-off]

"It’s not that we can’t do something about it . . . it’s just that we haven’t." — Salty Droid

Protect Yourself: How Being Tough
Can Keep You Out of Trouble

As long as "caveat emptor" remains the public’s only effective protection from business-opportunity fraud, there is one protective solution available to individual consumers. It’s amazingly simple and fair to all concerned, it’s perfectly legal and it’s part of the due diligence aspiring entrepreneurs in any other setting exercise when contemplating a business proposition.

Here’s the technique: Simply state to the seller at the outset of their pitch that as a condition of doing business with them, you need to see a true copy of their most recent income tax filing for the business into which they’re inviting your participation. If their tax form—usually an IRS schedule C—showing their net (taxable) profit—line 31on Schedule C—is positive, the proposition may merit further investigation, although you’re not necessarily safe. If on the other hand, line 31 indicates a net loss, you’d be wise to assume that you too would sustain net losses in the same business.

Unquestionably, this is a difficult demand to make on a friend or family member—the persons most likely to offer you a home-based business opportunity. They will probably tell you in all honesty that they haven’t been in business long enough to make a profit. That’s OK. Just ask to see the same documentation from the person directly above them in their upline. Keep going until someone up the line is able to produce a qualified document. Only three in every thousand MLM distributors make a net profit; and chances are, you’ll get a flat refusal before you get to someone who can show bona fide proof of profitability.

Deceptive business-opportunity sellers will make up all kinds of excuses for refusing to cooperate. Nevertheless, if you are persistent in your demand for valid proof of profitability, their excuses won’t sway you; and malevolent sellers will look for another mark somewhere else.

Cautions:

1. Don’t accept substitute documentation. The penalties for filing fraudulent income tax returns are sufficient to give you some assurance of a filed IRS document’s legitimacy.
2. If at any point you’re told that having a home-based business allows them (and you) a way to write off ANY non-business related expenses, walk away. The person who’s giving you that information is committing tax fraud. Would you really want to be in business with someone of that ilk?
3. Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into a conversation with anyone in your prospector’s upline until your demand is met and you’ve actually seen the document. Most often, that third person has specific expertise in deceptive tactics that will dissuade you from true due diligence so they can close the sale. Don’t allow it under any circumstances!
4. Before you sign anything, require your prospector to provide you with a certified photocopy of the IRS document they show you as proof of their business’ profitability that you can retain for your records. This gives you written documentation of fraud if it turns out your prospector sold you a bill of goods.
5. Finally, don’t be drawn into ANY proposition that promises quick or easy material wealth, a fast track to emotional health or to success in any aspect of life. It’s safest to assume those propositions are fraudulent and predatory. I can’t say there are no exceptions. However, I can honestly say that I’ve never encountered one.

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!