Neothink and Mark Hamilton aka Wallace Ward Jr.: still scamming, but apparently on a smaller scale these daze

Some lifelong scammers just never give up, even if their scam machine is running on fumes -- and that seems to be the case with one Wallace Ward Jr. (aka Mark Hamilton, aka Mark Scamilton on this blog) and his Neothink® scampire, which is based on "secret" information and "forbidden" knowledge.

Because I have been so distracted by the disturbing trends in American politix, it's been a while since I have posted updates about any of this blog's featured scammers besides serial huckster Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie on this blog) and convicted murderer James Arthur Ray (aka Death Ray). And actually, in both of those most recent posts -- the one about Trudeau and the one about Ray -- there was more than a hint of American politix as well as Scamworld, since, unfortunately, the two areas have become increasingly intertwined over the past few years.

In any case, I had recently been wondering about the current activities of Scamilton, who for many years was one of Kevin Trudeau's bestest bilking bros. I'll say right off that at this point I don't know if Katie and Mark are still associated with each other in any way; Scamilton seemed to beat a retreat into the background years ago after it became obvious that Trudeau and his mega-scam, the Global Information Network (GIN) were in real and immediate legal and financial peril. But back in the day, specifically 2009 and for a few years thereafter, Scamilton and his Neothink machine played a very large part in launching and marketing GIN. More about that in a little while.

Scamilton had inherited the Neo scampire from his daddy, the late Wallace Ward Sr. (aka Frank Wallace), whom Katie reportedly met during his first incarceration back in the 1990s. Kevin had been locked up for fraud, and Ward the Elder for tax evasion. Apparently the two hit it off.

The Ward/Wallace/Hamilton scheme has gone by various names: Neo-Tech, Nova-Tech, Nouveau-Tech, and Neothink among them. There have been numerous variations in spelling; sometimes the names have appeared as two separate words, sometimes as one hyphenated word, sometimes as one word with no hyphen. Under Scamilton, Neothink has been the predominant brand name. By any name, it has always been based upon "secret" or "exclusive" or "forbidden" information -- much like Kevin Trudeau's GIN. No coincidence there.*

The Neo/Nova/Nouveau franchise has always centered around several books of timeless "wisdom," some penned by Ward the Elder, some by Ward the Younger, some written by one or both under various pseudonyms. A few were presented as poorly-written novels. (Speaking of novels, Kevin Trudeau announced a few years ago that he was going to begin a series of magickal mystical books to be presented as "fiction" in order to make them more acceptable to the sheeple and to keep him from getting in trouble with the government and other evil forces, though he insinuated, in a nudge-nudge wink-wink way, that they will actually present the true story of the prodigy and extraordinary human that he markets himself as being. If you need a laugh and a brief diversion, read all about it here.)

But back to Scamilton. When casually surfing the Net for updates on him and his Neo-schemes, I came across a piece on the web site of the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle. It's a March 2023 column by Dallas Morning News Watchdog Desk columnist Dave Lieber, with the headline: "89-year-old invited to join 'Secret Society.' What is it?"

Lieber's 89-year-old mother-in-law had recently received, by snail mail, a 10-page letter inviting her to join a "Secret Society." The mother-in-law didn't fall for it, fortunately, and she did have the widsom to pass it on to her son-in-law.

The 10-page missive did not ask for money, but merely requested permission to send a free pamphlet. And if you know anything about Neo-scam marketing, the next part in Lieber's article will sound very, very familiar.

The letter informs Mom that she is one of the lucky few who have been targeted to join the secret class of leaders who quietly run our country. Please keep this confidential, it says. (So much for that.)

Using her first name throughout the letter, it praises her for possessing “some very rare, hidden traits.”

It informs that with its collection of famous people, billionaires, intellectuals and scientists, it’s considered by some to be “the most powerful organization in the world.”

Pretty impressive, Mom.

The letter writer doesn’t fully identify him or herself, but adds, “I don’t mean to brag, but I’m perhaps one of the most famous people in the world. If you own a TV, listen to the radio, browse the Internet, you will find me in a news story.”

The letter was simply signed, "Tom."

"I am the last man standing"
Now, if David Lieber had been a regular long-time reader of this blog, he would have known right off who "Tom" really was. But almost nobody reads this blog, so instead Lieber had to go to one of his colleagues to find out who was behind the mysterious letter.

I asked Dallas Morning News researcher Misha Vaid to help me find out who’s behind this. She described the research as going down “a very fun, albeit baffling rabbit hole.”

She helped me find the wizard behind this enterprise. Mark Hamilton is his pen name, and his real name is Wallace Ward, who is 64 and lives in Nevada.

In an hourlong phone interview, Ward told me the free pamphlet he sends can lead the curious to buy his $139 book, which, in turn, can lead buyers to pay $299 for a 3,000-page book by him. He calls it his “magnum opus” and shares his life philosophy, which he calls Neo-Tech.

The company that prints his book printed phone books, so you get an idea of his book’s heft.

The Neo-Tech philosophy was started decades ago by his dad, who had the same name. He carries on his late father’s work.

In summary, it goes like this: The world, especially in business and government, is populated by liars and cheats. The only way to stop them is through truth and honesty.

To Scamilton's credit, I guess, he did acknowledge to Lieber that it's inappropriate to send solicitation letters to the elderly, and he vowed that he was trying to cull the mailing lists he buys to attract a younger audience. Alas, most of those lists are by and large populated by the elderly, so what's a fellow to do? From Lieber again:

“I haven’t been able to figure out how to market this online,” he confesses. “I’ve tried over and over again to target younger people, but I haven’t been able to make that work through direct mail at this point in time.”

In his prime, he sent out 20,000 letters a month. Now, he feels lucky if he can get 2,000 out each month.

Nothing I can find is illegal here, but its morality is debatable. The initial letter is filled with promises about joining a society that claims to help rule the world.

While many solicitations thrive online, this one, without a strong digital presence, is dying. Ward refers to “the good old days.” He says that in his endeavors, “I am the last man standing.”

If those claims are really true (and you have to take everything a lifelong huckster says with a big dose of skepticism), then it would appear that the former ties between Wally Ward Jr./Mark Hamilton and Kevin Trudeau have indeed been severed. After all, Trudeau's scam machine is very much an online thing, and appears to be attracting not only younger rubes but an expanding international audience to boot.

"I will see you on the beaches of the world!"
But oh, back in the daze when Trudeau's GIN was a mega-MLM (multi-level marketing) scam, Mark Hamilton cleaned up more than anyone in the org except for Kevin himself. He made millions selling the "product," which wasn't actually a tangible product but was an expensive Level 1 membership in GIN.

In fact, according to court documents, Hamilton had not one but two MLM downlines in GIN, one under his real name of Wallace Ward Jr. and one under his pen name, Mark Hamilton. I wrote all about it in September 2013. If you read that post you'll find links to some of my previous posts about the Neoscam. (You'll also see that, according to a November 2009 letter I quoted from Trudeau's then-asset manager, Marc Lane, Mark Hamilton apparently had a sponsorship arrangement with Trudeau's infamous International Pool Tour, or IPT, which had supposedly failed a couple of years previously. I wrote about the IPT at length in this April 2013 post, under the subhead, "The International Pool Tour.)

Trudeau and Hamilton were scratching each other's backs big-time in those days, and, thanks in no small part to Hamilton's legacy (and his Neo mailing lists, no doubt), GIN was able to attract numerous folks who were already Neothinkers, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars to be in KT's mysterious "inner circle." And some of these people were senior citizens. (Here's a link to a capsule history of GIN and the wild promises on which the scheme was founded.)

Scamilton and Katie were clearly collaborating on the marketing of GIN in those early days, to the point that some folks thought GIN and Neothink were the same organization. In this May 2013 post I wrote about this, and included a link to a page, taken from one of hundreds of court documents, in which this statement appears:

26. Trudeau further states that he and another individual named Mark Hamilton reached out to their lists of purchasers of Trudeau's Natural Cures and Debt Cures books to get people to join GIN. At approximately 1 minute and two seconds, Trudeau then states "And because it was Kevin Trudeau, people joined, that's why thousands joined."

You'll notice that Trudeau shared his invaluable "Natural Cures" and "Debt Cures" lists with Hamilton. It was "Natural Cures" that shot Trudeau, via infomercials as well as online and direct-mail marketing, to new heights of fame in the early 2000s. "Natural Cures" unfortunately also launched some formerly obscure but truly evil scammers, such as phony doctor/cancer quack/neo-Nazi/alleged predator Leonard Coldwell, to infamy and wealth... but I digress.

In my May 2013 post I also provided screen shots of one of the early GIN solicitation letters, dated November 7, 2009 and headed, "From the desk of Mark Hamilton." In the grand Neo tradition, it was done up in an old-school looking typewriter font. Here's a direct link to page 1 of the letter, and here's a link to page 2.

The screen shots were originally shared by one of thousands of folks who had received the letter by snail mail; for privacy concerns I redacted the recipient's name. The wording is very much like the "secret society" solicitation letters for Neothink. Here's a bit from page 2:

Riches can be yours!

Secrets never before revealed can be yours!

The web site explains it all. Once you listen to the GIN Special Invitation recording, you will know what I am talking about. You will thank me a million times for thinking about you and personally giving you an invitation to join this never before structured kind of wealth membership organization.

But this is a LIMITED TIME OPPORTUNITY.

Listen to the Special Invitation on the web site. Go to [web site address] to sign up. Now is the time to act on this opportunity.

Money will flow like lava!

Millionaires will be made!

Join now and watch your dreams come true!

Join NOW, [NAME REDACTED], and I will see you on the beaches of the world!

Your Mentor,
Mark Hamilton
Author of Your
Nouveau Tech Heirloom Manuscripts

In the PS, Hamilton reiterates that you must act NOW and that you must use the affiliate code Hamilton. And as I mentioned above, "Hamilton" made millions from GIN as a result. As did "Ward," of course.

I have to wonder about Scamilton's insinuation, in his interview with Lieber, that he is still trying to attract a younger audience by direct mail. That's clearly not working, so why spend so much time and energy on that endeavor? After all, as he indicated, he does have an online presence.

What does seem to be true is that he has been trying to market his schemes online for years. For instance, in late 2013, after the original GIN MLM was shut down by the courts and it was clear that GIN would no longer be the gravy train it once had been for a very select few, Hamilton doubled down on his Neo-hustling -- and those efforts appeared to be largely if not exclusively online. I wrote about this in December 2013.

There's a new flopportunity in Scamworld. Or should I say, there's a "Neo-flopportunity." Now-jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's Ponzi-like Global Information Network (GIN) is imploding, and the MLM portion has been suspended, so the top earners and others are scrambling to find a new scam -- or in some cases, to dust off the old scams. One such top GIN earner, dustin' off the old scams and makin' 'em Nouveau again, is Mark Hamilton (real name Wallace Ward, Jr.; Whirled name Mark Scamilton). ...

...This seems to be the flopportunity in question: the chance to sell overpriced manuscripts of seekrit wisdumb, which are basically what the Neo-scampire has been selling for decades. In the past they old-school-marketed mostly to the elderly and under-educated, sending them "personalized" letters that told them they were Very Special People, and offering them special "heirloom editions" that had their name on the cover and everything. Now the Neo-scammers are trying to open up new markets, via an MLM...

...The copy on the landing page betrays, I must say, a certain desperation:

How would you like to make a nice profit selling the in-demand Neothink® Manuscripts from the Neothink Society, being released to the public for the first time? Especially since this is an easy, turnkey system all set up for you to place on your website or send out by email? It costs you no money and only a few minutes to set up and get started. For over three decades, Mark Hamilton’s life-changing Neothink® Manuscripts have sold through the private-club Neothink® Society to specially-selected people. You may remember at one time receiving your invitation letter from the Society. For the first time, Mark Hamilton and his Neothink® Society are allowing his highly-coveted Neothink® Manuscripts to be sold to the general public.

And so on. Of course, that was 2013 -- ancient history in Interwebz time -- and I have no idea how successful that scheme was, nor how successful overall the online marketing efforts by Hamilton and his proxies have been. But the point is that Hamilton and his scampire do have a significant online presence and they have for years. If their marketing has been as unsuccessful as Hamilton indicated, they need to modernize the products and maybe hire some better marketing folks.

I wish I could attribute Hamilton's claimed lack of success (again, provided that he was being forthright with Dave Lieber) to nothing more than a general smartening-up of the public in recent years, and a lower gullibility quotient than in the past. Stop snickering right this minute, because I know that this argument doesn't really hold water, given the fact that Kevin Trudeau and GIN are still attracting suckers with the secret society/forbidden info/conspiracy narratives shtick -- and for that matter, given the fact that there is a yuuge Trump cult that has been sucked in by many of the same marketing strategies Trudeau and Hamilton have used. ICYMI, I covered all of the above in my previous post.

Where Hamilton is concerned I think there's another factor at work besides ineffective marketing strategies. Perhaps the main key to Hamilton's and Neothink's relative obscurity, as opposed to Trump and Trudeau and their respective grifts, is personality, or lack thereof. For better or worse (worse, actually), Trump and Trudeau are Personalities with a capital P, and therefore have been able to build a cult of personality around themselves. They keep their respective cults alive by exploiting all media at their disposal to aggressively and relentlessly pander to their cult members' vanities, longings, greed, fears, and anger, while presenting themselves as saviors who can fix every problem.

By contrast, Hamilton, who has chosen to remain in the background for the most part -- and did so even in GIN's heyday -- has zero personality, and often comes across on his videos as a creepy perv from a third-rate 1980s movie. So maybe his problem goes deeper than mailing lists and advertising strategies.

Neostink web site's fake history of Mark Hamilton
Nevertheless Hamilton seems to still be striving to portray himself as a hero and a servant of humanity. The site that currently seems to be the main one for the Neothink Society is really playing up Mark Hamilton's contributions to humanity. (Again, shades of Kevin Trudeau and his supposedly magnificent contributions to the advancement of the human race.) Here is the copy on the "About Mark Hamilton" page:

Mark Hamilton wanted to tell everyone, but they would not listen. Their eyes would glaze over, for they were ensconced in what they had been taught by the powers that be.  The “experts” would ridicule Mark’s ideas.  The authorities would punish Mark’s ideas. His ideas were too different.  In fact, his ideas threatened the existing power structures.  He soon learned there could be no direct communication of what he knew.  He needed to silently clear a new path.

So, his work began in secret.  No one beyond his family would know for quite some time about his secret knowledge. Mark Hamilton worked long days, years, decades getting what he knew onto paper and then into action.  As years became decades, he captured thousands of pages of Neothink^® in his highly-guarded manuscripts.  Finally, after many years, he decided it was time to form a protected, secret society of his select few, yet very passionate readers.

And those passionate readers grew to a couple million, reading his large Neothink^® Manuscripts with entirely new ways of looking at the world.  With the rise of the Internet, Mark Hamilton’s secret society took a lot of abuse from establishment-ensconced, misinformed people who heard out-of-context bits and pieces of Mark’s hidden ideas when some of his ideas began to leak.  Of course, the establishment’s “experts” tried to discredit Mark Hamilton, and the authorities tried to shut him down.

After thirty-three long years, Mark decided to no longer keep his ideas hidden.  Maturing from an ambitious young man into a determined middle-aged man, Mark feels the time has come to release his ideas to the world.  And his passionate, secret- society readers agree.  The country is scattered with Mark Hamilton’s Neothink^® Clubhouses.  And they are ready, willing, and waiting with open arms, hearts, and minds to teach you Mark’s life-changing Neothink^® ideas and techniques.

And he gives you his entire life’s work — over thirty years of long days writing (and sleepless nights fighting establishment authorities) — all delivered to you in his massive and extensive volumes of literature.  Mark Hamilton wants you to finally benefit from his deepest, secret knowledge.  He has envisioned this secret knowledge reaching you and eventually the masses for a long, long time, ever since he was a young man and realized his secret establishment-shattering knowledge would enormously benefit everyone alive.

Since he was a young man, Mark Hamilton has pursued the goal of improving life for everyone…from his breakthroughs that turn your work from a burden to a joy, to his breakthroughs that turn our country’s leadership from suppression to a launching pad for universal wealth, health and peace.  Mark Hamilton’s Neothink^® breakthroughs bring unprecedented prosperity and wonderful emotions to the people.

There's not a peep about Mark's daddy, Wallace Ward Sr. aka Frank Wallace, who started the whole thing decades ago. And the claim that Hamilton "stayed in hiding" with his "secret knowledge" for years and years and then just suddenly decided to "release his ideas to the world" is just pure bunk.

The Neothink site has more tall tales about Scamilton, including that he built the Grand Canyon Skywalk even after engineers said it was impossible (thanks to Neothink, of course). From the What Is The Neothink Society page on the web site:

Following your heart and living the life you were meant to have seems impossible.  Through Neothink^® and The Neothink^® Society you will learn how to specifically do what Jobs so enticingly suggests: follow your heart for a life of immense passion, vision, and insane wealth.  Neothink^® is a new way of using our minds and enables us to do what before was considered impossible.  Mark Hamilton built the famous Glass Bridge and put it out over the edge of the Grand Canyon, even after engineers said it was impossible.  Through Neothink^®, the Grand Canyon Skywalk now is an American icon for the whole world to enjoy and for the Hualapai Indian Tribe to rise from poverty to prosperity.

It appears, however, that Super Mark didn't actually build the Grand Canyon Skywalk all by his lonesome, as admitted even on some of his own propaganda. From an October 2016 Mark Hamilton/Neothink blog post:

Neothink Society founder Mark Hamilton is one of the financial backers of the Grand Canyon Skywalk. He was part of Grand Canyon Skywalk Development LLC, which created the walkway. The attraction is located on Hualapai Tribe land and is operated by the tribe. A horseshoe-shaped glass bridge suspended over the western rim of the Grand Canyon, the Skywalk gives visitors a bird’s-eye view of the canyon from a height of 4,000 feet.

Mark Hamilton, Neothink founder, got involved with the Skywalk project after seeing a rendition of the completed structure in a newspaper. Hamilton first fell in love with architecture after reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead when he was younger. After seeing the renderings of the Skywalk, he got in touch with the Skywalk’s designer, David Jin.

So at most, Hamilton helped fund the project, most likely with ill-gotten gains from scamming old folks out of their life savings. I suppose, then, that you could at least say that Neothink^® had something to do with the building of the project.

The bottom line, given Dave Lieber's Dallas Morning News report cited above, and the current Neo online content, is that it would appear that Mark Hamilton is still running scams, or trying to. Like Kevin Trudeau, that's all he knows how to do, and in Hamilton's case it's a family tradition. I'd be curious to know if, a year later, Hamilton has indeed tried to cull his mailing lists of senior citizens' names, as he promised Lieber he would do, and if in fact he has reduced or ceased his marketing efforts to them.

Let me know if you have any info about Hamilton's current activities and schemes, especially about whether he and Trudeau are still involved in any projects together. Because their marketing copy is so similar and has been for years, and because they shared their most valued mailing lists with each other in the past, and because they both clearly possess the heart of a huckster, their divorce, if it occurred, must have been really traumatic. Drop me a line; I'm always open to providing more updates.

* For a (long and circuitous but nonetheless informative) two-part Whirled post that provides background on the Neo scampire and its association with Kevin Trudeau's GIN, here's Part 1 (with a link to Part 2), from 2011. Part 1 in particular has details about the Neo/Nova/Nouveau tradition of marketing to vulnerable elderly people.

Back into the black hole of politix...

We are well into October, and as the shadow of the U.S. presidential election looms ever larger and darker, I once again feel the possibly irrational urge to inject some politix into this normally non-political blog. For those of you who are sick of my lame punditry because you prefer pure Scamworld topics (or even because you have a long memory and are nostalgic for the carefree snark-fests that were once the foundation of this Whirled), I apologize. For those of you who are sick of the politicking because you are Trump supporters and don't like what I have written about him... well, goodness, it seems that I'm all out of apologies.

The Faux-hio voter fraud scandal
Several factors have drawn me back into this black hole of off-my-normal-beat bloggery, and some of them are related to my normal beat after all. For instance, the stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld, Leonard Coldwell, used his social media soapbox the other day to share a hoax story from the fake news site, Christian Times. And he wasn't the only one who shared it in all apparent seriousness. The phony story describes "hundreds of thousands" of fraudulent sealed ballots for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that were supposedly found by a Columbus, Ohio electrical worker. On October 1 the Franklin County Board of Elections issued a press release stating that the story was fake and even providing a link to the UK web site from which the Christian Times stole the photo used in the fake story.

Snopes debunked it as well. So did The Columbus Dispatch. Even Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (a Republican) slammed it.

But the story has continued to spread via social media and it is still up, with no retractions or corrections, on some clickbait sites that try to look legitimate, as well as overtly nutcake ones. Coldwell may be the dimmest and most loathsome entity to share the meme, but as I noted he's far from the only one. And the reason is obvious: it fits in with the wingnutty, Trumped-up "Crooked Hillary" narrative. By extension it validates Trump's own claims (and those of his most passionate fans) that the election is "rigged" against him.

It also feeds into the persistent myth of voter fraud committed by minority or liberal-leaning voters, a myth that has given rise to stringent voter I.D. laws which seem to have served mainly as a tool to disenfranchise those very minority and liberal-leaning voters. Though there have been investigations into possible voter fraud in states such as Indiana (some have called the investigations "partisan harassment"), it is for the most part not really a thing. And those who are throwing hysterical fits about suspected fraud might do well to keep in mind that some apparent fraud is simply human error. (More on that below.)

Most of the folks I've seen sharing the fake Ohio voter-fraud story are Donald Trump supporters, Hillary haters, chronic conspiracy addicts, or a combination thereof. And most are also -- and not by coincidence -- dedicated Snopesophobes, smugly claiming that anyone who cites Snopes is lazy, gullible, a "Libtard," a mainstream sheeple, or a combination thereof. To these folks, the mere mention of Snopes in a positive light during a conversation is a signal for automatic and immediate dismissal and derision of the person who brought it up. They won't even bother to follow the link and actually read the article. Mention Snopes on a certain type of thread, and prepare to be met with a string of rote accusations against Snopes and oneself that some of us can practically recite in our sleep.

As you may know if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, my opinion about Snopes is considerably more positive, and my opinion about some of the robotic Snopes-haters... um, not so positive. But I have also learned that it does no good to try to argue folks out of their "Snopes-is-a-liberal-tool" dogma. You can try, but don't be surprised if you get nowhere. As Jef Rouner wrote in 2014:

The first thing to do with a Snopes denier is... nothing. Do not continue the initial conversation. You have already lost your stand, and can do nothing more here. Ultimately, you are having a different interaction from the one you think you are. You thought you were helpfully informing, but they think you're part of a misled general populace that just can't see the monsters in the shadows.

But I never learn. I continue to engage 'em.

The fact is that Snopes has also been accused of having a conservative/right-wing bias, though I don't believe that accusation any more than I believe the site has a deep liberal bias. And particularly during this contentious U.S. presidential election cycle, Snopes writers have also been busily debunking leftist memes, such as this one about Donald Trump and his remarks about military veterans with PTSD... or this one about his running mate Mike Pence and his supposed remarks about abortion and rape... or this one about the Libertarian VP supposedly giving up the ghost and becoming a Hillary supporter. Snopes has also soundly condemned the clickbait site that spread the loathsome fake news of Trump's death from a heart attack.

But it simply does not matter to some folks.

Some of the Snopes-haters and anti-Hillary meme sharers with whom I have conversed about Trump are good people who were burned in some way by serial scammer Kevin Trudeau in his mega-scam the Global Information Network, or GIN, which were, of course, hot topics on this blog even back in the day when some of them were still partying it up on GIN cruises, hoping to get rich or change the world. Maybe it's obnoxious of me to keep bringing that up. But I will keep bringing it up anyway.

The Scamworld angle
It appears to me that these good ex-GINfolk simply cannot see that Donald J. Trump is an even worse -- and potentially more dangerous -- scammer than Trudeau ever could be (although granted, Trump and Trudeau have a few things in common). Though a few people have acknowledged that Trump is far from an ideal candidate, they insist that all of his shortcomings, wrongdoings, and deep character flaws pale in comparison to Clinton's alleged "life of crime."

This is not just about Snopes, of course. There is a deeper problem here, and it has to do with both Scamworld and with politics. The Scamworld angle centers on the fact that some of the Snopes-hating people who were burned by GIN, and insist that they have learned their lesson about scams and scammers, continue to embrace pretty much any conspiracy story that pops up on social media. I would suggest that this enthusiasm for conspiracies indicates they have not really taken their hard-learned lessons to heart after all, and possibly retain a core gullibility that is only thinly disguised by their oft-expressed distrust of the mainstream media and other institutions.

(It isn't that I am always enamored of the mainstream media myself. And believe it or not I am skeptical about government, and am no big fan of big business, and so on. I just don't take an extreme position of automatically rejecting everything simply because it is "mainstream.")

While the nouveau anti-establishmentarians imperiously point fingers at anyone who cites Snopes or other popular fact-checking/debunking sites -- and insist that their contempt for Snopes et al. demonstrates that they are the ones who are awake and aware, and the rest of us are either impaired thinkers or are crooked ourselves -- many are in fact advertising their own credulity to the world. They are showing that while they are willing to automatically reject "mainstream" narratives, they are all too willing to believe any wild-eyed tale spewed out by the "alternative" media.

More to the point here: these conspiracy fans are painting targets on themselves for any potential huckster with a knack for packaging "information" that "They" (i.e. the corrupt establishment/New World Order/Illuminutty etc.) "don't want you to know about."

The forbidden-information, faux-rebel-against-the-establishment shtick worked well for Kevin Trudeau for many years, and arguably still continues to work for him even though he is currently locked up in a minimum security prison. It has worked well for Trudeau's buddy "Mark Hamilton" (or Mark Scamilton as he is known on this blog), and before that for Scamilton's late daddy "Frank Wallace," and that whole Neo-stink scampire. And it is working very well indeed for career conspiracy mongers such as Alex Jones and Mike "the Health Ranger" Adams, as well as a number of other hucksters and scammers who are also exploiting the secret-info-that-the-lamestream-media-won't-tell-you motif.

None of this is really surprising, though. As my pal Salty Droid has both documented on his blog and has mentioned in private correspondence, quitting one manipulative scam or scammer doesn't cure one of the thinking pattern errors that got them sucked in in the first place. "Manipulation causes susceptibility to manipulation as a side effect," sez Salty. I know he's right, but I am still capable of being surprised by the phenomenon, especially when it occurs among folks whom I'd thought were friends, or at least allies.
 
The greater danger
If this were just a matter of personal Facebook battles it would be no big deal, even though, to my deep disappointment, I have seen what I thought were solid friendships collapsing in the face of increasingly heated political conversations. And if it were simply an indication of job security for scammers and hucksters that would be bad, but still not necessarily a catastrophe-in-waiting. But it seems pretty clear that the essential political battle is going to continue all the way to the ballots. Though some of Clinton's most virulent haters are not in fact eligible to vote in the U.S., there are many who are. And they could very well be responsible for propelling a dangerously volatile blowhard into the most powerful position in the world.

But it may be that America is screwed either way, as more than one non-U.S. citizen recently told me. For even if the Trumpians are unable to elect their candidate, it is very likely that millions of them will not accept the results of the election. How they will express that lack of acceptance is a matter of legitimate concern.

Accordingly the growing penchant for conspiracy tall tales -- of which Donald Trump is the current "theorist in chief" -- is more than just snarkworthy blog fodder, though I certainly have been snarking about conspiracies for years. While the Clinton campaign and Clinton herself have made references to various right-wing conspiracies, the conspiracy meme is simply not an integral part of that campaign, and that is in marked contrast to her opponent. Clinton has not been playing the "rigged election" card nearly to the extent that Trump has. (Her concerns about possible Russian involvement in hacking and leaking her emails, in order to influence the election, may be valid, but the jury is still out on that.)

In contrast to Clinton, Trump and his supporters appear to be full-on advocates of the conspiracy scenario. And I don't think Politico was exaggerating when they called the rigged-election narrative "the most dangerous conspiracy theory of 2016." It is a narrative driven by an almost rabid irrationality, the likes of which we've never really seen in a presidential election in the U.S. From the Politico article:

Recent surveys show Trump is in lock step with his supporters when he raises doubts that he’ll get a fair and square election. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this month found nearly half of Trump’s supporters aren’t confident the votes will be counted accurately, compared with just 18 percent of Clinton’s backers who think the totals will be illegitimate. In August, Public Policy Polling found 69 percent of Trump voters in North Carolina think Clinton would only win if the election was rigged: 40 percent actually blamed ACORN, which officially disbanded in 2010, as the reason they expected mischief.

And...

... many of the moves that federal and state officials make to secure the country’s voting system are being met with skepticism and backlash, and more conspiracy theories. Alex Jones’ program, for one, has done multiple segments questioning whether Obama intends to federalize or even cancel the presidential election. Last month, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp told the Nextgov news service in an email that he worried “the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security.”

The notion of widespread election fraud has been widely debunked both through media investigations and government watchdog reports, but there's no stopping the conspiracy-crazed Trumpsters. Wendy Weiser, director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said that insinuations of rigged outcomes are...

...completely unfounded. That heated rhetoric just undermines faith in American democracy, which works because people have confidence in its legitimacy. That confidence is something that should not be casually and baselessly tossed aside.

But it seems that many folks are tossing it aside, and all for the sake of an over-eagerness to embrace the false narratives and ridiculous tall tales that validate their own self-images as the most moral, the most patriotic, the most truly awakened ones.

In the end, though, and I hope you will pardon the cliche, we're all in this together. If enough people lose confidence in the legitimacy of American democracy, there's little evidence that this will lead us to a new enlightened era of transparency and fairness and liberty and justice for all. To the contrary, we risk turning the corner to chronic instability, transforming our political process into a Third-Worldish scenario of endless coups, revolutions, overt corruption, dictatorship, or any combination of the above. And that will have a devastating effect not only on the U.S. but on the rest of the world as well.

Check out this recent blog post from my husband Ron Kaye: "How Did We Come To This?"

As we near the day of the election, I cannot help but wonder what lies beyond. I sense that a cataclysmic sequence of events is all too possible, no matter which way the election goes. If a tyrant is elected, we will almost certainly lose most of our allies around the world, and will definitely lose their trust. At the same time, our enemies will be emboldened, knowing that they no longer face a united front consisting of all rational nations and their leaders. Actions once considered unthinkable are now very much a part of the debate. Torture, genocide, and nuclear holocaust are considered by the worst among us to be viable tools for achieving our goals, and the kind of rhetoric we as a country and a world rejected over 80 years ago has become mainstream and deemed worthy of consideration.

I think we all need to listen to our own words, and ask ourselves, Is this the kind of country and world we want to leave our children and their children? Are the lessons we are teaching them really consistent with our proclaimed values as Americans?

What Ron said. It's all pretty scary. So much is at stake. Please get out and vote.

Addendum, 26 November 2016: Well, the election has come and gone, with deeply unfortunate results. Drumpf got the electoral votes necessary to win, but Clinton won the popular vote (by at least 2 million and counting, it appears), and it looks like it's full speed ahead for the Drumpf regime. But the media are all abuzz with accusations of funny business in at least some states, and a call for a recount in those states. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has already raised millions of dollars, some of which are presumably going to pay for recounts in some states.

So does this mean that American elections might be rigged after all and that voter fraud is indeed a thing, contrary to all of the stuff I wrote above? And if I believe that, does it make me hypocritical? Does it mean I've flip-flopped just because "my" candidate lost? In truth... I don't know what to think. And I'm not sure how much good a recount will do, even though so far it appears that there were some dodgy things going on in some precincts in Wisconsin (and possibly Pennsylvania and Michigan) in order to shuffle things in Trump's favor. (Nate Silver, however, said the accusations about Wisconsin are probably B.S.) I simply don't know. In any case, here's a Q&A on Quartz, published November 24, which attempts to clear up some of the puzzlement about the legitimacy of the election results.

And from the Washington Post today, here's a rundown on what the Clinton campaign thinks about the issue.

Every Christian lyin'-hearted man will snow you

So some of us were wondering yesterday -- and I even wondered on my latest Neo-stink blog post -- if serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's former marketing director Peter Wink's recent announcement of an alliance between head Neo-stinker Mark Hamilton and Peter and Loony Coldwell's lame GIN ripoff, the IBMS Master's Society scam would cause a rift between Winkwell and Abe Husein, who had been speaking out forcefully against Hamilton for months.



By the way, here's a 2005 forum discussion with some scuttlebutt about "Steve Rapella." That forum and other sources have listed him as the adopted son of Wallace Ward (the elder: that would be the late Frank Wallace, who perished in an auto-pedestrian accident in 2006). But Rapella also seems to be the spouse or at least the ex spouse of Wallace Ward's daughter Ruth. (Jerry Springer, where are you?) Rapella is Mark Hamilton's "right hand man," according to some (and that link is from a September 2009 Neothink Newspaper). But he's not Mark Hamilton. And Peter Wink has been known to tell a few fibs before. See note in gold text below.
 
Anyway, as you may know, Abe and I have had our differences but I'm with him all the way on that whole "MH is a low-life con artist" thing.

After all, Scamilton cleaned up more than anyone else in Trudeau's scammy Global Information Network (GIN). He was more than likely responsible for sucking more people into GIN than just about anyone else (with the possible exception of Trudeau himself and Mocktor Loony C). He even sent out old-school direct mail letters that said, "Millionaires will be made! Money will flow like lava!"

Abe was right to speak out so forcefully against Scamilton. So some wondered if Peter's seemingly enthusiastic embrace of Scamilton would cause a rumble in the brotherhood.

Well, we needn't have wondered. All is well, and Abe will still be joining Peter and Loony and probably a handful of other IMBS-ing U loyalists at the Wyndham Bay Point Resort in Panama City Beach Florida this weekend (let's just hope that Wyndham has done something to reverse the "tragic decline" of this property, as described by a guest in late October of this year). The important thing is that the brotherhood is more solid than ever: God's in Its heaven, the Devil's in Its hell, and all's right with the Whirled.

So that's that.

[NOTE: Someone wrote to me anonymously on December 4, claiming to have a credible source and saying that Peter is not telling the truth about Mark Hamilton endorsing IBMS Master's Society. In addition, Peter's Facebook posts about the alliance seem to have disappeared; whether Abe deleted them for some reason, or Peter did, I don't know. I will share more information when I have it. ~CC]

Meanwhile, inquiring minds want to know if Peter Wink ever seriously pursued an IMBS-ing U alliance with convicted killer and star of The Secret James Arthur Ray. He seemed kind of anti-Ray earlier this year.This shot is from back in February 2013 (name redacted to protect privacy of the woman in question).

The above shot was from this post. For a few days there on the Facebooks, Peter was being quite the Christian and the heroic defender of single mothers and other vulnerable women. He mentioned his lord and savior a few times. What was that all about? I hope Jesus H. Christ wasn't too offended.

And a couple of weeks later Peter and Loony sent out a call for vulnerable, traumatized women everywhere. Ick. Just... ick.

Beyond that bit of revolting blather, I was kind of interested in the fact that Peter seemed to be slamming James Arthur Ray, snarkily referring to him as a "prisoner," when Peter had previously seemed willing to give Ray the benefit of the doubt. This is part of Peter's comment on my blog, from April 2010:

James Ray is not a bad guy. Maybe he just pushed the envelope a little hard and tragedy struck. I feel awful for the deceased, those who were hurt and the families who were affected.

Of course that was before Ray was tried and convicted and sentenced and sent to prison.

By the way, here's another amusing -- and seriously choke-worthy -- bit from that same comment by Peter:

I like to look for the good in everyone. Seriously. Connie is especially appealing to me as I've been more critical than she has of the industry I work in. It's people like me and Connie that will help this industry move forward.

Peter has been more critical of the selfish-help industry than I have? That sure was news to me. But in the interests of good will (back then) I let it slide.

Anyway. Yesterday a friend of mine told me that at the time Peter had made that snide remark about Ray's merchandise being in the GIN store, he (my friend) had spoken to someone at the GIN store asking why they were carrying James Arthur Ray's products. My friend says that the person in the GIN store said he really didn't know why but that it was some consignment deal made by PETER WINK, and the stuff just sort of showed up one day. The GIN store person was not aware of Wink's allegation about the GIN Store holding money for Ray.

If Peter was indeed responsible for Ray's material being in the GIN store, it seems kind of strange that he would have been criticizing the GIN store for carrying that prisoner's merchandise, does it not? Did he simply forget that he had been responsible for the crap being there in the first place (assuming that this is really true), or was it a setup of some sort? On the other hand, Peter has slammed GIN's Lazyman's and Hot Leads promos, and he had reportedly been in charge of those ripoffs while still in GIN and Katie's employ. So maybe there are two Peters, and one doesn't know what the other is doing.

But the plot sickens. Just after Ray got out of prison, there was this. It's from August of this year, and I don't know how I missed it earlier.

Jeez, I was really only half joking back in February when I suggested that Ray could sign on with IMBS-ing U Master Baiter's Society (scroll down to the sub-head, "A call for content"). I am just going to have to stop giving Peter ideas. I know he reads my blog.

Maybe Winkwell can sign on convicted killer and star of The Secret James Arthur Ray when he gets out of prison; Ray may be willing to work cheaper while he is on the comeback trail. I hear he performed satisfactorily on his Functional Literacy work assignments in prison, and he apparently has at least an eighth-grade level of functional literacy himself, so he's certainly qualified to submit his work to the IBMS Master's Society. For that matter, he may be over-qualified.

But in any case Ray may be too big for IMBS-ing U Master Baiter's britches now that he's been on CNN again.

Also see this Whirled post and this one.

And here is Omri's wonderful post on the latest Ray travesty.

And finally... finally!... here is the long-awaited piece on The Verge.

Death Ray or no, Peter no doubt has other fish to fry, or more accurately, customers to burn, in light of the fact that IBMS officially got all Neo-stinky and Neo-stink got all IMBS-ing U-ish [assuming of course that Peter was telling the truth about an alliance between Neo-stink and IBMS... a matter I am still exploring]. Peter has his work cut out for him because now, in addition to flogging his own limp seekrit klub, he has some overpriced, poorly written manuscripts to sell for Mark Scamilton. The market of elderly, Internet-deficient takers for the Neo-stink "Heirloom" manuscripts is dying off, so new markets must be uncovered [again, assuming an actual alliance or joint venture between IBMS/Peter and Neo-stink/Scamilton]. So there's that. Stay tuned.
 
There's also new news -- kind of -- on the Kevin Trudeau civil case. Another status hearing happens tomorrow (December 5). I'll try to keep you up with that.

PS ~ In case you were wondering about the title of this blog post, I was inspired by the old (pre-disco) Bee Gees tune. It was kind of ahead of its time.

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Got a GIN hangover? Here's a Neo-flopportunity for you!

There's a new flopportunity in Scamworld. Or should I say, there's a "Neo-flopportunity." Now-jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's Ponzi-like Global Information Network (GIN) is imploding, and the MLM portion has been suspended, so the top earners and others are scrambling to find a new scam -- or in some cases, to dust off the old scams. One such top GIN earner, dustin' off the old scams and makin' 'em Nouveau again, is Mark Hamilton (real name Wallace Ward, Jr.; Whirled name Mark Scamilton).

Scamilton apparently isn't on Facebook, at least not under his real fake name, but he obviously doesn't need to be, because there are plenty of folks willing to promote him via social media. As is the case with most promos for flopportunity launches, the person promoting this one, former Twelve Visions Party presidential candidate Jill Reed, is pretty coy about the scheme on her public Facebook post from November 24. She doesn't say exactly what it is. However, there are references to an email blast sent out.

This seems to be the flopportunity in question: the chance to sell overpriced manuscripts of seekrit wisdumb, which are basically what the Neo-scampire has been selling for decades. In the past they old-school-marketed mostly to the elderly and under-educated, sending them "personalized" letters that told them they were Very Special People, and offering them special "heirloom editions" that had their name on the cover and everything. Now the Neo-scammers are trying to open up new markets, via an MLM.

More accurately, it's probably starting life as just a one-level affiliate program and clever lead-generation scheme for Scamilton and possibly some of his joint-venture partners (more on that below). But still.
 
Here is the core frauduct line, which is almost certainly just the tip of the Neo-iceberg (click to enlarge):
 
There's even a link to a sign-up page, and you can sign up for freeeee!

The copy on the landing page betrays, I must say, a certain desperation:

How would you like to make a nice profit selling the in-demand Neothink® Manuscripts from the Neothink Society, being released to the public for the first time? Especially since this is an easy, turnkey system all set up for you to place on your website or send out by email? It costs you no money and only a few minutes to set up and get started. For over three decades, Mark Hamilton’s life-changing Neothink® Manuscripts have sold through the private-club Neothink® Society to specially-selected people. You may remember at one time receiving your invitation letter from the Society. For the first time, Mark Hamilton and his Neothink® Society are allowing his highly-coveted Neothink® Manuscripts to be sold to the general public.

Specially-selected people? Being sold to the general public for the first time? Oh, my goodness, that is unmitigated bull-crap.

If you want a story about leaving a legacy, here's a picture of the legacy one elderly Neo-thinker, who shall remain anonymous, has left his family, who was forced to remove him from his apartment and put him in a home. I have told this story before but here it is again. The man was living on government benefits and had blown his pension, but his family was refusing to help him because he had ripped all of them off as often as he had an opportunity. His dining room ceiling had collapsed onto the floor and he had sold just about all of his possessions; those that remained were dumpster bound. But he still had his Neo-tech books. Said the person who took this picture, "I didn't see one photo of him on a private island with Mark Hamilton."

Of course, this isn't to insinuate that everyone who has ever bought the Neo-stink material ends up in such sad circumstances, and it is certainly not to imply that it is Scamilton's (or his late daddy Frank/Wallace Sr.'s) fault that some people's lives end up in the toilet. But this sad fellow does appear to be one of the key demographics that the Neo-Scampire's direct-mail campaigns targeted.
 
As many of you may know, but I'll say it again since I love to repeat myself: Since the summer of 2011 I've been writing about the Neo-scampire (Neo-Tech, Neothink, Nouveau Tech, Novatech, the Society of Secrets) and its shady head honcho, Scamilton. See embedded links in this post, and the list of links at the end of the post.

The big deal that has riled up a lot of people lately is that more than anyone else, Mark Hamilton, under two separate accounts -- Mark Hamilton and Wallace Ward -- seriously cleaned up in the GIN MLM. That was reported by the court-appointed receiver, Robb Evans and Associates, in September of this year, and immediately reported here on this very Whirled -- complete with with an infographic and some old screen shots that point to Scamilton as being the vice-scammer to Kevin Trudeau's head scammer of GIN. Included in that post of mine are screen shots of Scamilton's direct-mail piece for GIN, sent out in 2009 and rife with clumsy, amateurish-sounding copy, such as claims that "Millionaires will be made! Money will flow like lava!"

Morally if not legally, Mark Hamilton is every bit as culpable as Kevin Trudeau in the GIN fraud.  But he's a sly one and by all appearances, he has so far been able to slither away from real trouble. No doubt he harbors more than a little regret that he became embroiled in GIN. But no worries: he still has his Neo-Scampire, and even though he has probably lost a few fans as a result of the GIN travesty, he still seems to have plenty of fans who are either KT defenders too, or who simply think Scamilton can do no wrong. (On the other hand, he has his share of detractors; see the vid at the end of this post.)
 
I just wonder if any of the Feds have spoken to Scamilton. Maybe he made a seekrit seekrit deal that is so seekrit he hasn't said anything about it (he's always been a bit taciturn, anyway).

One thing Scamilton does have that's worth more than gold in Scamworld is a huge mailing list. He and Trudeau traded names and helped grow each other's lists for years. In fact Trudeau and the Neo-Scampire go way back; reportedly Trudeau first met Scamilton's daddy, the late Wallace Ward Sr., aka Frank Wallace, when the two were doing time in a Federal pen in the early 1990s. It was, as I've said here before, a match made in marketing hell.

Will the circle jerk be unbroken...
Since many of the Neo-stinkers obviously have a little bit of discretionary income, lesser predators than Trudeau have tried to suck them into their own sales funnels. For instance, earlier this year, a GIN ripoff called IBMS Master's Society, founded by ex-Trudeau buddy Mocktor Leonard Coldwell and ex-Trudeau marketing director Peter Wink, solicited Neo-stinkers (scroll down to, "Neo-stinkers can join too!")



Peter wrote that January 2013 Facebook invite to Neo-thinkers, but as you can see, Loony Coldwell seemed in agreement, noting that he was fond of these folks. I wrote about this and a few other matters on this May 2013 post (which also contains screen shots of Mark Hamilton's "money will flow like lava" direct-mail piece for GIN).

I wonder how the IMBS-ing U Master Baiters' Supreme Partners -- both of whom have come out publicly many times against Trudeau and GIN (particularly Loony C, with his nonstop ranting and gloating about Katie's troubles) -- are going to handle the fact that Mark Hamilton/Wallace Ward Jr. so obviously got away with so much GIN money...and is now back to running his own scams full time. Mark/Wallace has that magickal golden mailing list, and the Neo-stinkers have money (well, some of them do, anyway), and they would be such an asset to the IBMS Master's Society scam.

But there's that whole GIN thing. Moreover, Coldwell's buddy and business partner Abe Husein, who will apparently be a featured speaker at the upcoming IMBS-ing U wingding in Panama City, Florida this weekend, came out with some rather ungracious rants against Jill Reed when she promoted the GIN ripoff, the Omnia Society. (Personally, I agree that Jill is promoting scams but I do think she has handled her critics with grace.)

So I wonder if and how the IMBS-er Supreme Partners are going to try to mend the rifts caused by the squabbling factions. Sometimes one has to walk such a fine line in Scamworld. It's hard to keep everyone happy when there's so much grousing and backstabbing going on.

[Addendum, 3 December:] I didn't have to wonder long.Here is a Facebook post that appeared on Abe's page some time after this post was first published. Whether it's a joke to bait the critics, or Scamilton is really joining in some alliance with Peter and Loony to throw Katie under the bus, I can't say at this point. Surely they do not mean that Scamilton is joining in any class action lawsuit that the Loony contingent may be cooking up. Why should he? He raked in more dough than anyone. I'll update this portion if any more info comes in. I will say this: If it's a joke it's a good one, but believe me, that's damning with faint praise because the reason it is being taken seriously at all by anyone is that all of the parties involved are just sleazy enough to do something like this.

Apparently it is not a joke. This just in... 3 December 2013:

And here's another one... 3 December 2013:
[NOTE: Someone wrote to me anonymously on December 4, claiming to have a credible source and saying that Peter is not telling the truth about Mark Hamilton endorsing IBMS Master's Society. In addition, Peter's Facebook posts about the alliance seem to have disappeared; whether Abe deleted them for some reason, or Peter did, I don't know. I will share more information when I have it. ~CC]

Joke, lie, or not, apparently Peter and Loony C are leading the charge to convince the probation officer assigned to Kevin Trudeau's case that Trudeau is a bad, bad man. Could it be that Scamilton has joined them in this endeavor? I am still thinking of that comment Loony made in the screen shot above, regarding "everybody making sure the crook Trudeau will pay the price."

And where does this leave the fans -- rank and file folks, good people for the most part, who have lost money, time, and energy in some of these schemes? Well, for starters, I think that for those current or ex-GIN members or Neo-thinkers who are still confused about what and whom to follow, the best bet is to do what my friends Julie Daniel and Roger Argenal have suggested to many: Take the 60-day challenge. Go for 60 days without reading or listening to or watching Kevin Trudeau or any of Mark Hamilton's or other Neo-think material. And then see if your head is a little clearer.

It will probably be the best gift you could ever give yourself.

More Neo-stinkin' info on this Whirled:

• August 19, 2011 -- I first became interested in Neo-stink via a rather circuitous route -- reading about it in a book that had nothing to do with Kevin Trudeau. But even before doing any research I had this gut feeling that there was a connection between the Neo-scampire and Trudeau... and I was right. http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2011/08/everything-old-is-nouveau-again-or-neo.html
• August 28, 2011: This post has extensive info about Mark Hamilton and the Twelve Visions Party: http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2011/08/everything-old-is-nouveau-again-or-neo_28.html
• There is also a little bit about Neo-tech in this interim post from August 24, 2011:
  http://cosmicconnie.blogspot.com/2011/08/calling-all-lazy-men-lets-build-pyramid.html
  

PS ~ My pal Julie pointed out this August 2012 video, made by someone who is obviously not a fan of Mark Scamilton.

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Now more than ever, your donation is needed
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