Scamdemic: Kevin Trudeau's enablers continue to push COVID-19 conspiracy tales along with KT hero/martyr/Guru narrative

At some point soon I really will blog again about something besides COVID-19 and the various hucksters, scam artists, and cynics (inside and outside of politix) who continue to push wacko conspiracy narratives about, and dubious or dangerous "cures" for, the coronavirus plague sweeping the planet. But for now, let's pop in and see what imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled, is up to regarding the virus saga.

Or, more accurately, let's look at what his water carriers are up to, since it seems that rumors of his impending freedom have once again been exaggerated, and that continued lockdowns at Camp Cupcake are apparently restricting his ability to provide valuable COVID-19 upchucks... I mean, updates. To date, there have been 13 of these "updates," which are essentially overcooked sales letters for the Trudeau-founded GIN (Global Information Network), mixed well with stale whines about Katie being "censored," and well-seasoned with recaps of conspiranoid and right-wing talking points.

But what Katie can't do for himself, his enablers continue to do for him. On May 12, 2020, the admins of the Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club page on Facebook posted this endorsement of the conspiracy-porn "documentary," Plandemic:

FROM TONYA AND RAHELIOS:Kevin has not viewed this, as he can not view any internet content from prison, but we have reviewed it. We have no documentation or substantiation about the facts being true in this video, but it does resonate with us. We suggest you view it, as it is in agreement with what Kevin has been saying in his books, "Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About", "More Natural Cures Revealed" and "The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About". It also is in agreement with what Kevin has said in his Covid-19 updates.The mainstream media and all social media are censoring this video. It is banned from YouTube. It is banned from Facebook. They don’t want you to see this. Many people are downloading it and sharing it, so that it remains available to the public. After you watch it, you might want to do the same.Currently, it is still available at the website PlandemicMovie.com. Watch it now, while you still can...

By the way, I just now followed the link that was embedded in the Facebook post. Apparently some wag co-opted the URL after the movie was (once again) taken down. [Update on May 21: The content I referenced has now been removed as well, but never fear; I copied and pasted the content and took a screen shot; see the end of this post. ~ CC] At any rate, although I hadn't participated very much on Katie's Facebook fan page in a while, I felt moved to respond to this particular post. I wrote:

Connie Schmidt I imagine Kevin would indeed like "Plandemic," since he apparently never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like. Conspiracy theories and forbidden knowledge form the foundation of his marketing strategies. I don't know how long this comment will be allowed to stay, but I am taking the liberty of sharing an article that offers some perspective on the virologist, Judy Mikovits, whose work is at the heart of "Plandemic." BTW, there's nothing "healing" about the beach when the water is full of flesh-eating bacteria, as has been the case numerous times over the years in some US waters (e.g., the Gulf coast of Texas). The proliferation of these bacteria is apparently a direct result of global warming (climate change), but if I'm not mistaken, Kevin doesn't believe in that either.

This is the link I shared following my comment on the Katie fan page. It's a basic fact-checking piece that does indeed give some salient perspective about virologist Mikovits, and that I thought might be useful for those who are willing to entertain something besides the conspiracy narrative du jour. (One point the article addresses is Mikovits's questioning why public beaches should be closed, with her question framed around her claim that the beach is a healing place because of "sequences" in the sand and "healing microbes in the ocean in the salt water." That's why I mentioned the flesh-eating bacteria that have increasingly been popping up in salt water, and the probability that climate change is only making the threat worse.)

But my comment, link and all, now seems to be disappeared. I can only speculate that this is because the admins either thought that Kevin wouldn't like it, or that it might possibly shake the faith of the faithful, or both.

The admins of the page did, however, leave another comment of mine up there, though it's possible, since it was a reply that's nested under someone else's comment, that they just haven't seen it yet. My comment was in response to one by a long-time fan of Katie's, David Krueger, whom you may have met briefly on this blog back in 2012. Back in the day, David was thrilled right down to his toes to be on the same plane as Kevin Trudeau. More recently, he wrote this about the conspiracy vid Plandemic:

David Krueger Facebook and YouTube themselves have confirmed the truth of it for us with their censorship campaign.

To which I replied:

Connie Schmidt Facebook and YouTube are privately owned companies and they have a right to decide which content they want or do not want to host. But Facebook also allows pages like this one that push Kevin Trudeau's "information," so there's not really too much cause to complain, is there? BTW, many of my own comments have been removed from this page, presumably because Kevin would not like them. But I'm cool with that because the site admins have a right to remove anything they want to remove. However, using the same logic you used, it could be said that my offending posts have been removed because they were too truthful.

And I am actually cool with having my comments removed from a Facebook forum; it is the admins' right to determine, at least up to a certain point, what goes on their page and what doesn't -- the point at which their rights end being when Facebook gatekeepers determine that content violates Facebook's terms of service or "community standards" or what have you. But as I noted in my response to David Krueger, it is, after all, Facebook that is allowing those admins to push Kevin Trudeau's propaganda, despite all insinuations about Facebook and YouTube being involved in sinister censorship efforts.

GIN is still doing a lot of the heavy lifting for Trudeau as well
Meanwhile, in neighboring parts of Scamworld, some of Katie's other cronies continue to enable and promote him in various ways. For instance, on May 15, 2020, current GIN co-owner Tom Morter, aka "Dr. Tom" -- one of the "GIN fat cats" I wrote about earlier this year -- spent quite a few minutes on his weekly "GIN update" telling folks how they can send money to Kevin in the clink and to the lawyers who failed to keep him from going to the clink. According to "Dr. Tom," money sent to the KT Legal Defense Fund goes directly to Winston and Strawn, one of the main law firms behind Katie's failed attempts to stay out of prison. But then again, Kevin himself wrote, in a letter to Judge Robert Gettleman in January of this year, that his lawyers are no longer even speaking to him, so who knows what's really going on? Maybe the plan is to get the gullibles to send enough money to the lawyers so that they'll start speaking to Katie again, and will resume their futile efforts to get him sprung.

As I've also 'splained on this blog, there is a cozy symbiotic relationship between Kevin and the Morter bros and the other GIN co-owner, Blaine Athorn -- at least for now. But they probably need Katie more than he needs them, which is why they've been pushing so hard on various online forums for people to join GIN and pay up in order to possibly get a chance to see Katie in person some time in 2022 (maybe).

Watching "Dr. Tom's" tiresome performance on the latest GIN update reminded me once again that no matter how jovial and enthusiastic he or his brother Ted or their fellow co-owner Blaine Athorn are, it's a pretty safe bet that they will never come within spitting distance of inspiring the abject worship accorded to Kevin Trudeau, or "GuruKev" as he has fairly recently begun branding himself (with a little help from the above-mentioned water carriers).

I think it's also a pretty safe bet that Kevin is very well aware of that hero worship, and that he gleefully exploits it, sometimes employing false modesty, which seems to make the faithful love him even more. On April 15, 2020, there appeared on the KT fan page this somewhat puzzling post about the death of Nelson Mandela (who had actually passed away in 2013):

GURUKEV:
Nelson Mandela passed away… One of my heroes.

He was convicted of being a TERRORIST!

And spent 20 years in a jail cell!

A hero. A person I admired and respected. If I had only 1% of his character.

I mention to you many of my heroes....such as Jesus, Gandhi, Chavez etc. All people that were convicted of crimes in court and were sentenced to prison time.

I am not even in their league.

They are my heroes. They give me strength. Always look at people who walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And gain strength from what they had to go through. You will be inspired by those who went through much more than you or I have ever endured.

I look at my life and current situation and see that I have it so easy compared to others who went before me. You can always put things in perspective. Focus on the good things and what you want…and be happy right now!

I am!

Much love!
GuruKev

My blogging colleague Bernie at GINtruth and I are well aware of Kevin's history of comparing himself, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, to Mandela and Gandhi and Christ and others. We made quite a few comments about that topic on this thread, but the faithful insisted that Katie was definitely not comparing himself to these heroes of history. "Kevin even clarified it on the post," said one fan who had clearly been fooled by Kevin's faux-humility. Another fan wrote, "No point to argue and waste time, people. Because Kevin IS very similar to Mandela, Gandhi, and Jesus."

Oh, dear.

In any case, both Bernie's and my comments were subsequently wiped away, leaving only the worship.

But Kevin is still his own best promoter
While the Facebook admins and the GIN owners are diligently propping Kevin up and polishing his brand, he still remains his own most effective shill. Also on April 15, Kevin's 12th COVID-19 "Update" appeared on the Facebook fan page. In this post he doubled down on his claims that he and he alone has access to the real info about the coronavirus, "unlike the mainstream media." And once again he played on his GuruKev persona.

You may have noticed that all the predictions I have made in those updates and other communications have come true or are in the process of coming true. All I have stated has proven to be correct and true (unlike the mainstream media).

I have gotten thousands of communications from people all over the world who have been so amazed by the uncanny accuracy of my predictions about this "pandemic". Many are asking if I am some sort of "mystic" or "psychic" or have powers to see the future. Many ask if I am "channeling" some "higher entities" or "ascended masters" or "tapping into the Ether, Universal Field, Akashic Records or Universal Consciousness".

Others ask if my former membership in certain "societies" still gives me access to people that have direct first-hand knowledge of what really goes on in the power circles around the world, and things that are hidden "behind the curtain".

People ask me if certain current "insiders" actually "leak" secret information to me so that I can disseminate it.

The answers to the above questions are two fold.

1.) First, I do have first-hand insiders as some of my "sources". I have mentioned in previous updates who some of my "sources" are, and that I almost always use exclusively "first-hand" sources.

A first-hand source is the person who actually said the thing or did the thing. If I do not have a first-hand source, I always use a person who was actually there and witnessed the thing being done with their own eyes or heard a thing said with their own ears.

I still must have at least 2 other independent sources before I will report something. Second and third-hand sources are only used to verify, document and substantiate something. I authenticate everything before reporting it. I do not spread "rumors" or speculation or theories.

2.) Next, I do also "tap or plug into the Field". Some call this channeling.

You may hear of someone who channels "entities" or "frequencies" such as Esther Hicks who channels the group of entities called "Abraham", or Paul Selig who channels a different frequency thus a different group of "non-physical entities". But I do not tap into a specific frequency or group of entities. Rather I tap into the "entire Field" all at once. This "one Field" is the "one SELF".

One of my closest friends is an Enlightened Perfected Being, a "Guru", and is called a "Saint". We were talking about this as we both do the same thing when it comes to "plugging into the Ether". We discussed that the highest "frequency" is the ONE SELF. All frequencies are contained in the ONE SELF. Thus, when we "channel", we channel "our SELVES". We are not on a "lower frequency" or a "single band" of frequency. We are getting all frequencies ALL simultaneously. Therefore, I channel my "SELF".

This is important to understand. When someone "channels" a particular frequency, it is like getting a report from a person who is up on a mountainside. They have a much better view than you because they are higher up the mountain. They see more.

But a person high on one side of the mountain can only see the view from that side. Another person higher up on the same side will have a slightly different report, as they can see more and have a more complete view. Yet another person on the other side of the same mountain might have a very different report, because they are looking in a different direction.

This is why authentic "channellers" sometimes deliver different or conflicting messages from each other.

But the person on the very top of the mountain or in a helicopter hovering over the mountain has ALL views, of ALL sides and a COMPLETE and TOTAL perspective. They can see that all the "channelers" are giving accurate information from their limited perspective, but do not see the "Big Picture". They do not have a totally integrated view of EVERYTHING at the same time.

This total, all-encompassing "knowing" is the ONE SELF. This is what I "channel". I channel my SELF, not someone or something else.

So with both of these "Sources", 1 and 2 above, you can now see why the data being reported here and in the other trainings I have produced are so accurate.

"I channel my SELF?" Sounds a lot like #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump's past claims that his chief consultant on foreign policy and other matters was "myself, because I have a very good brain, and I've said a lot of things."

Next Kevin uses his own very good brain to spew some of the same "facts" about the COVID-19 pandemic that we've seen in his previous missives, and then, predictably, he segues into (yet another) sales pitch for GIN.

As I predicted, the worldwide numbers for this "created" horrific, global pandemic are a big nothing burger.

And the numbers for the USA are worse than other countries for the reasons I outlined previously, but still a big nothing burger.

Compare the number of "deaths" caused by this virus to the number of deaths caused by other health issues and viruses, and you will see that the media and governments around the world have misrepresented the facts and totally mislead [sic] everyone.

To get the real death numbers of other viruses and health issues to compare and see for yourself, go to these websites:

World Life Expectancy Website
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-rankings-total-deaths#WORLD%20RANKINGS

World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Data Repository
https://www.who.int/gho/database/en/

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) FastStats (USA Data)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/default.htm

Our World In Data - Causes of Death

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

And of course, to get the “official” data on Covid-19 deaths, all you have to do is search online for “Covid-19 Deaths”.

You can also see that several countries such as Mexico, Brazil and others did not do ANY social distancing and did NOT shut down their countries. They stayed "business as usual". Their countries operated completely normally without changing anything. They did not buy into the big lie.

What happened? NOTHING! No "mass deaths" as the "experts" predicted. The funeral homes and morgues were NOT filled with dead people from Covid-19. Hospitals were NOT filled. Everything was exactly the same as it always is. Every day people die from a variety of things. Nothing changed. NO spike in deaths.

Covid-19 was nothing more than a “bad-flu-year” in those countries, and in most areas, Covid-19 was not even as bad as a normal flu. This shows that all the mass hysteria about "if we don't shut everything down, millions will die" was simply a BIG LIE. IT DID NOT HAPPEN in those countries that did not shut anything down and everyone went on living their lives as normal.

As I stated previously in other updates, I am being severely restricted now. My "voice" and Free Speech expression is being suppressed once again. I cannot say certain things on this public forum. This is one of the reasons why a "private club" is so vital and important now and in the future.Only through a private club, like GIN, will people be able to share information without censorship or fear of retaliation from powerful organizations, internet monopolies, and government. That is why the Global Information Network (GIN) is so important, and why it has "Information" in its name....

There are several problems with the above statements. A major problem is that one of the countries Trudeau specifically mentioned as having "stayed 'business as usual,'" Brazil, has, in fact, become not just the Latin American but also the global epicenter of COVID-19 -- while its fascist "leader" (and Trump bromantic partner) Jair Bolsonaro has continually played down the threat, joking about the "neurosis" of Brazilians who are actually worried about the virus. From Time, May 9, 2020:

Even by the standards of other right-wing populists who have sought to downplay the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro’s defiance of reality was shocking. From the favelas of densely packed cities like Rio de Janeiro to the remote indigenous communities of the Amazon rain forest, Brazil has emerged as the new global epicenter of the pandemic, with the world’s highest rate of transmission and a health system now teetering on the brink of collapse.

Unlike the previous global hot spots – Italy, Spain and the U.S. – Brazil is an emerging economy, with a weaker social safety net that makes it harder for local authorities to persuade people to stay home, and an underfunded health care system. When a particularly severe outbreak struck the city of Manaus, in the Amazon, in late April, hospitals were quickly overrun, leading to a shortage of coffins. On May 17, the mayor of São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, warned that hospitals there would collapse within two weeks if the infection rate continued to rise. The country has confirmed almost 18,000 deaths as of May 19, with a record 1,179 people dying in the preceding 24 hours–the world’s second highest daily fatality rate. Epidemiologists say the peak is still weeks away.

And another country Trudeau mentioned, Mexico, is now among the top 10 countries for COVID-19 deaths.

On May 13, 2020, The Guardian reported that both Brazil and Mexico recorded their deadliest days from COVID-19.

And on May 19, the LA Times reported that COVID-19 is rapidly spreading past the hot spots of Brazil and Mexico, and threatening to overwhelm other Latin American countries. Chile and Peru and Ecuador are not doing well at all.

Even though the articles I linked to above were published weeks after Trudeau's "Update #12," at the time he posted it there had already been numerous published reports that things were not looking good in Brazil and Mexico. The point is that Kevin's "secret sources" and "self-channeling" and other exclusive tools have failed him and his readers.

But Kevin's fans aren't big on fact-checking his screeds, so it's not surprising that this one was met with the usual round of enthusiastic support. (I posted a comment that pointed out the inaccuracy of his statements about Brazil and Mexico, but it was wiped away.) Among numerous worshipful responses to Kevin's Update # 12 was this:

You are One And ONLY KING on this planet Earth !!!
Thank You Thank You Thank You ... For Everything You Are Givinig [sic] to us !!!!!!!
Thank You Thank You Thank You !!!!

Eat your hearts out, Morters and Athorn!

But seriously. If Katie's spiritual shtick, with its attendant responses, some of which are truly disturbing, isn't an example of "toxic spirituality" (to evoke the beat and book title of guru/cult scambuster Be Scofield), I don't know what is. (And this of course assumes that the worshipful comments are in fact sincere and aren't just a moderately clever form of trolling.) Kevin Trudeau may not be a sex predator like some of the "gurus" Scofield writes about, but for much of his career he has been a financial predator, as well as a conduit of other forms of exploitation that, for some followers, may be as harmful as sexual abuse.

Plandemic is a crock of shite
And bringing it back to the conspiracy-porn vid that kicked off this post, regardless of whether he ever sees or endorses Plandemic, I don't think one can go wrong by betting on Kevin Trudeau continuing to embrace and exploit conspiracy narratives and forbidden-info themes, no matter how wildly wrong, all in the service of lining his own pockets. People love that stuff because it's exciting and it makes them feel really special to be privy to information that "they" won't tell you -- and Kevin knows it.

But I'm thinking that all you really need to know about Plandemic can currently could, for a few days, be found on the link embedded in that May 12 post on the KT Facebook fan page. Just below the graphic is the actual text, in the event that you can't read it on the pic (Blogger seems to have forcibly scaled it down to the point of unreadability, and try as I might, I couldn't fix the problem).

FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Judy Mikovitz [sic] is bat shit crazy (COVID pun intended)
• Bill Gates is not patenting any of these drugs ... and what the fuck do you think he would do with >$100 millon more anyway?
• Masks aren't going to kill you
• The world is scary now. Believing that this is all part of a global conspiracy is more comforting than the truth. If we give into fear and ignore *actual* science things will only get worse

Amen.

This post has been revised since its original publication, most notably, to add information contradictory to Trudeau's COVID-19 "updates" (specifically, about COVID-19 in Latin America). ~ CC

GIN fat cats still in cahoots with Kevin Trudeau

If you're ever in a jam, here I am
If you're ever in a mess, S.O.S.
If you ever feel so happy you land in jail, I'm your bail
It's friendship, friendship
Just a perfect blendship
When other friendships have been forgot
Ours will still be hot
~ Cole Porter, 1939

Friendship can be such a wonderful grift -- especially decades-long friendships based on a mutual mission/compulsion to aggressively promote an endless series of frauducts and flopportunities to gullible or vulnerable people. Consider, for example, the decades-long bond between imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie) and three of his bestest buds, Blaine Athorn and the Morter Brothers, "Dr. Ted" and "Dr. Tom."

On February 7, 2020, a message celebrating this enduring friendship was posted to Kevin Trudeau's "official" Facebook fan page. As I've explained in previous recent blog posts, I'm going to assume that this post, like virtually all of the messages on that and related pages, was directed by Kevin himself, and that one of his proxies posted it on his behalf.

Here's the post in its entirety.

Over the last 6 and 1/2 years, thousands of people have asked to be added to my visiting list and be allowed to visit. I have politely said no.

I desire to spend this time in mostly isolation, where I could meditate, read, write and do various mental and spiritual practices.

I did however allow a few people to visit. These included Blaine, Dr. Tom and Dr. Ted.

Over the last 6 years, these three have come to see me regularly. They are very special friends and very special people. For those of you who have the opportunity to spend time with them, or hear them speak, I encourage you to take advantage of those opportunities.

Blaine and Dr. Tom were just here recently and we talked about some extremely exciting things for the future. Get ready to blast off everyone, and to go to places you could never imagine.

I'm excited! How about you?

Much love,
your friend,
Kevin

Now, as it happens, Blaine Athorn and the Morter bros are the current owners of what was once Kevin's biggest scam of all, the Global Information Network (GIN), which I've blogged about many times since 2009. In fact, "Dr. Tom" seems to have pushed himself up to the front and center as the GIN web presence; he's now the one doing the GIN weekly updates. Frankly, I liked the other guy who was doing them before, but nobody asked me.
 
In light of the fact that GIN and Kevin are still in very much in love, even though (on paper) Trudeau no longer has ownership, it's not surprising that he would allow GIN's owners to visit him in the clink. Granted, Blaine and the Morters can't literally be his bail now that he's in jail, so the lyrics to the Cole Porter classic aren't a perfect fit, but they can do the next best thing to posting bail: visit him in jail -- or, more accurately, federal prison camp -- and cook up new ways to pick people's pockets.

And speaking of picking people's pockets, here's the February 7, 2020 GIN update from "Dr. Tom." I tweaked the link to begin it at the 2:32 mark, because that's when Tommy Boy really starts talking about the urgent need to "upgrade" one's GIN membership by a certain date. It all has to do with getting the Level 8 "teachings" for free, direct from "KT."

Is history repeating itself?
Tom says some folks have raised questions about preserving "the integrity of the system" if some members will be rushing through upgrades in order to qualify for Level 8 by December of 2021, which is the deadline for qualifying to receive Level 8 for free and getting to see Katie deliver it. (There's also a deadline of December 2020 to actually join GIN, though something tells me that if someone were to join later than that, they'd still qualify for the big Katie deal as long as they coughed up the money for the first seven levels by the December 2021 presumptive deadline. In fact, I'm willing to bet that if they joined after that deadline, but were still able to come up with what is more than likely tens of thousands of dollars for the prerequisites, GIN would gladly accept their money and deem them worthy of "Level 8" training.)

But Tom assures his audience that members upgrading by several levels quickly will not get access to all of the information at once; they'll still have to go through the process of assimilating the info for each level and passing tests to get to the next level. Presumably, however, they will still have to pay the increasingly costly upgrade fees upfront, for however many levels they wish to purchase. But hey, no worries; Tom adds that the leadership hasn't quite worked out the logistics yet, but they will, in plenty of time for the big event. Addressing the question of preserving "integrity" he says, "Trust me" -- which for several reasons should be a big red flag right there, for anyone paying attention.

I will concede that the current plot does not seem to be as extreme, on the scam-scale, as the schemes a few years ago when Katie was still running things and the GIN MLM was still going strong. I'm thinking of the "Lazy Man" scam, in which members were fraudulently sold expensive leads in order to build their affiliate business (after which both orders and money were reportedly withheld from many of them); and the infamous "Platinum Bonus" swindle in which members were implicitly encouraged to take shortcuts and even cheat the system in order to get to a certain "level" by a certain time, at which time it was promised that they would get a huge bonus that, for the great majority, was never delivered.

This time around, members aren't overtly being promised a big bonus or instant wealth or anything like that -- just a free entry to the as yet nonexistent "Level 8" in GIN, and a chance to maybe see Katie in person (barring any unexpected developments such as Katie being re-arrested or going into hiding on the other side of the world, but the GIN leadership doesn't go into that part). But I think that it's merely a matter of scale, and it's easy to see the flaws in the plan, given past history. While there may not be nearly as much money in the pot as there was a few years ago, the current promotion still appears to be a cynical money grab.

My guess is that if the leadership actually does try to pull this off, it will be an administrative nightmare for the few employees who are probably left at GIN and who most likely do the real work, and that if it all goes wrong, which has been known to happen in GIN, Blaine and the Morters and possibly "Lee" (that would be another Katie cohort, Lee Kenny, whom Tom mentioned in his update a few times) will still be able to pocket a lotta moolah, leaving pretty much everyone else in the lurch.

It's the same old circle jerk (and you're not invited)
On the PS to the February 7 Facebook post, there's a link to two videos of what Kevin-through-his-proxy describes as "me and my friends." Years ago I linked to the first one, which features the Morters, but here it is again. In this 2011 offering, produced during GIN's heyday as a super-scam, Katie and his well-fed buddies waxed profound about "Energy, GIN, and Fishing." Given the fact that they were, at the time, at the very apex of their scheme to scam hundreds of people out of many thousands of dollars, the vid kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Although Kevin himself does not appear in the second video, posted in 2018 but dating from 2011, he is very much a presence in it nevertheless. This video features Blaine "interviewing" Chris McGarahan Jr. (son of Voldemort, who as you may recall was one of GIN's top hucksters a few years back). In the guise of a frank discussion on Scamworld's youth movement, Chris Jr., sounding much more like a California stoner than an ambitious go-getter, shamelessly touts Kevin Trudeau as one of his most important mentors. And with Blaine's encouragement, he also flogs the 14-volume scamfomercial CD set, Your Wish Is Your Command (originally created to be a come-on for GIN), claiming that it's one of the essential self-help classics, on a par with Napoleon Hill's works and The Magic of Thinking Big.

But I wouldn't trust Chris the Younger or Chris the Elder as far as I could throw 'em. There's a substantial bit about both McGarahans in this June 2014 Whirled post. That was back when Chris Jr., still apparently masquerading as a leading member of the younger generation of go-getters, was pushing an MLM flopportunity called Vemma, about which my friend Jason "Salty Droid" Jones had a few things to say.

Nor would I trust Blaine Athorn or the Morters, and as indicated in the links in the first paragraph of this post, I've blogged about these guys several times over the years.

I first discussed Blaine at length in this April 2013 post about one of Kevin Trudeau's bankruptcies (particularly under the sub-head, "MLM fever"). In that same post I also cited a December 2004 piece (which for several reasons you really need to read if you haven't already), which references Katie and Blaine's Amway days. The piece claims that Blaine fired Kevin after the latter's 1989 credit card fraud, but apparently there was no bad blood between the two, because they're still buddies.

And I wrote at length about the Morters as well in this August 2015 post, mostly under the sub-head, "Trick and Morter." These guys have a real family scampire, which began with their late daddy and which they show every sign of continuing and expanding as long as they can get away with it.

Included on the February 7 Facebook post I referenced above are several photos of Katie and his fat-cat buds taken over a period of years. There's one of him and the Morters in a private jet; a pic of Katie and the Morters on stage jawing about GIN; a couple of pics of them at one of their "exclusive" fishing trips (paid for by GIN members, many of whom were vainly expecting their own lives to get better as a result of pouring money into Kevin's piggy bank); and an old pic of a pudgy Kevin and two guys whom I assume are either a couple of Morters or a Morter and an Athorn.

And below, you'll see a bonus photo that's not on the Facebook post. Appearing on this Flickr album, it was taken at a GIN event in the Bahamas on New Year's Eve of 2010, which was when the GIN scam was really hitting its stride, raking in lots of money by making all sorts of wild promises to the rank and file. The pic shows Kevin Trudeau and the Doctors T gabbing excitedly about something.

If you follow the link in the paragraph above the pic, you'll see several other pics of Katie and Blaine and the Morters and a few others lounging on a boat, clowning it up in a limo, dining scrumptiously, and just generally having a good old time at the expense of hundreds of GIN members who apparently didn't have what it took to be invited to the private parties held at GIN events, but whose money was certainly good enough to subsidize those parties.

Well, I guess that's understandable. The elite leadership has to escape from the riff-raff once in a while, don't they? There are several other albums on Kevin Trudeau's old Flickr collection that you might find interesting as well.

Every picture tells a story, and truly, it's the same old story: turds of a feather clump together. Or more specifically these days, they huddle together during visiting hours at a federal prison camp to plot and plan their next grift(s). As Kevin wrote, "I'm excited! How about you?"

As for everyone else, the writing has been on the wall for years, for those who are willing to read it: The only people who will significantly benefit from any project that even marginally involves Kevin Trudeau will be Kevin himself and a select few of his closest buddies. Everyone else is disposable and interchangeable, as long as that money keeps coming in. It has been this way for years and it will most likely always be this way.

In the future the big hook to catch all the little fishies may not be GIN specifically; it may be another big "exclusive" club or group of "like-minded" individuals. But I'd say that at this point, if you're not Blaine or a Morter, or possibly another one of a small group of long-time cronies, you are probably never truly going to get any tangible or lasting benefits from even the most worshipful treatment of Kevin Trudeau, no matter how much of your hard-earned money you give him. It's something to keep in mind.

But hey, no worries. As Eric Idle's character demonstrated at the close of the 1979 Monty Python movie, Life of Brian, just about everything looks more cheerful if you can turn it into a song. So go ahead and celebrate Katie's friendship with his nearly lifelong buds; Cole Porter and I will get you started.

If you ever need a scam, here I am
If you need to sell a lie, I'm your guy
If you ever feel you need to hide your cash, I'll help stash
It's friendship, friendship
Grab the gold and spendship
When the marks are bitching 'bout our latest breach
We'll be on the beach!

~Cosmic Connie, 2020

 Just purse your lips and whistle!

PS ~ Bernie at GINtruth is blogging again. And he's on Kevin's case too. I'm glad he's back, because it was getting a little lonely in this part of the blogosphere.
 
Related on this Whirled:

• 31 January, 2020: Kevin Trudeau asks Judge Robert Gettleman for post-prison scam guidance
  Kevin Trudeau and his buddies seem to be actively plotting his post-prison career. But is all of this moot? Realistically, what will Kevin himself actually be able to do, especially since he'll presumbably be on "supervised release" for five years? Anything could happen, and at this point we can only speculate, but Trudeau himself did reach out early in January 2020 to Judge Robert Gettleman, with an inquiry about these very matters.
•  27 January, 2020: Eight misbehavin'? GIN is using imprisoned founder Kevin Trudeau to promote their Level 8 "training"
  Quid pro Trudeau: You scratch my scaly back, I'll scratch yours (and possibly stab you in it if I need to). GIN needs KT as much as (or more than) he needs them, and it shows. But that dynamic could change when Katie gets sprung from the clink.
• 18 December, 2019: Saint Kevin Trudeau becomes GuruKev as Facebook clamps down on his "celebrity" page
  There's nothing like throwing in a heapin' helpin' of McSpirituality to the scamcake mix you're making in preparation for your release from prison. Kevin Trudeau will probably never abandon the conservative Christian part of his base, but his rebranding as "Guru Kev" is blatant pandering to the more "sophisticated" marks who have a more worldly view of "spirituality." But don't be fooled. All of that holy talk is just another hustle.

Straight from the horse's a$$

People are free to spend their money on whatever they want--more power to 'em. But just as I don't personally care to "waste" my money on some gazillion-dollar sports car to park in my driveway, I also don't need a gazillion-dollar imported German Hanoverian warmblood in my stable to make my life complete. That's just me. If people really WANT it, okay, whatever makes ya happy. I just noticed, as a casual observer, that there's a whole lotta money being tossed about in [the horse lovers'] world, and if I were the cynical predatory type it would be a consideration to, uh, consider.

Another observation: I would guesstimate from my own experience... that probably 70-80% of the horsie world is FEMALE... So if I were looking for companionship and I were attracted to the female persuasion, it would be a good place to look. Or troll, as the case may be...

...The potential for lots of money and sex: it's a winning combination! Though I am CERTAIN all these people and services you mention [in the blog post] only have the animal's (and the consumer's) best interests at heart. I'm just sayin', that's some pretty green grass, there, is all....
~ My friend "Mojo" (being sarcastic) in a comment to an August 2008 Whirled Musings blog post

Note: This post is a bit off of the beaten path -- at least the path I've been riding for the past numerous posts. Enjoy the break; I'll be back to Kevin Trudeau court docs and so forth before long. Meanwhile if you want some good articles and links about the now-imprisoned Kevin and the lasting effects of his mega-scam GIN, visit Bernie's GINtruth blog.
~CC

I love horses, and have been fond of them since I was a kid. I've never really been into riding, though I have ridden a few times over the years (not very well, I might add, but at least I know how to get on a horse, and I've never fallen off, so that should count for something). I might actually take up riding for real at some point, but for now, I simply appreciate horses for who they are, or to be more accurate, who they seem to be, based upon my own observations and projections. I don't claim to have any special knowledge about horses but I admire them and find them endlessly fascinating. I love the way they look and feel and move and sound and smell. Having been fortunate enough to live in proximity to (other people's) horses for several years, I have come to appreciate them even more. I completely understand how people can fall so deeply and hopelessly in love with their horses.

I also understand how expensive and high-maintenance horses are, even in the best of circumstances. Overall it seems that many of them are less hardy than some of their less-romanticized but generally healthier and dare I say smarter cousins (e.g., the long-ears, particularly mules) -- and even though horses clearly have a strong survival instinct, as do pretty much all sentient beings, many of them also seem inordinately prone to sabotaging their survival chances in shocking and costly ways. (The Oatmeal has a humorously cynical outlook on horses; I have probably linked to it before, but here it is again. Of course I do not agree with the whole "I hate horses" sentiment, or with the notion that we should be eating equines, or with the author's general contempt for horses... but it's pretty funny anyway.)

Combine the normal expense factor with the profound love that people have for their horses and their desire to do the very best for their equine friends, and it is easy to see why catering to the horse lovers' market can be lucrative indeed. It's lucrative for legitimate business owners and practitioners, and I certainly do not begrudge any of these people their right to make an honest living. Unfortunately, judging by what I've seen and heard, the horsey market can be pretty profitable for scammers as well. I was reminded of that again recently by an alert reader who is a horse expert and is utterly appalled by the way certain scammers -- who, as it happens, have a connection to now-imprisoned serial mega-scammer Kevin Trudeau -- are taking advantage of people who have horses with health challenges. We'll get to that specific herd of horsey hucksters in a few moments. But first, some context and history.

Saddle up; you're about to be taken for a ride
In the years I've been blogging, I've managed to work in a few drive-by snarks about New-Wage horseplay. For instance, there's this August 2008 piece (scroll down to, "The horse is the new dolphin"). That's the post on which my pal Mojo, whose words you saw at the beginning of this post, commented; here's the link to the entire comment.

Nearly a year later, in July 2009, I used the topic of equine flatulence as a shaky framework for a post about the aforementioned Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie) and another huckster Katie was courting at the time, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale. At the time I wrote the horse-fart post, I had no idea that Katie was getting ready to launch his biggest boondoggle of all, the Global Information Network (GIN), which is currently having its big "Inspire France 2015" event in Paris. (It's free, but you couldn't have gotten in on it even if you'd learned of it on time, because it has been sold out for weeks, according to the web site.) The impending GIN launch was apparently why Katie was courting Joe back in 2009; no doubt he wanted to capitalize on Joe's fame as a star of the New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, as well as get his greedy hands on Joe's mailing list. For his part Joe was over the moon about being sucked up to by one of the most successful marketers of all time, though he has been strangely silent about Katie since the latter's trial, conviction and imprisonment. Anyway, I didn't learn about GIN till a few months after I wrote the-horse-fart post, and it (GIN, not horse flatulence) has been a frequent topic on Whirled Musings since then.

Although the equine-exploitation angle of Scamworld has never been a predominant theme on this blog, I've been aware of it. Apart from the posts cited above, I've mentioned, for instance, Gary Douglas, the founder of the cult-like sex-and-money org Access Consciousness (aka Scientology Lite). See this post, under "Warning: ACCESSories on the loose". Gary and his younger sidekick Dain Heer have a pretty good horse shtick going with their Conscious Horse Conscious Rider workshops.

Not content to bill himself as a mere horse whisperer, Gary claims that he is an "international horse medium." Back in 2012 my good friend Yakaru did his own drive-by snark about Gary's horse mediumship. Gary maintains a small herd of trained "facilitators" to present his workshop; Texan Suzy Godsey appears to be one of Gary's trail hands. She helps out with the Conscious Horse Conscious Rider workshop scheme and also has a "horse bodywork" shtick going, based largely on Access teachings.

Over the years Gary appears to have targeted rich older women for his various scams and schemes, including rich older women with horses. A few years ago he even told a story on a radio show about possibly missing out on an opportunity to inherit some $67 million because he wouldn't bang a wealthy "older woman" whom he was helping with her horses. But maybe that's fodder for another blog post. I do have a recording of the interview, though, and it kind of disgusted me.

And moving on to even lower forms of equine exploiters (if that is even possible), we have the vociferously self-promoting and profoundly daft Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell, a former b.f.f. of Kevin Trudeau. Lenny was a highly paid GIN speaker until his firing in 2012, and even today his profile still appears on one of the Taste of GIN pages on the official GIN web site. But I probably don't need to tell you about his GIN background, which is actually what brought him to my attention in the first place. As it turns out, among his many other claimed accomplishments Lenny is a horse guy too, and according to him he knows all about horses and how to train them and work them.

I'm not insinuating that horses are Lenny's main shtick or even close to it; as far as I can tell, most of his time these days is still taken up with promoting his cancer quackery and other alt-health propaganda, as well as spreading idiotic conspiracy memes on Facebook. In the service of the latter he has made several hilarious attempts over the years to discredit the Internet's most famous conspiracy-meme debunkers, Snopes, as we just discussed here the other day.

Although Lenny doesn't currently seem to be actively exploiting his love and knowledge of horses, a horsey theme pops up every now and again in his public show-and-tell. There is, for instance, a picture of him sitting astride a saddle horse on a recently created page on one of his new-ish German web sites. The apparent purpose of that page is to show off what a successful, well-loved, and wealthy man he is, though frankly I think this picture is much more representative of Lenny than any of the others on the page. Not wanting his English-speaking audience to be deprived of yet another glimpse into his rich and successful life, Coldwell also provided a link to the German page on a thread on his main Facebook page. This shot is from August 13, 2015:



But I digress. Contrary to what a casual observer of the page on the German site might be inclined to conclude, that picture of Lenny on horseback is not a portrait of a wealthy gentleman horse owner on one of his noble steeds. Rather it is a pic of Lenny on a rent-a-horse, taken at a motivational/"spiritual" weekend retreat he hosted in late January 2013 on a dude ranch in Georgia, the Southern Cross Guest Ranch. In the promotions for that event he clearly attempted to capitalize on his immense horse knowledge, and I wrote about his promotional efforts on a February 2013 blog post (it's up towards the beginning, so you don't have to read the whole thing if you don't care to). The marketing copy I wrote about is pretty icky, and though it is long gone from Coldwell's own sites, this promo video is still on his main site. In the vid he mentions that "horses need leadership," the message being that if you learn, under his expert guidance, to show your horse who's boss, you can be a leader in life. And speaking of icky, there is this cheesy video, produced post-retreat.

A couple of years before the horse camp, while he was still in GIN, Coldwell apparently gave some horse-loving GIN members the impression that he was a breeder and owner of top German show jumpers and that he had sold many horses in the $100,000 to million-dollar range. That nugget was shared with me by an ex-GIN member who is a seasoned horse lover and owner. This person acknowledged that top show jumpers do indeed command that kind of money, and added that many of the top horses come from a handful of bigwig breeders in Germany and the Netherlands. The ex-GIN member claimed to actually know quite a few of these people but added, "I somehow never heard Coldwell's name come up in those circles. Gee, no surprise there...I don't think he ever trained any horse; he doesn't ride well enough... [but] he's aware of his limited riding skills...If he ever was involved I'm curious who rode for him. It's a pretty small world amongst riders; we compete against each other all our lives. I never got around to asking him [about] that, though. I was already aware of his exaggerations."

And then there are those backyard horses that may or may not exist. In the fall of 2013, Coldwell boasted on Facebook that he was moving into a 17,000 square foot mansion. He posted several shots of the alleged residence, which actually looks pretty generic on the outside and doesn't appear to be even close to 17,000 square feet. Included in one of his boasts was a picture of what he said was his back yard, which looked like a huge open pasture, and he added that "the horses" would be delivered there soon. But he never did share any shots of the horses in his backyard after they were delivered, at least not that I've seen. Maybe they are actually unicorns and don't show up in photographs.

More recently (June 2015), Coldwell was apparently on a throwback kick on Facebook, and he boasted about having had a horse ranch in Virginia a mere two years after moving to the United States from Germany. He claimed it as one of his great "successes." Here are the screen shots:

Suspecting he was fibbing or at least stretching the truth, I reached out to someone who knew him very well when he still lived in Virginia.

Did he actually own a horse ranch in Virginia in the early years after he moved to the U.S.? I read something in the [2007] police report about him having some kind of horse training venture with somebody, but that's not the same as actually owning his own horse ranch. Anyway, he's been boasting about his past on Facebook lately, and yesterday he posted a boast about the success he had at his horse ranch...

The person answered back:

NO he never owned anything in Va - not horses, a house or anything. I don't know where those photos came from but I have never seen them before. I recognize the shirt though. That's actually funny since anybody can find out that he is lying. And as a side bar there are no ranches in VA; they are called horse farms no matter how big they are. LOL.

Virginia apparently does have a few dude or guest ranches, but the type of property Coldwell was talking about does indeed seem to be what they would call a "farm" in that neck of the woods. But beyond the semantics... I know, I'm as shocked as you are that Leonard Coldwell apparently lied yet again. No worries for him, though. His fans did not even seem to question his claims. They simply nuzzled up to him as per usual, whinnying their approval.

Also as per usual, I am willing to seriously entertain notions contrary to what I think I pretty much know to be true. I'm always willing to admit I am wrong if I am. Accordingly if Lenny -- or someone else who knew him back in Virginia when he supposedly had that "horse ranch" -- would like to present me with some concrete evidence that he was telling the truth about being a successful horse breeder who owned a horse operation in The Commonwealth in the 1990s, I am all ears. Or eyes. Drop me a line at one of the email addresses displayed on this page, or via a comment through Blogger.

I would especially love to hear from someone who was in the horse world in Virginia in the mid to late 1990s to early 2000s. Lenny resided in Fauquier County, Virginia back in the day (Remington and Warrenton, I'm told). Do any of you horse people who were living in the area, or anywhere in Virginia back then, recall a short, volatile little German guy with unnaturally black hair, a perma-tan and a porn mustache, who was a highly successful horse trainer/breeder and/or horse farm owner? He most likely went by the name Leonard Coldwell, but could have still been using Bernd Klein or maybe even Bernd Witchner. (He didn't actually get his name legally changed to Leonard Coldwell till June 1998, but clearly he was using that name for years in Germany and the U.S.)

So let me know. And if I hear anything contrary to what I've written, I will be glad to retract, correct, or amend the above as appropriate, and to restore Leonard Coldwell to his rightful place in the horse world. Otherwise I'll assume that he is just shoveling sh-t as usual and is about as prominent and accomplished in the equine world as he claims to have been in the martial arts world.*

Trick and Morter
Now -- finally -- let's get to those other flim-flammers, the ones to whom I was alerted recently by my correspondent, who is not only a lifelong horse lover but also a professional horsewoman with what appear to be very impressive creds. This concerns a scampire run by some long-time buddies and business partners of the aforementioned Kevin Trudeau, the Morters. I've known about them for years and have mentioned them in passing, but have simply never given them the attention on this Whirled that they so richly deserve.

Next to Fred van Liew, another nearly-lifelong Katie pal to whom I have paid tribute here several times, the Morters are arguably some of the most nefarious in the foul stable of Katie enablers. Unlike Freddy, they weren't mentioned in Aaron Gell's excellent piece for Business Insider, which was published earlier this year (here is my blog post about it). I don't know if Aaron reached out to them and they refused an interview, or if it was just an oversight, but in my book, the Morters deserve their own stars on the Scamworld Walk of Infamy.

The Morter scampire was founded by the late Dr. Milton Theodore (Ted) Morter, Jr., who was apparently good buddies with Katie for many years before his death in May 2013. If you were simply to visit the link above on the Morters' main web site you might think he is still alive, but here is his obit.

Back in the 1970s, Ted the Elder (one of his sons, Ted III, carries on his name as well as his schemes) invented a health and healing gimmick called Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique, or B.E.S.T., described thusly on the Morter site:

B.E.S.T. is a non-forceful, energy balancing hands on procedure used to help reestablish the full healing potential of the body. Understanding the body makes no mistakes regarding health and longevity, B.E.S.T. principles acknowledge the concept of Interference we create with our conscious mind. This Interference caused imbalance in the autonomic nervous system leading to exhaustion of our organ systems over time. Researched at major universities, taught in several Chiropractic Colleges and in professional continuing education seminars, B.E.S.T. is recognized as an effective healing science. The principles and concepts of Morter HealthSystem and B.E.S.T. technique are available to families, therapists and health care practitioners.

If think you've heard that kind of stuff before, you almost certainly have, if you've been following some of the snarks on this blog over the years, or if you've been following or observing the New-Wage/New-Age/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health subcultures and industries at all. Most of these "healing modalities" offer pretty much the same line of horse crap, and I mean no offense to either horses or their crap. The schemes just have different names and various other branding details. But if you've seen one you've pretty much seen them all, or, as we like to say on this Whirled, it's deja screw all over again.

The B.E.S.T. main page goes on to elaborate on various offshoots of B.E.S.T., including something called Morter March ("a technique designed to use contralateral movement and stretching to neurologically update and re-time your body"). Then there's "Physical B.E.S.T" (hands-on stuff "taught to practitioners only" -- you can probably understand why). By "practitioner," the Morters are probably referring to chiropractic -- they are chiros, as was their daddy -- and select other alternative or "holistic" fields.

If you're not a practitioner, no worries, you still have a chance to be taken in by "Emotional B.E.S.T.," which "utilizes advanced technology developed to update higher brain interference from the physical body." Described as the core of B.E.S.T technology, Emotional B.E.S.T. is also, according to the site, "the pattern for health and wellness" which "unlocks the power." Patients as well as practitioners can do Emotional B.E.S.T.

Not surprisingly, B.E.S.T. isn't just about techniques of hands-on and hands-off woo. There are boatloads of supplements, kits, and other frauducts and info-frauducts to help relieve you of that burdensome money.

So there you have the foundation of the Morter brand of New-Wage crapitalism -- at least the part devoted to human animals. There's a whole other related realm in the scampire, devoted to non-human animals, and we'll have much more on that in a moment. It's not so much that I'm taking time getting to the point, but rather that there are so many points to make.

Background is important because, I believe, the role that the Morters have played in Scamworld cannot be overstated. They have their own shtick, certainly, but for years they have also been bloated planets orbiting around the bright and toxic sun that is Kevin Trudeau. Though marginally dimmer, Katie's light continues to burn even from within the walls of the federal prison camp where he now resides. Back in 2009 The Morters -- not only the late elder but also his two overfed, smirking sons, Ted III and Tom (horse people might call them "easy keepers") -- were apparently only too happy to jump aboard Kevin Trudeau's GIN gravy train. (Their sister, "Dr. Sue," doesn't seem to have been involved so much with Katie and GIN, but she is doing her own motivational/pseudoscientific dog-and-pony show and is, among other things, a member of that Scamworld cartel that calls itself the Transformational Leadership Council.)

Even though the GIN assets were sold to a group of Katie buddies in 2014, the Morter boys are still part of the GIN "faculty," or at least they were last time the GIN site actually listed its "faculty" members. They were also part of a group of investors recommended by the court appointed receiver, Robb Evans, to purchase what was left of Katie's Natural Cures scampire; see page 5 of this document. The group called itself the Business Education Support Team LLC... B.E.S.T. ... get it? And Ted Morter is currently listed as a "faculty" member of the group that bought GIN, AXS. So really, GIN didn't change hands at all.

Speaking of the GIN "faculty," I found it interesting that the public part of the GIN web site now only has a teaser video on the Faculty page. Do they have such a high turnover rate that they don't feel comfortable listing individual "faculty members" any more? Or were those individuals simply getting too much publicity (positive or negative)? In any case I thought it amusing that the final shot on the current video is a sound bite of Kevin Trudeau himself saying, "Listen to somebody who has what you want, and has been where you are." Well, I suppose that anybody who has aspirations to end up in Camp Cupcake (aka Federal Prison Camp Montgomery, Alabama) could do worse than listen to and follow in Katie's footsteps, though I imagine you would also have to have access to many millions of dollars to feed your high-priced lawyers (a la Katie) in order to be incarcerated in such (relative) luxury. Good luck! Let me know where you end up and give me your inmate number, and I might send you a postcard.

GIN "faculty" or not, it appears that the Morters are still quite involved in GIN, and they still maintain their GIN Morter Facebook page, which displays a website address that redirects to their main site. The Facebook page has a relatively modest number of "likes" at present -- only a little more than 900 -- but I have no doubt the Morters have profited handsomely from being a part of the GIN scam, particularly in GIN's heyday. However successful they may have been on their own, Katie gave them a huge platform they almost certainly would not have had otherwise.

And they got to have a lot of fun with Katie too, at others' expense. They were privileged to be part of numerous fishing trips and cruises with Katie, paid for by countless scammed GIN members and other consumers of Katie's frauducts and flopportunities. Here's a pic from happier days, of Old Doc and Younger Docs Morter on a private plane with Katie. (That's pool shark Mike "The Mouth" Sigel in the background.)

And here are Teddy and Tommy and Katie playing the fat-cat role to the hilt -- smoking expensive cigars, drinking expensive booze, and gabbing about energy, GIN, and fishing. It's an August 2011 video and I know I've linked to this one before, but it so deserves another sharing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-joxyPHISo

Are you disgusted yet? If so, prepare to become even more so.

Talk to the animals...
It's really no big surprise that there is an Animal B.E.S.T. We love our non-human companions, after all, and horse people aren't the only folks who, with so much love in their hearts, can be especially vulnerable to animal scams. Enter the Morters, who have been only too willing and able to reach deeply into the hearts and wallets of these loving souls with their pseudoscientific flapdoodle. Here's the capsule summary of what Animal B.E.S.T. is all about:

Animal B.E.S.T. (Bio-energetic Synchronization Technique) is energy work, which balances the body and updates memory patterns so animals can heal.

Yup. Same song, different verse.

Early in July I received a comment to a November 2014 blog post largely devoted to Katie and his scam circle. Rather than re-write what the commenter so adeptly wrote herself, here it is in full:

The Morter System has a B.E.S.T. program targeted on animals. As if taking advantage of the human do-gooder-wannabes isn't enough, they have pulled in innocent animals as bait to bilk more money out of the unsuspecting public.

I had one look at the pics and videos of their supposed "Master'" instructor James W Murphy and knew the con was on. He claims to be a professional horse trainer, showman etc. I KNEW this man had never won a National or World Title as he was claiming. Not possible.

I called Morter Healthcare and asked them exactly what titles that he had won. I pointed out that he was in a video on their site claiming that he was a huge success and endorsed and taught the Morter technique. So...surely they had his credentials somewhere that listed his accomplishments? They said I should call him, that they only knew what he told them, but I could leave a voice message for "Dr. Ted".

I called Murphy himself. After just a few pointed questions from me, he started backing up quickly. He wanted nothing more than for me to go away and hang up. No such luck for him. His final comment was that he was under Confidentiality agreements not to divulge his show record! ( lol alrighty then fraud face). He claimed 73+ World Title affiliations, yet was not able to ["divulge"] one single name of a horse or show or trainer that won said "World Titles"?

Next call was to the 2 major breed associations to check out his judges status that he had touted. Ya well....he never has held a judges card with them. Tsk tsk...

Armed with my personal conversation with him, and backed up with the info supplied by the National Associations, I called Morter Healthcare back. (of course no one bothered to return my call after I had called 3 times and left a voice mail) This time in no uncertain terms, I told the receptionist that they had a fraud on their hands and I felt that they had some exposure there seeing as how they were making money off of his false claims ($2,500 to take the 2 class package that his instruction was among the class choices) oh...and that I would not be letting this go. This time she put me through to "Dr. Ted" himself.

After listing the issues related to Murphy's false credentials, Dr. Ted attempted to turn suspicion around to me. When I pointed out that this was not about me, but rather his failure at due diligence to vet his spokesperson, Dr. Ted became condescending and combative. I gave him the names of the association and told him to get to work. He wanted an email sent to him with my information before he would take it any further. Call me paranoid, but I am not about to give that bunch of money grubbing cons any of my personal information. Nope, not gonna happen.

Suffice it to say that Morter Healthcare Systems is making bank off of the false credentials of their sadly incompetent horse 'professional". BIG bank. They have been put on notice, it will be interesting to see how they handle it.

The horses don't deserve this failure of care. I have viewed youtube testimonials by another idiot that claims to be modifying their genetics by use of the B.E.S.T. technique. One particular horse was obviously suffering from feet issues which needed xrays and corrective farrier work. This honyonker was claiming that the horse needed his energy balanced. Poor horse was lame and being made to move around on hard ground for the video.

Yep that'll get me good and pissed off. Here's hoping you may get a bit pissed off too!

 

It did get me a bit pissed off, enough to inspire, as you can see, a more lengthy and more involved blog post than I've managed to produce in a long time. And by the way, here is the link to the video of the guy who claimed to be modifying a horse's genetics. More on him in a moment.

My correspondent (let's just call her Melissa) and I have communicated several times since her initial comment to my blog. She describes herself as a professional horsewoman with numerous championships and world titles in winnings. In short, as Melissa says, "I know horses." I believe her.

For personal and professional reasons Melissa wishes to remain anonymous, and that's one of the things that apparently riled Dr. Ted and James Murphy, as well as the guy whose video I linked to a couple of paragraphs up. That guy is a Texan named Joseph Agrue, who bills himself as "The Animal Shaman." He is another certified Animal B.E.S.T. practitioner and also a massage therapist -- somewhat of a New-Wage dilettante, it appears.

Melissa sent me correspondence and screen shots to back up her claims that she was treated first with indifference, then with suspicion and rudeness when trying to communicate with these people via phone, social media, and email. It appears that they all tried to turn the criticism on her, calling her cowardly and vengeful, among other things. For instance, in late July she sent an email to the Animal Shaman Joseph Agrue, which read, in part:

...I am an Equine professional and I take exception to those that pretend to be helping horses when in fact they may be causing more harm. For you to pretend that you are qualified to instruct or train others to diagnose the origin of lameness in a horse is potentially harmful to both animal and human. The horse in your video has front feet issues that require the cooperation of veterinarian and farrier to address. The owner of that horse has wasted time and money on the BEST technique , when that horse could have gotten much needed care and real relief.

The  claims that "the color changed" and that the horse "now has dapples" are ridiculous and patently impossible. That is a scientific impossibility. Also, to encourage inexperienced people to stand directly behind horses to "check their hip alignment" is another issue altogether. Is is just a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured.

Here is the deal; real horsemen know a fraud when they see one. Real horsemen want for the horses and owners to be well and safe. You sir are no horseman and it is glaringly obvious to those of us that are. You have no idea about lameness issues, you do not even use the correct verbiage unique to the industry. The claims being made are bogus and can be proven out by other Equine experts...

Here was the Animal Shaman's response:

I have no doubt you are a vindictive evil woman. I talked to dr. [sic] Ted myself yesterday and he has no idea who you are. Unless you tell us who you are and give us a name and contact infol [sic] you're not going to be taken seriously you are a joke. why are you a coward and afraid to identify yourself?

In my years as a scam watcher, I have noticed that in addition to the usual ad hominem attacks on their critics (accusing them of being jealous losers, evil, or on someone's payroll, for instance), scammers love to call those critics out as cowards when they don't use their real or full names. Actually, though, I understand why Melissa hesitated about revealing her identity when communicating with these New-Wage hucksters. I have seen how angry and vindictive scammers and some of their lunatic fans can be. Some will even resort to sham lawsuits against their critics, or to serious attempts to physically endanger their critics. So I can't blame any critic or skeptic or questioner for being a little circumspect about his or her identity. That's not cowardice; it's simply common sense.**  

There's another good reason for Melissa to shield her identity, apart from the plausible risk to her personal safety. If she were to reveal her identity and her business, particularly through this blog, she might be accused of engaging in underhanded self-promotion, and for that matter I might be accused of aiding and abetting someone whose agenda is to undermine the "competition." People might think that Melissa is no better than Coldwell and his former partner Peter Wink, who used their vitriol against GIN and Kevin Trudeau as a springboard to launch and promote their own GIN ripoff club, the IBMS Masters Society. And readers might question my ethics for allowing such promotion on my blog.

After questioning her at length, however, I personally am satisfied that Melissa is not in competition with the frauduct and flopportunity peddlers like the Morters and their "certified" Animal B.E.ST. practitioners. Rather she teaches real-world riding skills that include a variety of English and Western disciplines, including pleasure riding, jumping, trail riding, halter, reining, cutting, barrel racing, Western Dressage, team penning, and ranch sorting. In addition she says that she breeds, breaks and trains show horses. All of her life she has been around horses and horse breeders and trainers on both coasts and several spots in between. She seems like the real deal to me.

And although I have no way of knowing for sure, I think it is very possible Melissa would never have even heard of Animal B.E.S.T. had it not been for the fact that a woman contacted her, wishing to use Melissa's horse for "master certification" work in Animal B.E.S.T. The woman needed to complete and document 20 "cases" in order to receive her certification. Melissa describes her as having bought the Morter gimmick hook, line, and sinker but adds that she was able to teach the woman a few things about horses and the real reasons they do the things they do, which apparently rid the lady of her delusions about the horsey aspect of B.E.S.T. "But she is still into the human bioenergy crap," says Melissa.

My point here is that in most cases, erring on the side of caution regarding one's true identity is a smart thing to do when one is criticizing volatile and unstable people. I know from experience, and learned it years before I'd even heard of Loony Coldwell, that some of those "love and light" people are actually some of the darkest and most hate-filled -- not to mention litigious -- folks around, particularly if they think their income stream is being threatened. I think Melissa has been handling things sensibly, and more than that I think she is coming from a place of deep concern for horses and the people who love them.
Murphy's flaw
As I explained in my response to Melissa's initial comment on my blog, I hadn't actually heard of James W. Murphy and when I looked him up, the first info that popped up was apparently for another James W. Murphy, a Maryland gentleman who died in 2009. That Murphy was also a horse person, but was involved with horse racing and was apparently credible and respected.

But the Animal B.E.S.T. James W. Murphy is very much alive and resides in Arkansas, where, as it happens, the Morters also hang their hats. If you Google James W. Murphy you have to be pretty specific, and even then you're more likely to get results for the dead Murphy. But there is this June 2013 video, which is one of the chief pieces of content that really got to Melissa, due to what she felt are Murphy's exaggerated or false claims about his own accomplishments. He also tells a touching back story that raised some serious red flags for her (it even sounded a bit suspicious to me, as little as I know about horses). Melissa explained the credibility gaps to me in detail. We'll have a little more about that in a moment, and I'll link to the video again.

Oddly enough, Murphy's actual web site doesn't seem to pop up very prominently in the search engines, but here it is. I am thinking that Melissa's efforts to reach out to B.E.S.T. and to Murphy himself had an effect. The above linked video apparently was but no longer is on the Animal B.E.S.T. site, though Murphy is still listed on that site as a certified Animal B.E.S.T practitioner. And more interestingly, Murphy's claims about his horse training creds and whatnot seem to be gone from the "About Us" page on his own site. Melissa sent me a screen shot of the original blurb that captured her interest. Here it is:



And here is how it looks today:

Melissa explained that some of the photos on James' web site were another red flag for her. Take, for instance, the three pics that are currently on the "About Us" page on his web site. Here's Melissa's critique:

In one, he has the lead rope wrapped around his wrist and hand. A HUGE no-no, any horseman would never ever do that.

In the middle one, he is all off center with his saddle slipping off to the right. His right stirrup is hanging lower than his left and he is twisted in the saddle. All because his cinch isn't even secure. Enlarge the photo and it is evident that the cinch tongue isn't through the latigo hole on his saddle. ...not to mention he has his horse over bridled, and by the look of the bit shanks, the curb strap isn't positioned correctly.

Then in the far right photo, his halter is not placed correctly on his horse's nose...  I have 6 yr old beginner riders that know better than that!

When I pointed out to Ted [Morter] that people were paying big money to learn about horses from his so called expert, using false credentials, that's when he got touchy.

I'm no riding expert so I can't judge the photos myself. I'm just passing along what Melissa said. The money is definitely an issue I think I understand, though, and big money it is, potentially. Even if it is not huge money by the standards of Scamworld or the larger world of commerce, it still adds up. Melissa wrote:

They charge $2,500 for people to attend their classes in order to be certified as practitioners for Animal B.E.S.T. (the Morter technique). [The woman who contacted me about using my horse] witnessed about 60 people at these animals classes. There are at least 4 per year which includes Paris, France as a venue. The animal classes have been going on for 8 years. Do the math...then these scammers charge naive pet owners $100 to "balance" their pets. They are in the process of requiring that all of their practitioners that wish to be certified in their human B.E.S.T. attend the animal classes. This will bump their sales up significantly as they offer at least 15 other events for certification. 

Of note, the B.E.S.T. event going on in Paris, France this as-we-speak-end coincides with the GIN Paris event. That's cozy! Here is the schedule of upcoming B.E.S.T. events. And if you want more info about B.E.S.T. courses and their costs, go straight to the source and ask the horse. Not all of the links work correctly; some of the enrollment links lead to the Morters' frauducts catalog page. But at least one link directs properly, revealing the price for the course being described. The whole issue of the actual course costs is a little confusing to me, though, particularly after reading the FAQ page. In any case, it seems the training isn't terribly cheap, whether it's human B.E.S.T. or Animal B.E.S.T.

Another point of contention for Melissa was Murphy's video, which I mentioned above. It's not real new; it's from 2013, but Melissa assures me that it was up on the Morters' site until recently, when she began making noise about it. For Melissa the first red flag in this video was Murphy's apparent claim that he had more than 70 world titles. She wrote, "Hell, I'm accomplished, and having five to ten is damned impressive!"

Then there is the story Murphy tells in the video about how his horse Patches saved his life. I recommend that you watch the vid and hear it yourself, but I'll summarize it here. Murphy says he was riding Patches in traffic one day when an eighteen-wheeler made a big boo-boo, causing all sorts of mayhem and panic. He tried to get Patches to turn in a certain direction to avoid disaster, but Patches, for the first time EVER, ignored his instructions and turned sharply in the opposite direction. What happened next with the truck and the surrounding mess was a complete surprise to Murphy, but he says that he realizes that if Patches had obeyed him instead of going his own way, they would have both been killed. So... hero horsey, humbled rider.

But poor Patches hurt his back terribly from the sharp turn, said Murphy. He was so bad off that vets and horse experts told Murphy he should just have the horse euthanized. But how could Murphy do that to his faithful friend who had saved his life? Then Murphy heard about Animal B.E.S.T. He took Patches to an Animal B.E.S.T class to be worked on by the class. They all worked on Patches all day, and voila! Patches was healed and even better than before. So Murphy decided the right thing to do was to try to get in on some of that Animal B.E.S.T. action himself.

Here is Melissa's take on the story:

In Murphy's testimonial video he described how his horse "turned very quickly and hurt his back". I promise you Connie, nothing turns faster and harder than a Cutting Horse. They do it over and over and over without hurting their backs. lol. He did not mention that the horse fell...nor slipped...he only mentioned that it turned hard. That alone shows me his inexperience. Then he claimed that the horse would lie there and not get up. Again, I am here to tell you that a horse cannot lay down for long periods without creating a much more serious problem. His story is crap. And IF that horse were SO injured that a qualified lameness expert could not help it, nor get to stand, that damn BEST flimflam hocus pocus would not help! ...Plus, I asked him for the name of the attending veterinarian and what tests were done...no reply. *crickets*. But what a heart tuggingly new age feel good story that was eh? Horse saves man from death, BEST saves horse? Bull....

Of course if James W. Murphy (the live one, not the dead one) would like to contact this blog and counter any of the above, he is welcome to do so.

Melissa says her only motivation in making a stink about these frauduct and flopportunity peddlers is to promote the welfare of horses and the people who love and work with them. She says she even went so far as to persuade the Texas State Chemist to send Morter a cease and desist order against their pet feed supplements. "I have Ted's attention, and he sent me an email that pretty much reads as an offer of a bribe," she told me. I have seen an email where Ted asked what it would take to make her happy, so I suppose that could be open to an interpretation of bribery. It appears to me that what would make Melissa happy would not be bribe money, but a world in which scammers would stop taking advantage of good, decent people.

That would make me happy too.

Horse sense and nonsense
I know this post has already dragged on more than long enough. But here's one final point. While we were on the subject of animal scams, Melissa and I also discussed the contemporary craze for various types of equine assisted therapy, which I snarked about it in one of those blog posts a few years ago. Melissa said that this therapy certainly does have its value in some contexts but is often misused. She wrote:

I have worked horse therapy with children with issues. It was really rewarding as the children were more active and attentive when interacting with the horses. However, there is now a push to use horses in all sorts of therapy. As you pointed out, they are the new dolphins!

...It is a racket filled with wannabes that can't wait to pretend they know something about horses.

The problem is how they use the horses....those therapists miss the real deal of what working with horses can do. They zero in on catch phrases like "trust" and use anthropomorphic reasoning to relate horses and humans. That is where they lose the whole basis on how horses can help humans work through issues. They do not understand the horse's viewpoint and how that can help the human. I get livid listening to their BS. Typical example is the Sandra Bullock film 28 Days, where she is in horse therapy and is told to "trust the horse" in order to pick up its foot. Ridiculous crap like that abounds. There is a very deep and real way that working with horse can help people, but first one has to truly understand the horse. And sadly not many people do.

In a subsequent communication she wrote:

People like think that horses are these mystical, all knowing animals that are half fairy dust and half quantum particles. They are an animal that is hard wired to react in a given way. Yes they have different personalities, but they are innately horses, period. You can call me from France and tell me about a problem with a Polish Arabian that was an embryo transfer from a Dutch Warmblood and I can tell you how to fix the problem. Horse behavior is not unique nor it is a "feeling". It is what it is...a learned herd behavior of a prey animal. Period.

Call me a neigh-sayer, but I'll take the word of a genuine professional horse person over that of a New-Wage frauduct or flopportunity peddler any day.

* Speaking of martial arts and horse whispering, here's the latest offering from one of Lenny Coldwell's nuttiest friends/supporters/sycophants: stoner filmmaker, low-budget movie star and kick-boxer Ian Jacklin of iCureCancer infamy, who was supposedly going to be doing another breakthrough film about natural-cures heroes, featuring Lenny. No telling what happened to that; apparently he couldn't get sufficient funding. This vid is all about Ian, not Lenny. There's a lot in the vid about vaccination evils, wholistic cancer curing and even sovereign citizenry, though, all of which offer clear clues about why Lenny and Ian have been consistently masturbating each other. The horse whispering part of the new vid appears to be a mini-saga of Ian trespassing into someone's pasture to make friends with a nice horsey; it starts at about 12:00 and goes on for several minutes. Apparently Ian had been spending a great deal of time trying to get into the pasture, but was too stoned to figure it out until he finally discovered he could have just opened a gate and walked in all along. Watch the whole thing if you have time, though. It's hilarious. It's not quite Harold and Kumar quality, but still fun. And honestly, I can't tell if Ian is just a harmless stoner or deeply disturbed and potentially dangerous... or maybe just in character, playing a deranged activist. I'll leave that up to mental health experts and/or film critics to determine. Maybe "deranged" is just part of his persona, like his doppelganger Seann William Scott of Stifler/American Pie fame, who like Ian seems to be a little on the washed-up actor side. Except Seann may be a has-been, and Ian... well, he seems to be kind of a never-was...

** Regarding cowardice and anonymity: Even though I don't think it is necessarily a mark of cowardice to want to be anonymous online, I do think that the people who send anonymous death threats or abusive comments to critics and skeptics and questioners are cowards. I hear from such cowards all the time. Even so, I continue to allow anonymous comments on my blog. (Note: I'm not claiming that everyone who disagrees with me and chooses anonymity is a coward -- just the abusive ones.)

Some people have told me I am a fool for revealing my own identity on this blog, but I have a feeling that if I had tried to disguise it I would have been outed anyway, as my pal Salty Droid was not long after he began blogging. At any rate I'm "out," and have been facing the consequences for more than nine years now. Among many other things I, like my new friend Melissa, have been called an evil and vindictive woman (and worse).