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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sex cults, dead dogs, dead docs, scammer skirmishes, sticky fingers... just another day on my Whirled

It has been a busy and crazy few weeks, both in the real world and on my own Whirled beat, though you might not think the latter, judging by the couple of weeks of silence on this blog, which, incidentally, will celebrate its tenth birthday on July 27, 2016. It isn't that there is nothing to write about; on the contrary, there's almost too much, and I've been busy with other things. But I wanted to throw together a few snippets and musings to catch you up so you'll have something to occupy your brain while you're monitoring the coverage of the Clown Party Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Since this isn't a political blog, except of course when it is, I won't delve too deeply into the clown show; there are plenty of other blogs and sites to do that, and they'll do a far more thorough job because that's what they do. But I did want to share this Mother Jones piece that nailed what the GOP, the fabled "party of Lincoln" has become: the party that from all appearances has finally and fully embraced the politics of being an a$$hole.

So this week the Republican Party is poised to anoint a man whom House Speaker Paul Ryan, the GOP's highest ranking elected leader, has said made racist remarks. That is—or should be—stunning. But even this highly significant fact becomes lost in the torrent of Trump's offensive conduct. And most of the GOP has accepted him as the nominee, enabling and legitimizing his behavior. Per its electorate's wishes, the party has shoved aside traditional conservative principles, basic decency, and fundamental standards of competence—this guy didn't know what the nuclear triad is—to embrace hatred, nastiness, and cruelty. With malice toward none, with charity for all? No, it's opposite day. This convention marks the moment when the party of Lincoln has become the party of reality-show trash talking. As Trump might say, sad!

Apropos of that, and particularly of the pre-Trump-tive Clown Party nominee, my husband Ron Kaye wrote a short blog post today about the decline of real journalism, which he worries about as much as he does "the rise of bullies who would lie, threaten, bully, and frighten their way into public office, because journalists who are brave enough to demand truth are our single best weapon against tyrants."

Yeah, what Ron said.

And now to the snippets and musings. I've posted some but not all of what follows on Facebook, so if some of it seems familiar, I apologize for the redundancy.

Access Consciousness in the news again; Whirled Musings, not so much
As long-time followers of this blog know, I've been writing about the wackadoodle sex-and-money-obsessed cultlike scam known as Access Consciousness (formerly Access Energy Transfer) since 2007. My Access posts remain the most-read posts on this blog, which probably isn't saying much since this is not exactly the world's most hottest spot in the blogosphere, but it's something.

Anyway, Access made the news again earlier this month when Complex.com posted an article announcing that "Ricky Williams is in a Cult." Williams is a former Pro Bowl NFL player who has also recently made the news for his cannabis-centered gym. He first made Access-related news in 2012 when he accepted a $50,000 donation for his Ricky Williams Foundation from none other than Access founder Gary Douglas. Natch, I wrote about that here.

As such articles go, the Complex piece is a pretty good one, despite the fact that, as the Houston Press's Craig Malisow wrote in a short post about the piece, "...we wish the writer had prodded Williams a little more about the most troubling aspect of Access, which is this: Douglas, the group's founder, believes that 'young children are incredibly sexy.' To those of us who aren't card-carrying members of NAMBLA, language like that is a bit spooky."

Craig, to whom I'd given assistance and information while he was writing his November 2012 feature article on Access, gave a passing nod to all of the writing I've done on this topic. Craig said my research into Access "still stands as some of the best work on the subject."

Alas, the Complex article didn't acknowledge my blog at all, merely noting, "There are over a dozen blogs and forums that have lent considerable bandwidth to deconstructing the validity of Access Consciousness." The link embedded in the word "blogs" directs to post on a Christian blog, "Women of Grace," warning about the evils of Access.

So -- no love for Whirled Musings in most of the media, despite the fact that I was the first blogger to write about many loony things regarding Access, including the fact that the scam originated in the 1990s when founder Gary Douglas started channeling Grigori Rasputin and assorted other entities. That detailed story was published in June 2010, and I'd made a big fat snarky deal about the matter in my first Access post in June 2007. I was also the first to snark about the "9 Trannies" (May 2011). And so on, and so forth.

But at least I got a mention on this Access apologist site a few years ago, a site whose main purpose seems to be to invalidate Craig's 2012 article. Being the phony good sports that Accessories are known to be, the person or persons responsible for the page wrote: "Connie Schmidt writes a blog that is very funny and her articles poke fun at Gary, Dain and Access Consciousness in general. Her work is provocative and engaging so it usually inspires people to go to Access Consciousness website for more information. Her 'Whirled Musings' are not really a creditable source of accurate information about Access Consciousness."

(Pssst. Yes, they are.)

And a former "Accessory" who "did" Access Consciousness for quite a few years wrote in an email to me a few months ago, "I remember Gary Douglas mentioning you on a number of occasions. He basically vilified you and also the journalist Malisow... It clearly rattled him and he was reacting and trying to deny and dismiss any negative comments."

This person also wrote, "In the upper echelons of Access I've heard that Gary and Dain [have claimed] that if people are causing problems for them or those close [to them] that they will crush their universes."

Gary Douglas himself had actually written to this blog several years previous to that. He fake-thanked me for making people aware of Access. My former Accessory correspondent said that Gary told his classes about writing to my blog, but this person seemed to share my opinion that Gary's good-sport response was just a veneer, perhaps a way of whistling past the graveyard. "Clearly," my correspondent wrote, "you've gotten to him, or he wouldn't mention it."

Take that, mainstream media people who think that you're being really scoopy when you tell the world about about Ricky Williams' "cult." I may be doomed to eternal obscurity, but I still manage to get under scammers' skins.

And despite my narcissistic whining about getting no love, the important point is that Access's lunacy continues to receive publicity, which one can only hope will encourage parents to carefully vet any activity that is even remotely related to Access before they entrust their kids to the care of crazies.

Dog daze and deja Blue (or: LoonyC gets Snopesed...again)
Earlier this month the scourge of Germany, fake doctor Leonard Coldwell, copied and pasted a fake news article to the blog on his main web site, regarding the supposed arrest of Snopes founder David Mikkelson for involvement in pit bull fighting.

The dog pictures in the fake news article were taken from various real stories about incidents that had taken place in various parts of the country over the past couple of years. A reverse Google image search can easily uncover this fact. But if you don't feel like reverse-Google-image-searching, the author of this article from the hoax alert section of the Lead Stories site has done it for you. The picture of Mikkelson supposedly being arrested was a poorly Photoshopped piece that had been used for another fake Mikkelson arrest story last year. I wrote about that here. The Lead Stories site also covered it.

But just as he did with last year's hoax, LoonyC copied and pasted the pit bull article to his own site as if it were real. He soon deleted last year's post, but the latest one is still on his site as of this posting.

The source of the current hoax article about Mikkelson is News 4 KTLA, a fake news/clickbait site, Granted, unlike some other sites, News 4 KTLA doesn't trumpet the fact that it's a fake news/parody/satire site. But the clues are in the text, for those with the snap to see them. The Snopes/pit bull piece, for instance, begins like this:

Nearly a dozen people are in custody, including Snopes CEO David Mikkelson, following a bust of a major dogfighting ring. The San Fernando Police Department and the FBI all took part in the early morning raids targeting the home of the popular Internet “writer” who is known for making his money by copying the original writings of fake news sites. [emphasis mine ~CC]

I tried twice to post a comment on Coldwell's blog post, using my full real name. I 'splained that the article was a hoax and that the source of the article is a notorious fake news site, and I also cited the original sources of the photos used in the fake article. I was respectful, despite the fact that Coldwell deserves no respect whatsoever, but my first comment was not published. And when I tried to post a second time, it appeared that I had been blocked from even trying to comment.

But these people were allowed to comment. The second commenter, who posted twice, is particularly disturbing.

Don't get me wrong. As a lifelong dog lover I think people who abuse dogs and our other fellow creatures should be dealt with harshly. But David Mikkelson did not do what the fake article accuses him of doing. Yet LoonyC's idiot followers, who apparently bear the same irrational hatred of Snopes that Loony does, didn't even question the veracity of the article.

It all reminds me eerily of what I was going through two years ago at this exact time, when Coldwell was publicly and repeatedly and falsely accusing me of poisoning his pit bull dog, Blue (and publicly and repeatedly publishing my home address and cell phone number, and telling his sympathetic fans to get in touch with me). I wrote about this at great length here and here. (Those of you who have been with me a while know this whole story, so again, my apologies for the redundancy.)

His fans, who had no idea who I am and apparently didn't bother to question his claims, were ranting on his Facebook pages about the horrible things that should be done to me in punishment for the crime I had supposedly committed against Lenny and his dog. They were suggesting that I should be hunted down, shot, poisoned, tortured. Someone even threatened to burn my house down in the middle of the night. It was pretty scary. And I had no legal recourse; though I reported the matter, law enforcement said there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the matter.

So I feel for David Mikkelson.

Dead holistic docs conspiracy rages on
One topic I addressed in last year's Lenny-got-Snopesed post -- and here's that link again -- was the dead holistic doctor conspiracy drama that so may people refuse to relinquish. Here is one of all too few rational articles about the matter, published last year. Granted, the body count was lower back then, but this doesn't invalidate the need to be skeptical of the conspiracy narrative, particularly since not all of the people on the supposed list of dead docs were even doctors, and of those who were, not all of them could be considered "holistic."

Some of the deceased parties in the conspiracy narrative have been murdered, while the deaths of some were reported as suicides, and some died of heart attacks or other ailments. Not surprisingly, the conspiracy buffs refuse to accept that any of these good people committed suicide, despite the fact that doctors and other medical professionals have a relatively high suicide rate, at least in the US. And the conspiracy fans insist that the docs who died of various ailments had been in perfect health up until their deaths. The deaths reported as homicides, of course, are self-explanatory and fit perfectly into the dastardly-plot narrative: Clearly, Big Pharma and/or other forces opposed to natural healing are somehow responsible.

In any case, as of this writing the latest so-called "holistic doctor" supposedly done away with by some nefarious cabal of Big Pharma and New World Order operatives was a 65-year-old Asian woman living in Palo Alto, California, Jenny Shi, whose stabbing death Health Nut blogger Erin Elizabeth announced with her customary "heavy hearts" on July 13. Erin has remained front and center in the parade of dead-doc conspiracy alarmists, despite continuing to insist that she is not implying a conspiracy of any kind.

Apart from the fact that she owned a chain of acupuncture clinics, Jenny Shi had much more going on in her life than "holistic" doctoring. She was an international businesswoman with enterprises that included real estate and angel investment, and she had business connections in Shanghai and Beijing, China. Investigators suspect that Shi knew her attacker. She reportedly rented rooms in her home to multiple tenants, and detectives are investigating these as well as her numerous business relationships.

But the conspiracy believers are out in force, apparently because according to them, the late Dr. Shi spoke out against "the vaccine establishment."

As the debunking article I linked to above concluded:

Saying that these deaths are a coincidence may be supported by the facts and our understanding of statistics, but it is emotionally unsatisfying to our pattern-seeking brains. We find apparent patterns in the world very compelling, and we want there to be an underlying explanation. We just don’t like the idea that the pattern is an illusion. That is why we fall prey to excessive pattern recognition and hyperactive agency detection (seeing a deliberate agent in random or natural events).

When the apparent pattern fits our pre-existing narrative or world view, the temptation to accept the pattern becomes overwhelming. Only the most diligent application of critical thinking can overcome such a temptation.

But don't expect much of that critical-thinking stuff from Erin and gang.


Katie and the Supremes
As reported here in Febuary 2016, currently imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie -- also a frequent snarget on this blog -- lost the appeal on his criminal case. Now he is trying to do take his battle to the Supreme Court.

Here's a link to the Petition. Stay tuned.

Has Troy McClain become an impotent figurehead in GIN?
Speaking of Katie, his biggest scam ever, the Global Information Network, or GIN, is still chugging along. I've heard from more than one knowledgeable source that there has been a massive power struggle because the GIN principals and staff just don't care for GIN CEO Troy McClain, former star of Donald J. Drumpf's "reality" TV show, The Apprentice. The mass dislike apparently has something to do with Troy's yuuuge ego and lack of ethics. (I thought those were job requirements for a Scamworld player, but there do seem to be some actual decent human beings on the remaining GIN staff who seem genuinely dismayed by the unethical stuff. As for the principals, it's just one big clash of egos and behind-the-scenes scammer skirmishes.)

Our most recent Whirled visit with Troy was back in March of this year, when Troy was making a big self-righteous stink about removing someone from "our Club" for some great ethics violation. Well, apparently lots has happened since then. Long-time Katie buddies Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan and Blaine Athorn, a couple of the co-owners of GIN (along with Troy and another fellow), are reportedly trying to force Troy out of their tree house club altogether. Blaine is reportedly in charge of GIN now. That may prove to be a win for Katie, eventually, since Troy reportedly does not like Katie, but Blaine presumably still does.

But Troy has worked hard on revamping the GIN branding, particularly with the new GIN Evolve web site. Gone is the old GIN site; it's Troy's brand baby now. And Troy still apparently owns the KT Legal Defense Fund site, leaving me to wonder again if all of the online donations to help Katie actually go to help Katie and not Troy.

So I wonder how this will all play out. As I find out more, I'll be sure to tell you. Or you can tell me, if you know more. We all help each other around here. In any case, as far as I'm concerned... Troy, Blaine, Chris... meh. They're all turds of a feather.


Speaking of The Apprentice...
Salty Droid has been busy, and here he is again, ruminating on The Donald and some of the scammers Drumpf hath wrought. Important stuff here.

Also well worth reading: the interview, published in The New Yorker, with the person who really wrote The Art of the Deal, ghostwriter Tony Schwartz. To this day Drumpf brandishes the book as proof that he's the greatests, and that he's qualified to be the leader of the free world. Schwartz has earned millions in advance and royalties for writing this book, but he never really felt good about it, and has pledged to donate royalties from here on out to groups of people that Trump's bigotry, xenophobia and elitism could seriously harm. Schwartz reveals some pretty disgusting things about Drumpf, which of course won't make a bit of difference to the Drumpfians, but go ahead, read it anyway.

Are Freddy's fingers in Coach Coral's scam pie?
Another Whirled unfavorite, Fred Van Liew, long-time friend and defender of Kevin Trudeau, is apparently involved in cross-promotional (or should that be crass-promotional?) shenanigans with scammy "life coach" Coral Grant and gang. In January I wrote about a lawsuit against Coral and her hubby Mac, but it appears that it's just business as usual for Coral despite the lawsuit. Fred posted on his Facebook page July 16 about an event he attended with "Best Life Coaching Society," a company in which Coral and Mac are currently involved. They're not listed as the owners of the company; that honor goes to Scott and Jen Kazmierczak, "the true power couple," according to the Best Life Coaching Society web site. Coral and Mac are simply listed as the head trainers, although according to the site, Scott and Jen "never got any real results until a few years ago, when they met Coral and Mac and learned their Subconscious Release Technique..."

But back to Fred, who posted a big picture of himself and Coral beaming into the camera. I made a comment on that pic, complete with a link, asking him how the lawsuit is coming. As of this writing he hasn't answered.

As you know if you've been here a while, apart from being a long time Trudeau buddy and now an apparent Coral buddy, Van Liew is also involved in multilevel marketing schemes -- particularly one that's a lot like Herbalife. It's a Youngevity/Livinity merger called 90forLife -- and again, there's a Trudeau connection, as Barb and Dave Pitcock, proteges of Trudeau, are principals in the MLM. And Fred has his own line of pseudo-scientific products to purify water and protect people from various evil electromagnetic forces.

As I've also mentioned here before, Fred was quoted in an excellent piece by Aaron Gell, published by Business Insider in January 2015. 

After high school, Trudeau found work at an auto dealership, where, Van Liew says, he soon became the No. 1 salesman by eagerly chatting up the customers whom his colleagues stereotyped as window shoppers and cheapskates. “The other guys would say, ‘This guy’s a loser,’ but Kevin didn’t do that. And he’d sell them car.”

He also became adept at pushing auto loans. “He would tell people, ‘Save your credit with your bank in case you need it for something else,’” Van Liew recalls. “Was it the best advice? No. Was he doing it to get you the best deal? Hell no. He was in it for profit and money! He knew most people are idiots.”

"He knew most people are idiots." To me that sums up the contempt in which most con artists hold their marks. My friend Julie Daniel, who formerly worked with some of the Trudeau enterprises, agrees. She says, "I heard some of the back-room conversations, and if people only knew what exactly was said about them... [Mark] Hamilton likes to say that his little group is a family. But when they are not listening, they are brain-washed sheep." (Mark Hamilton, aka Mark Scamilton, is the Neo-think founder and former co-scammer with Trudeau in GIN.)

Anyhow, it appears that Freddy and Coral have a good thing going on. Or maybe Fred is just trying to keep a close eye on Coral for the benefit of his true scambuddy Trudeau. I've heard scuttlebutt that Coral and Kevin aren't really as tight as Coral has implied in the promos where she brags that she is one of the few folks to have been personally mentored by Katie. Word has it that she pretty much pushed and shoved her way into Kevin's inner circle (not to be confused with the now-defunct GIN Inner Circle, whose members paid $50,000 to $75,000 for that privilege back in GIN's heyday).

At any rate Coral and Fred seem to be scratching each other's backs, which I assume is only a figure of speech because the thought of any literal physical contact between the two is enough to put you off your feed for a month -- but be that as it may, here's a disturbingly topless-looking Coral in mid-June 2016, praising Freddy after an "energy work" event at which he was one of the "trainers." She describes the training as "getting into it [whatever it is] on the scientific but not on the 'woo-woo' level." She also calls it, "...Insane... absolutely the best training I've ever been to..."

Well, okay. The "insane" part is probably correct.

In any case it seems pretty clear that Freddy and Coral have their sticky fingers in each other's schemes. The road goes on forever, and the scamming never ends.

That's it for now (isn't that enough?). Stay safe, stay cool, and don't let the circus this week or next week eat up too many of your brain cells. I'll be back soon.

GIN head Troy McClain takes the (fake) moral high road

While cooling my heels in between posts about the awfulness that is Mein Drumpf, I saw a post from my pal Kenneth Reimer on the public Facebook forum GIN Network Truth. Kenneth, and as it turns out several others I know, recently received a rambling email from Troy McClain, the current patriarch of the Global Information Network (GIN), a "success club" and surrogate family originally created as a personal piggy bank for now imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau. In the missive Troy is very long on boasts about his fierce desire to protect his "family members," and painfully short on actual substance regarding the threat he says he has removed from the club. Here ya go:

Violation Of Code of Conduct Announcement Members Beware

To our Family:

Re: Mr. Shawn Kesling, Former AXS employee, has been removed from our Club. Any further interaction is at your own discretion

Allow me to declare that I am a fallible man and a practitioner toward greatness. I have been so overwhelmed with love, graciousness, and respect from all members – so much that while I continue to practice our principles, I like you, continue to learn my lessons each day. One lesson I am practicing is forgiveness, however this practice tends to be overshadowed by my strongest and greatest gift that I can give to others – Fiercely loyal and protective!

I have made a declaration to our entire membership, staff, and family that I would fiercely protect, report, and stand against any one person or group that would prey on or otherwise hurt our membership – if I in fact found them to be doing so. I will investigate, look into, and hold off on position until such time facts prevail. Then I will uphold what I hold dear to me – my word. I will do so in all situations, actions, and climates.

We are on honest, moral, and ethical movement that will stand together. However, I have also declared to others I would lead from the front to set the example. When I ask others to give back, I in fact give back. When I ask others to practice our principles I do the same. When I ask others to report and stand up when they see or experience potential wrong doing, I myself MUST do the same.

This movement must be dedicated to conducting our business consistent with the highest standards of ethics. We have an obligation to our co-workers, contractors, partners, community representatives, and family to do so each and every day without fail.

The security, safety, and stability of this movement and its members is vitally important to me and one I take extremely serious. I will not tolerate any action whatsoever that threatens any one persons future or related careers in our amazing environment. That said, recently, upon his own omission [sic], I have learned that one of our own has been less than becoming to our standards and has threatened our positive light and standard of being Honest, Moral, and Ethical.

This type of behavior will not be tolerated. And while it saddens me on so many levels to have had this happen under my watch, it also inspires me to do the right thing for the betterment of our team and family. I want to make it beyond clear to all that read this – any action against this club or those within it can be considered an action against all of us. YOU WILL BE CALLED OUT and I will back my family up. I trust this example sets a new tone in a new unit of time that, while a student at some things, I am great at standing up and speaking up for those I love and those who have brought love in my life. This club no longer will turn a blind eye to those whose intentions are bad. The standard must be "See Something – Say Something!"

I will act swiftly to remove the negative element from our positive environment and report publicly when found to be true. You, our staff, our members, and our family have worked too hard and too long building up and creating a positive, honest, and moral platform for us not to say something when actions against us happen. Again, I will not tolerate my family being subjected to this type of business nor will this ever be allowed.

My top priority is to create a safe and friendly environment for our entire membership; one where we can grow as family in a positive direction. Anything that threatens this will be considered as such and removed. I will act swiftly and report this publicly when conduct by others is found factually to jeopardize our futures. GIN, be assured we all must do this; and those hiding among us, be assured this leader will call it out!

What unifies us is trust and belief in a system of success and team that operates the system. When I find this type of practice happening it hurts and disappoints me greatly, however knowing that we have a team that will protect each other from bad apples, gives me a sense of honor and pride.

We have addressed and removed the negative. Now I have reported it as such, and as I committed to do.

Sincerely,
Troy McClain

For those of you who are wondering what the GIN Code of Conduct says -- and I assume for now that Troy is indeed referencing that "code" -- it's item number 11 on this document.

I set out to find out what Shawn, whom I'd never heard of before Troy broadcast his name and shame far and wide, supposedly did to violate the Code. I reached out to some people who might be able to give me some insight, including Shawn himself. Via private Facebook message, Shawn did not give details but simply told me that he harbors no hard feelings for Troy and wishes Troy et al. nothing but success. He said that the decisions made had to do with "life choices" he had made and that he completely respects the decisions of the GIN leadership. When I told him that it sounds as if he's taking the high road, he said there is really no low road.

Well, I'm thinking that maybe there is a low road -- it's just that some of the low roads are lower than others. I'm thinking that Troy McClain calling out a former employee carries about as much moral weight as Leonard Coldwell and Peter Wink calling out Kevin Trudeau and GIN.

A little background
Based upon my general knowledge of Troy -- who has been a subject on my blog several times since 2014, because, as I mentioned above, he is the person currently at the helm of Trudeau's big brainchild GIN -- I am willing to bet that we have a good case of Scamworld pot-and-kettle here. Troy, a "business consultant" and bloativational speaker (who seems to get more bloated every year -- check out page 4 of the November 2015 GIN Report), originally emerged into the spotlight for being on Donald Trump's "reality" show, "The Apprentice." Drumpf said that Troy is one of those guys who makes America great.

Currently Troy has several companies under the umbrella of his AXS Group. It seems clear to me that he has been steadily working to absorb GIN into AXS. To see the writing on the wall, all you have to do is look on the official GIN web site and you will see this:



And then click on to this up-and-coming site, which contains more Scamworld bidness babble per square paragraph (square-agraph?) than I've seen in a while. Troy is definitely marking his territory. It's the Scamworld equivalent of dominant male canine urination, but infinitely more foul than the latter. There's a word for this phenomenon, but "evolution" is not it.
 
Several credible sources have indicated that Troy intensely dislikes Kevin Trudeau, even though Kevin gave Troy a big platform in GIN. Ingrate. Though Troy is at the helm, other members of the AXS Investment Group that purchased GIN in 2014, when the court-appointed receiver put it up for sale, include Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan (a real a$$hole and MLM scammer); Blaine Athorn (very long time buddy and bidness partner of Trudeau, also a MLM veteran -- see MLM fever" in this post); and Greg Kramer (involved with a frauduct boutique called the GIN Store). Jeff Devine (another bidness partner and buddy of Trudeau) was originally involved too but no longer is. (A guy named David Cohen, a principal in AXS Consulting, may be an owner as well.) But Troy is at the head of it all and definitely seems to be marking his territory.

All of the above is general background that most of you know already, the sole purpose being to illustrate my points about pots and kettles and about turds of a feather bilking together. As anyone who has observed Scamworld at all knows, the bilking together doesn't necessarily prevent the bilkers from occasionally trying to peck each other's eyes out. No honor among thieves and all that.

Google provides some more background information
As noted above, I had never heard of Shawn Kesling till Kenneth shared Troy's letter. When I first started researching I immediately found a Facebook page for a Shawn Kesling, but it doesn't really reveal much. So I did a little bit of rudimentary research, and a simple search for "Shawn Kesling Idaho" (Idaho is Troy's home state and also the home of AXS headquarters), revealed this December 2013 court document referencing the several felonies of a certain Shawn Michael Kesling.

So there's that. My first thought upon finding the initial information about Shawn was that this might not be the same Shawn Kesling; there are a few folks in the US with that name (I did not mention the court docs to Shawn in my brief conversation with him). But a person in a position to know confirmed that it is indeed the same guy.

I couldn't help but wonder if Troy knew about Shawn's criminal background before he hired him for AXS but thought it was no biggie until Shawn did something to displease Troy. Or, I surmised, maybe Shawn did something so blatantly unethical and/or illegal that Troy knew he couldn't sweep it under the rug. I just don't see Troy as a model of integrity, is what I'm saying.

Though Shawn isn't telling any tales about Troy, Google is telling plenty of tales about Shawn. In addition to the court opinion linked to above, there is this January 2013 document regarding a complaint by Shawn that he was infected with Hepatitis C due to inadequate sanitation at the Ada County (Idaho) Jail. (On the GINtruth discussion I shared this link to the PDF of the document, but I am having trouble getting it to load now. Maybe it will work for you.)

I also found this May 2008 article from a Boise alt-weekly. It is mostly about one of Shawn's ex "business partners" (a man who just couldn't stay away from meth and hot women but still sued the state of Idaho for treating him unfairly), but there are a couple of paragraphs about their mutual ventures. Seems they had some vaguely Trump-ish aspirations, and there's something about an escort service involving strippers.

Some of my friends on the above-mentioned GIN Network Truth forum shared some pretty plausible explanations of the ways in which Shawn may have pissed in Troy's corn flakes. One wrote, "Maybe GIN still has a 'Do as I say, not as I do' policy like they use to, and Shawn was leaning more to the 'do' side." Another speculated, "He stole money that Troy was trying to steal. He probably used a short con to fleece an idiot who Troy had pegged as long con material. After he stole his bank account, Troy was unable to clean out his retirement fund and the equity in his house. You can't have that sort of scammer immorality in your club."
 
And Kenneth, the person who initiated the thread, said that people to whom he'd put out feelers indicated that Shawn's departure was related to the theft of money. Some rumors from several other sources indicated that the theft was in the mid-five-figure range.

Someone who knows the parties involved speculated on another forum that AXS/GIN either didn't do a background check or that Shawn was another "rescue" of Troy's. Troy reportedly likes to say that he "saves people," but speculation is that he also likes to have something to hold over their heads. In that respect, Troy would seem to have something in common with the Church of Scientology, which promises people a chance to clean their lives up and help "clear" the world -- but at the same time makes sure it has something to hold over the head of every member.

There are other whispers in the wind from other sources that Troy did indeed know that Shawn was a convicted felon but failed to inform anyone else, and that the long rambling letter he sent out after jettisoning Shawn was the first notice anyone had that anything was amiss. There are also whispers that at least one other convicted felon is still on staff AXS/GIN. In that regard GIN has something in common with GIN ripoff WIN (the World Information Network), whose principal Perry Kiraly has a pretty long criminal history himself, which includes robbery and safecracking and other wholesome activities (see this post for some links).

And let's not forget that many of the GIN membership still adore Kevin Trudeau, who has been a convicted felon since the early 1990s and is, of course, currently an imprisoned one. Being a convicted felon is not a deal-killer if you want to play in Scamworld.

I'm not just pointing fingers for the sake of pointing fingers.
When I referenced "moral weight" in my comment above, that was not just a throwaway point. No matter what Shawn did or did not do, no matter how Troy spins the firing incident, no matter how he tries to paint himself as the great protector of his cherished GIN/AXS "family," and no matter how hard he tries to convince the world (and himself) that his feet have trod on high ground all along, fighting like a knight of old for honor and integrity... remember this:

James Arthur "Death" Ray was a keynoter at a major GIN event, and was glorified before, during and after the event, and it was all under Troy McClain's watch -- so his lofty declarations about his integrity have zero credibility as far as I am concerned.

Pardon me for shouting in a larger font. I just get riled up sometimes.

I will continue in my efforts to get the details about the alleged violation of the GIN Code of Conduct that has Troy's panties in a wad. Meanwhile there is plenty of stuff about Troy on this blog, and for that matter Salty Droid (whose revamped site is set to launch soon) did a drive-by snark about Troy a few years ago. This was in relation to another scam; it was before Troy was handed the keys to GIN. Point is, Troy is on Jason's radar too. And I look forward to the day that the little fake robot is back on the job.

One more important point: In general I believe in giving people -- including convicted felons -- second chances if they can demonstrate that they are really trying to turn their lives around. This is particularly true of nonviolent drug offenders but I think even grifters, and even some violent offenders, may deserve a second chance in some cases. That's why I'm sympathetic to the "Ban the Box" movement, and to organizations and individuals who are working so hard to make life easier for deserving ex-cons.

But some leopards really do not change their spots. As my friend Julie noted, "The problem I have with the 2nd chances is that kt [Kevin Trudeau] overused it. It was always about a second chance, he wore his illegal moves (mostly stealing credit card numbers) like they made him more valuable. He said he'd learned and a 2nd chance to steal more credit card monies was what he needed."

Yes, there is that.

And it appears that even as Shawn Kesling was publicly preaching about GIN being the "Movement of Second Chances" (the link is to a December 2015 talk), he was privately doing everything he could to blow his own "second chance." But don't worry, Shawn, it's a big world, with plenty of other opportunities to grift. And for that very same reason, Troy has little cause to worry either. It's the remaining GIN members I'm concerned about, but then again, the writing is on the wall, and it has been for years -- so at least some of those who continue to support GIN and Trudeau, even after knowing the complete back story, must at some point shoulder some of the blame for their own losses.


Stay tuned; more to come.

Kevin Trudeau: Katie's at Camp Cupcake, GIN parties on, and all's right with the Whirled

I have a ton of work but am determined not to let September slip away without at least one more post, and one that is about something besides the stupidest man in Scamworld. I've said my piece about that for the time being, and even though I'm not going to give up on this subject, there are so many other more interesting and more important topics to blog about. So. Even though it has been a busy month, work-wise, I am going to make good on my promise to post updates about the saga of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, as well as some of the folks who are struggling to keep his legacy alive while he cools his heels at Club Fed. Or Camp Cupcake, as he calls his new home at Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama.

The gushing (and eye-rolling) posts on Katie's Facebook fan page continue, most of them first-person homilies that lately seem to be seriously pandering to the New-Agey Law of Attraction crowd. Trudeau seems to be sounding more and more like a New-Age ninny, as opposed to some of the earlier Facebook posts when he appeared to be pandering to the more traditionally religious believers in miracles and such. The messages for the posts are still presumably being sent via email to, and then posted by, Katie proxies such as his long-time business associate and ex-girlfriend Janine. Occasionally, however, one of his cronies will pop on and talk about going to visit Katie in the clink, marveling at the fact that he is in such good spirits and is An Inspiration to All of Us, and is really Walking the Talk and Living the Training and so forth.

For instance, Earlene Vining, cohort of staunch Trudeau loyalist Ed Foreman, recently posted this, which looks like an attempt at free-verse poetry but may just be an unfortunate line-break glitch (as usual, click to enlarge):

"Kevin is a bright
Star in all of our lives..."

Do I hear the sound of some of you gagging?

And every few days there's a blurb about an upcoming legal fundraiser for Katie that will take place in Colorado on October 23, 2014. (Here's a link to a September 24 promo post on Facebook.) If you make a contribution of "only $200" to the Defense Fund, you'll get a complimentary ticket to the big rally that will be hosted by Katie's pal Coach Coral (Grant, formerly Thomas). Coral is currently being flogged as Trudeau's "protege," who "does not do public speaking engagements so this is a very rare opportunity to spend time with Coral live and in person." Which is utter bull crap. Coral, whom I've mentioned a few times on my blog (particularly here) reportedly has a deal with Katie that she gets to milk his brand for all it's worth (and it's still worth quite a lot, apparently) if she contributes an agreed-upon amount to his defense fund.

Kevin himself, through his proxy/proxies, continues to pile it on thick, as indicated by this September 16 bit of inspiration:

Everyone likes/desires/wants different things. That is why there are menus at restaurants! LOL

Some people LOVE to skydive, or ski, or scuba dive, or garden, or paint, or play tennis, or watch horror films, or read terrifying novels. I personally do not LOVE any of those and might even HATE some of those. I like/love challenging my physical/mental/and emotional limits be it hiking for days with limited food and no shelter! Or being attacked by the US Government and having all my possessions taken away! Or being thrown in a jail cell for 23 hours a day for months not knowing when or if you will ever be let out! [Apparently this is a reference to his experiences at MCC, not Camp Cupcake. ~CC] Or do mental exercises for days straight without food or sleep to access spiritual dimensions few have ever been! The list could go on and on. These are MY desires.

The point is we all want/love/desire different things, experiences and conditions. There is no right and wrong, or good, better and best when it comes to desires/wants or things you love. You love and get pleasure from certain things, and I love and get pleasure from perhaps the things YOU hate, or scare you the most. Many people however, are not deliberate creators of their life's experiences. Most people do not consciously choose what they experience in their life. Most people are not focusing on their preferences or what they decided they love/want/desire. And most people are not focusing on WHY they want these things/experiences in their lives. When you focus on what you want and WHY you want it, (instead of HOW you are going to get it), you will be happier and you WILL manifest what you want. Many people ask WHY I would want to experience what I am experiencing. The answer is simple. I LOVE this! You see, my desire is to teach, to share. (this is my destiny as decided on by ME long ago...longer than you realize) In order to teach and share with complete effectiveness, I must KNOW, not just KNOW ABOUT. I must have DONE what I am to teach. And I must first HAVE what it is I want to share. VERY few people will ever feel the desire or have the joy I (and others throughout history) have for living these type of experiences. When you are taught by someone who KNOWS (experienced it firsthand) you can then truly learn because YOU then experience it vicariously through that teacher. You virtually learn via osmosis. This is why throughout history, Guru's, Sages, Enlightened Ones, Saints, Masters etc have had such a profound impact on those who were READY, and physically close to the one who KNOWS. I am doing my part. I am going "places" you will never want to go, and experiencing things you will never want to experience first hand. I am increasing that which I KNOW. I will be out and among you sometime between mid next year and 2022! LOL The Universe KNOWS the best and perfect HOW and WHEN. If you are ready, the sky is the limit for you, and the best is yet to come!
Much love

LOL, LOL, LOL.

In other words (if I'm reading this right), Katie's time in the clink is turning him into a gen-yoo-ine spiritual guru. All the better to reach his hand into your wallet teach you stuff when he gets out -- that is, if you're ready to be taught. When the mark student is ready, the con man master will appear. To date that post has 763 likes, 112 shares, and 118 comments. A woman who calls herself "Lena Lemurian" (I sense that is not her real name) responded to Kev's message with a magickal incantation:

I intend for Kevin Trudeau to be released and I see him released within the year and so it is.

I'm not so sure those intentions and whatnot are very effective. Remember that group mediation for Katie that took place about a year ago? Not so effective in getting him cleared of all charges, was it?

In response to the September 16 post a man wrote:

How do you go for days without food or sleep and still feel good? What discipline! Your NATURAL CURES books ,Your wish is my command and GIN Has greatly improved my health and thinking . They have made me signifantly [sic] more positive and improved my relationship with my friends and family and made dream again. I thank you Kevin from the bottom of my heart , you saved my life! I am glade [sic] you are feeling good and getting gooder [sic] every day. You are one of my greatest hero's. Love you!

Well, I too am glade for Kevin that he's good and getting gooder. Speaking of Glade, they've come out with their fall collection and holiday scents, and even though that stuff is probably really bad for you, I fall for the marketing every year. It makes Ron roll his eyes, but it sure beats litter box odor.

But I digress. Katie also had this September 26 message for the troops:

Thank you for all your continued love and support. Please know I am more than good here at Federal Prison Camp Montgomery. I am the best I have ever been. And getting better. My appeal has been filed. I should get the decision sometime next year.

As my dear friend Sam points out, I am not attached to any outcome, so I yield to the Universe and am allowing the perfect manifestation of my personal goals/dreams/desires in the WAY Source knows is best. My desires are not about myself, they are about you, society, the planet, and the universe. Peace, harmony, love, and all people feeling the deepest contentment and appreciation for all experiences is one of my visions. My desires are my desires. They are not your desires. Mine are right for me alone. Yours are right for you alone. All our choices, preferences, desires/dreams/goals are always right for each of us. Do not try to force YOUR desires, or your ways of living on others. You will just live with frustration and never be truly at peace/contentment or experience true inner total bliss. Many wonder about my situation and make all kinds of assumptions. Consider stop looking at others and judging, condemning, assuming things, and criticizing their conditions and they way they choose to go through this game we call life and the situations/events they create. Wanting to make oneself right and others wrong is a motivation that will keep you from experiencing all your desires and feeling true bliss.

Know at the deepest levels, we create circumstances in life (that in fact just games we create), to experience a full range of emotions as well as conditions to allow us to exercise our invisible power!

I have a request. IF you feel moved to do so, could some of you send me pictures of Zurich, and of beautiful things/scenes/mountains/etc for MY dream board! Guess what I may want to look at each day and vibrate into physical manifestation! Know all the well. I will be out and with you as soon as is perfect! Much love

Well, Katie, I have some ideas for your vision board. You say you want some pics of Zurich?


I grabbed that still from a vid on this page, Katie. I thought you might appreciate revisiting that glorious day in Zurich when the "ambush" journos from ABC caught up with you.

Or I could send you some screen shots of some of the horrid things written by a little Teutonic twerp you unleashed on the world through the Global Information Network (GIN) -- not just the stuff about me and about some of the other critical bloggers, but the hate-filled, anti-Semitic rants as well. Since you have been playing at being Jewish, Kevin (at least you mentioned to Judge Gettleman that you have a rabbi), I'm thinking these rants might not look so good on your vision board. But they are part of what you helped to create.

For now, please accept the vision board, or dream board, that I made for you my own self, with the help of Google images. It's up there at the top of this post. I know that vision and dream boards are supposed to be about the future, but I think you need to ruminate on your present and recent past as well.

For the rest of you, here's something to consider: no matter how cynical one may be about all of this, Katie's fans continue to look upon him as a hero. Every one of those Facebook posts gets hundreds of likes and at least dozens of comments. One woman, who apparently just got back from the 2014 Global Information Network (GIN) Family Reunion in Phoenix (more about that below), wrote:

FAMILY REUNION was Exceptional! You can be proud of the "Magic 5" and all the "Maple Syrup" who were there (ask someone who was) [One] man birthed the dream (ThU KT), AND we would have proven the Training untrue, if we hadn't Re-Birth bigger & stronger than before. Mission Accomplished! Onward!

Nice to know that the GINtanic is sailing on even without Katie at the helm, isn't it?

Another woman had this to say:

I'm living two hour away from Zurich and I'm watching the mountains right now while listening to your cd's. the world needs people like you Kevin... the important is who you become, not what you have. .... time goes on, get out of there, we have so many wonderfull [sic] things to do ! don't wayste [sic] your time...

There are no two ways about it: Trudeau still has a large and loyal fan base -- from all appearances a much larger and more loyal base than that bitter little German gnome who used to be his sidekick. And while the posts on Katie's Facebook fan page are truly eye-rolling, other sources besides Trudeau and his proxies and long-time loyalists say he really is in good spirits at Camp Cupcake. (You'll read more about that soon; I'll be sure to provide a link when it's available.)

I suppose it's possible that Kevin truly has accepted his fate and is cool with it no matter what. But I'm thinking that more likely he is just a really good actor, as many sociopaths are, or he could be basing his seeming tranquility and optimism largely on his belief that his appeal will actually be successful. At this point I'm still thinking it won't be, but we'll know in a few months, and we'll also see if he continues the Facebook shtick if the appeals process fails him. And speaking of the appeal (and the case that made the appeal necessary in the first place)...

Camp may be fun, but Katie wants out: the appeals process continues
It's been quite a while since I did an update here about Trudeau's court cases; the last post was on July 22, 2014. I've been remiss on my Katie reporting duties for sure. At any rate, the appeals process for his criminal contempt conviction is still ongoing and there probably will not be a decision until some time in 2015. I know you're probably thinking the same thing I'm thinking: if he's so happy at Camp Cupcake, why waste any more lawyer money trying to get out sooner? I guess that's just one of those mysteries of the Universe that only Kevin knows, and will be glad to share with you if you pay him or his cronies.

So what's going on, court-wise? Let's take a look...

1. Opening appeals brief and supporting documents: On August 27, 2014, I shared the initial appeals documents on the GIN Network Truth page (a public forum) on Facebook -- here is that link. And here is a Scribd link, for the benefit of those who cannot access the Facebook file.
2. Criminal trial transcript: I also finally downloaded some court transcripts, although I will have to keep such activities to a minimum because with actual transcripts, PACER apparently does not place a 30-page cap on download fees as they do on other court documents. At ten cents a page, it can get pretty pricey. I was able to nab this transcript of Trudeau's criminal trial, which took place in early November 2013 in Judge Guzman's court. It's a big'un. Here is a Scribd link.
3. Sentencing hearing transcript: And here is a Scribd link to the transcript from Trudeau's March 17, 2014 sentencing hearing.

One more thing: My PACER connection is having some glitches so I haven't been able to download any court documents since late August. As soon as I get those glitches straightened out I will pop onto PACER again and check for any newer activity. Or you can do it yourself if you are so inclined. Why should I get to have all the fun?

GIN rolls on, tries to lure big spenders back into the fold
Anybody who thinks that Katie's biggest scheme to date -- GIN -- is dead, has simply not been paying attention. Granted, it may be a shadow of its former self, but it's still definitely hanging on, as indicated by the pics from the big wingding that took place this past weekend: the 2014 Family Reunion in Phoenix, Arizona. You can see some of the festivities on one of the GIN Facebook pages.

Troy McClain, CEO of AXS Investment/Management etc., the group that bought GIN, hosted the promo video. And the first thing I noticed was that it was branding for AXS as much as it was for GIN. No big surprise there.



And Jeff Devine's Hybrid Group was also very much involved, judging from this little event blurb on etouches. 

As noted on this blog previously, the new owners of GIN reportedly consist of Troy McClain, Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan, Blaine Athorn, Jeff Devine and Greg Kramer.

In case you can't get to the GIN Facebook page I linked to above, here are some highlights from the weekend:

Looks like fun, huh? And oh, goody, there's going to be a cruise in 2015. And, not to belabor a point, but even without Kevin, and even though GIN membership is way down, it still appears that the Family Reunion drew a far larger crowd than the events put on by certain GIN ripoff clubs. (Unless, that is, GIN hired a bunch of folks to make it look like a crowd, or used CGI like they do in the movies sometimes.) Just saying.

A reliable source let me know that Troy McClain and Chris McGarahan have been making serious efforts to get Inner Circle and upper level members back into the GIN fold; in other words, they're trying to woo back the big spenders. As you may recall, Inner Circle members paid either $50k or $75k for that dubious privilege, with the promise that they would receive a percentage of the GIN proceeds and other perks. Some of these people's GIN "investments" were six figures (one former Inner Circle member and Founding Member insists GIN owes him a million dollars). When GIN nearly collapsed due to Katie's legal troubles, those folks were out all of that money, and reportedly many quit. Now Troy and Chris are trying to woo them back, with the promise that GIN will make it a point to get them the moneys owed to them asap.
 
Word is that some of these people asked that their "initiation" and monthly fees be waived for the appropriate amount of time in lieu of as much of the money owed as was applicable and GIN said no. Now, it's possible that something in the court order forbade such an arrangement (after all, GIN is beholden to the receiver and the court for the first year under the new ownership), but whether or not that is the case, it sounds pretty sleazy to me.

Troy and Chris are also reportedly pandering to the Christian demographic to get them to join or re-join GIN, and some who know Chris find this disgusting, saying that he is about as far from being a Christian as anyone they know.

At any rate GIN seems poised to grow, and may very possibly restore the MLM program at some point, though it was discontinued last November (2013). They haven't removed mentions of it from their online legal documents. For that matter, they haven't removed the statement that GIN is a multi-level foundation based in Nevis. Maybe they just need to finish updating their web site.

The moral of the story, once again, is that in Scamworld there are no neat and tidy endings. But I bet you knew I was going to say that.

That's it for now, but rest assured that I'll be back soon with more.