Happy October, y'all! September was a busy
month on this Whirled because it was an active month in the
courts for serial scammer Kevin Trudeau and his nemesis, the US
Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The civil hearing that took place
on September 26, and for which Trudeau's loudest and looniest detractors held
out such high hopes, was originally
continued to today, October 1. The Loony was not happy about that, no-siree.
But subsequently the FTC lawyers, with the blessings
of Katie's lawyers, filed an emergency motion to move the hearing
to later in the week, due to the looming government shutdown. Without
government funding, the FTC lawyers prolly wouldn't be able to
show up for the hearing, said they. Accordingly said hearing was
rescheduled for Friday, October 4. I guess they're optimistic
that the government will be back in operation. If not, they can
always reschedule. They seem to be good at that.
Anyway, a flurry of new court documents appeared on September 30.
There are three docs for the criminal case [1:10-cr-00886, Judge
Ronald A. Guzmán presiding]. They are mostly about the pre-trial
motions, which are still being argued back and forth endlessly,
in preparation for the November 4 trial. And there was one doc for
the civil case [1:03-cv-03904, Judge Robert Gettleman presiding],
with a long exhibit attached. Here's a link to the civil document.
The main document is "FTC’S STATEMENT REGARDING THE NEED
FOR COERCIVE SANCTIONS" -- in other words, a recap of why
the FTC thinks Katie needs to be thrown back in jail again unless
one of three "precise purge conditions" can be met:
1) He fully complies with this
Court’s June 2, 2010 order (DE372);
(2) He establishes that he has no present ability to
comply with the Court’s
June 2, 2010 order beyond what he has already done; or
(3) He establishes that continued incarceration will not
have a coercive effect.
By and large this is more of the same old
same-old that we've heard and read recently, but there's newer info
too, including a summary of additional recent violations of the
receivership order. According to the FTC, Trudeau has violated
recent orders at least five times, which they recap in a footnote
on page 1:
As discussed further below, these five
instances include: (1) failing to disclose the Australian
account; (2) spending and transferring assets from that
account; (3) destroying documents; (4) failing to disclose an
offshore gaming account; and (5) lying to the Receiver, as
the Receiver’s reports document. There are additional
instances of noncooperation that the Receiver has asked the
FTC not to raise because, in the Receiver’s view, doing so
would impair the Receiver’s ability to recover certain
assets.
Lying to the receiver? That alone is enough to get Katie thrown back in a cage, according to the terms of the receivership agreement as I understand them. (By the way, In case you don't know about that Aussie account, here's the scoop.)
If you've been reading some of the other recent court docs you'll
recognize some of the items from the exhibit as well, but there
are new items there too. It's all pretty interesting.
Perhaps because the FTC is following
Katie's advice to "look for the gold" in everything,
the issue of Trudeau's gold purchases has appeared numerous times
in the court docs over the past year or so (including in his
ex-marketing guy Peter Wink's declaration to the FTC). And there's more in this latest doc about Katie's
purchases over the past few years from Peter Ragnar's Golden
Lyin'... I mean Golden LION Mint. In another
footnote on page 1 of the main doc the FTC declares:
As discussed further below, Trudeau
purportedly could not remember any details regarding
significant new evidence the Receiver discovered indicating
that Trudeau acquired additional gold bars (beyond the ten
already known) and gold coins between 2008 and 2011, see
infra at 6, except to say that he thought his wife had them.
Oddly enough, Ragnar has reportedly
distanced himself recently from both Golden Lion Mint and Roaring
Lion Publishing (perhaps leaving his bidness partner and Lion etc. co-founder Tony
Balistreri dangling in the wind)? By
the way, here's a Ripoff Report complaint about Golden Lion Mint, dated
April 28, 2013. Quite a contrast from "Health Ranger" Mike Adams' glowing review
back in December 2008. Seems like lots of Scamworlders have gold fever, including, of course, Loony Coldwell.
I really do need to finish that blog post about Peter Ragnar,
whose real name is Peter Lundell, and who has a very iffy past,
like so many players in Scamworld. Ragnar certainly benefited
from GIN, even after the sh-t started really hitting the fan. He is still being sought by various pro-GIN folks as well as some anti-GIN (but
pro-Scamworld) factions. Here's one of numerous recent examples of two robbin' Peters flim-flamming in tandem...
Ragnar is still waxing profound on Facebook
and doing various webinars in conjunction with other hucksters, and in my opinion not being held accountable for his
part in the huge GIN scam.
But I digress. One point that the FTC is trying to make is that
the receiver's investigation will exhaust all of the available
resources if allowed to continue much longer. They apparently
think that jailing KT may hurry things up. (Cue laugh track.)
Says the FTC in its statement:
Simply put, there is no realistic probability
that the Receiver will locate the bulk of Trudeau’s assets
without his cooperation, and there is zero probability that
Trudeau will ever cooperate voluntarily....
The continuation of the current collection plan has drained
significant public resources in a fruitless attempt to
collect Trudeau’s assets. Worse yet, without coercive
incarceration, the costs of the Receivership almost certainly
will outstrip the assets ultimately collected. Thus, the
choice at this point is stark: either incarcerate Trudeau for
however long it takes to coerce him to turn over all the
assets he controls, or continue depleting the assets
available to Trudeau’s victims. In the event that the Court
chooses the latter, the FTC will of course follow any order
of the Court, but it cannot continue wasting public funds
chasing down the avalanche of Trudeau’s lies and deception.
Unfortunately, absent coercive incarceration, there is
nothing further the FTC reasonably can do to help Trudeau’s
victims.
So the FTC has given themselves an out, anyway. In
another footnote they declare:
There is nothing Trudeau can do to further the
goals of the Receivership outside of prison that he cannot do
from within prison. However, the FTC requests that any
coercive incarceration order provide the Receiver with access
to Trudeau in the event that the Receiver needs Trudeau to
execute documents or make phone calls under the Receiver’s
supervision.
The subtext is that Trudeau can lie and deceive from
jail just as easily as he can lie and deceive anywhere else. I
guess the FTC is still holding out some hope (or is pretending
they are holding out hope) that he can be "scared
straight," but that hasn't worked out too well so far.
What all of this jail talk is accomplishing is increasing his martyr/hero
creds, and he still has a passionate and fairly large fan base. We visited some of them here the other day. An apparently larger group of the faithful are
enthusiastically planning a GIN cruise on their own to replace
the January 2014 GIN Leadership cruise, which the court-appointed
receiver has postponed indefinitely. They even started a Facebook
group to plan it. (I bet they end up getting better rates than
they got with the Katie cruises, and they'll see (or not) how he was ripping
them off.) One person on the group wrote:
This up coming cruise will be a great event for
all of us.
We are doing this because a great man taught us how to dream
big and how to look for the gold in everyone and everything.
Most of all how to believe in our abilities to do for self. (
If it is to be it is up to me.) (if you can do it I can do
it.)
For some odd reason I was invited to join that group, but out of
respect for their privacy I will not attempt to link to the group
here and will not name it or any of the parties who are planning
the cruise. Actually I think it's a good thing that they're
planning for life without Katie, and I told 'em so. They deserve
a good party after all they've been through. I don't
think it's a good thing that they're still doing it all in His
Holy Name, but so many people are still in denial. At least there
is better and more objective information for them when they're
ready for it, and they know where to find it. They know that they
won't find that more objective info on Loony Coldwell's Facebook
rants or his little brother Abe's YouTubes.
By the by, on the September 30 civil document I linked to above,
I didn't see a mention of the FTC's concern that the receiver is
possibly running an illegal operation by keeping GIN open.
Closing GIN may not be a top priority right now for the FTC,
despite what was reportedly brought up in court during the September 18 hearing that ended up with Katie
being incarcerated overnight, and
despite what Loony (and his little bro) have been mouthing off
about.
Notwithstanding the forced joy of the alt-GIN cruise
planners, once again it doesn't look real good for Katie at the
moment, but you never know what might happen between now and
October 4. And there's no guarantee right now that the hearing
will happen even then, what with that gummit shutdown. And so the
saga continues, with the Cosmic mantra once again playing in the
background...
No. Neat. And. Tidy. Endings.
* * * * *
Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit
card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank
you!
