Kevin Trudeau: passport pleas and a piss-poor movie

So goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Where the scammers and predators howl
They've planted me in the jailhouse
There isn't much to do now

Maybe you'll get a replacement
There's plenty like me all around
Predators hungry for money
Sniffing for marks, who are easily found.

With apologies to Bernie Taupin, Elton John, et al.


Even though he's behind bars, serial scammer Kevin Trudeau continues to provide entertainment for those of us who are easily amused -- even if he provides it unwittingly or in the most tangential way. But before we get to the rollicking fun, I should mention that as of the time I'm publishing this, people who object to the sale of the Global Information Network (GIN) assets to AXS Investment Group (or AXS Consulting, LLC) -- a group consisting of some of Kevin's bestest, most loyal buddies -- have less than an hour to file their objections with the court. Deadline is today (Monday, May 12, 2014) at 5:00 PM Central Daylight Time. I'll keep you posted.

Mama mia, Katie wants his passaporto!
Last week I found out, and shared on Facebook, that Katie wants his passports back -- both his U.S. and Italiano passports. Or his lawyer does, anyway. The lawyer filed a motion with Judge Guzman's court on Thursday, May 8. Maybe it's for sentimental reasons. Or maybe Katie wants to put them in a scrapbook or on a vision board. Except I think they probably don't have scrapbooking and vision boards at the MCC.

Click to enlarge.

The gummit has till tomorrow, May 13, to respond to this motion. Katie's lawyers will be in court this Thursday, May 15, at 9:30 AM to present Katie's passport plea before Judge Guzman.

Naturally we are having some fun with this on Facebook. My friend Bernie O'Mahony of GINtruth.com wrote, "Maybe he needs them in order to get from Cell Block B, to Cell Block D?" Tim Donohoe wrote: "In an unrelated motion, his lawyer has asked for his release from prison pending his appeal. Nothing to see here." In a subsequent remark Tim wrote, "Another idea is that maybe his lawyer needs access to some offshore accounts when his next bill is due."

I thought that there might be a specially infused seekrit magnetic strip in the passports that can override the biometry in that biometric safe in Zurich where all sorts of seekrit things are hidden. As you may recall, last year Katie told the courts that he couldn't surrender his passports because they were in that safe in Zurich, but a little while later the passports mysteriously turned up anyway in Chicago. But suppose they really do contain some magickal seekrit strip and can help open that safe. What manner of treasure may be hidden therein? Next up: court docs demanding that whoever has his $6,400 cufflinks return them to his lawyers immediately.

By the way, on that passport motion Katie's lawyer, Thomas Kirsch, got the date of his client's criminal conviction wrong. It was November 12, 2013, not November 7, 2014. November 7, 2014 hasn't happened yet. But I guess I am not too surprised that Kirsch would get that detail wrong; he was the one who bungled Katie's criminal trial by opening with that lame "cheesy moon" argument, and later on in the trial he and his team made the judge kind of mad.

UPDATE 13 May: The government responded with an opposition to Kirsch's motion. Here is a link to that document. The government points out that the usual procedure with convicted criminals is to return their U.S. passports to the State Department, and any foreign passports to Homeland Security. It hasn't been done yet but the government expects that to happen. It also points out that by the time Trudeau is out on supervised release, his passports will have expired anyway.

UPDATE 15 May: Motion denied. Judge Guzman agrees with gummit and thinks that giving the passports to a third party might constitute a security risk. Here's that doc. (Note: I incorrectly titled the document 05-15-14; it was actually filed on 05-14-14.)

I still have to wonder why the lawyers wanted the passports badly enough to file a motion. But maybe this is much ado about little; perhaps it is just a routine thing for criminal lawyers to file to get all of their clients' documents back from Pretrial Services. Or... maybe Katie needs his passports to return to Oz.


Good buy Yellow Brick Road? Well, not so much.
The long-awaited animated movie, Legends of Oz:Dorothy's Return, was finally released theatrically across the US on Friday, May 9. This project was one of the "investment opportunities" offered by a couple of GIN members to other GIN members. My friend John Foster, an ex-Katie fan, former founding member of GIN and author of a new book about his GIN experiences and the scam GIN was, wrote on Facebook, "Investors spent around $100 million and [the movie] is opening in 1800 movie theaters. If it makes money it will be the first GIN opportunity that was promoted that made money."

There was a lot of skepticism about this movie when the discussions came up on Facebook last year, and one reason for the skepticism -- beyond the obvious fact that the "investment" op was being offered within the framework of GIN -- was that the folks involved with the production firms, Summertime Entertainment and Alpine Productions, have been involved in some dodgy business deals and have had some complaints made against them (more on that in a moment). People were even getting spam phone calls from folks asking them to invest in the project. (Here is another link about that, from the same thread.)

But now that the project has indeed come to fruition, I would like to know if any of the GIN members who "invested" -- either the ones originally offering the opportunity to GIN members, or anyone else in GIN who took advantage of the "opportunity" -- will actually be making any money from the movie. My email box is open!

Of course they are buzzing about it on the GIN Facebook pages: "In case you are not aware, a group of GIN Members utilized their training to help manifest the money to partially fund this movie."

Um-kay. But will they make any of that money back? Or was that even their intention in the first place? Inquiring minds want to know. I don't even know how to begin to pursue this matter because I don't think I ever knew the names of the GIN members who were pushing it. Can anyone help?

Brief update: A person in the know sent me a message clarifying that the Oz movie had nothing to do with GIN (which I knew), but the connection was simply that there was one GIN member pitching the project from the time he joined. He was able to pull a little money from a few members but nothing major. My source noted that on a conference call last week, Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan (one of the members of the group who is buying GIN) apparently gave GIN credit for raising all of the money for the film production -- which isn't even close to true, but even if it had been...well, it was nothing to brag about. And that gives this story double snarkitude points: for the fact that the GINvestors are claiming credit that they don't deserve, as well as for the fact that the movie they're taking so much credit for is an embarrassment (see next paragraph). Nice job, guys! [NOTE: See May 13 updates and addenda below. ~CC]
 
In any case the GINvestors who pitched in a few bucks should be very proud of themselves, because the movie is just getting splendid reviews. That is, if you define "splendid" as being "[An] eyeball-gougingly ugly, charm-free animated musical sequel, which is inexplicably opening in thousands of theaters instead of going direct to video." Or a movie that feels "like the cheaply made knockoffs you find in a dollar store: garishly shiny, flimsy and not built to last." As another reviewer wrote, "The bricks are still yellow, but the road doesn't lead anywhere special."

My friend Kenneth, another ex GIN member, said he went to see a movie this weekend but the show he wanted to see had sold out for the show time he wanted. He inquired about other movies and was told that aside from Spiderman, which only had a few tickets remaining, Legends of Oz had only a handful of people in it. "Needless to say, people had no interest in it whatsoever," he noted.

THIS JUST IN: Record breaking lousy debut at the box office (even worse than Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil).

But it's all sweetness and light on the official pages: the one for Summertime Entertainment and for Legends of Oz.

Still, there were hard feelings along the way to production and release, as I suppose there often are in the movie biz. Someone wrote a nasty note to Ripoff Report in October 2012.

And guess who wrote the rebuttal? One Marc J. Lane, whose law firm represented Summertime's Ryan and Roland Carroll and the production team behind the film.

As you may recall from reading this Whirled and various court documents and forums, Marc Lane was the asset protection lawyer who, as it happens, was hugely instrumental in helping Katie create and structure GIN.

Marc participated in social media buzz about the film while it was in production last year.
He was responding to this March 2013 post on "The Royal Blog of Oz," an Oz enthusiast blog. (By the way, after the fanfare on that blog, the actual movie review by one of the blog's team members was kind of anti-climactic.)

Marc also participated in one of the discussions about the spam phone calls that I mentioned above. Here's another page on that scam phone call thread. (It's basically the same spiel he wrote on the Ripoff Report thread.)

But Marc has been curiously silent about the movie on Facebook since its release, but he has "liked" several Oz-movie related pages... among other things. My goodness.

I can't say that I think Marc is a bad guy. I mean, lots of folks like porn; I don't think that's really that big a deal as long as it all involves consenting human adults. Besides, maybe the porn site people are clients of his. Or maybe a mischievous member of his household got into his Facebook account and "liked" that naughty page. There could be any number of explanations.

And judging from some of his Facebook posts Marc has a social conscience, or at least wants to make it appear that he does. In fact, when it comes to several issues regarding social and economic justice he appears to be embracing a side that is contrary to that embraced by most of the one percent. I like that in a person. But I have to wonder what sort of "conscience" or moral compass allowed him to participate so extensively in helping Kevin Trudeau create a scammy scheme such as GIN. I'm told by those who seem to be in a position to know that Marc gave Kevin sound advice that was well within legal frameworks, but that Kevin chose to ignore a lot of it and did as he pleased, and that was what caused all the trouble. I'm only halfway buying that. Because, really... Kevin Trudeau? Well-known lifelong scammer? Seriously, Marc, what were you thinking?

At any rate, my understanding is that various investigations are still ongoing. I've alternately been told that Marc isn't out of the woods yet regarding the Trudeau investigations, and that he is out of the woods because he cooperated with the Feds and didn't do anything with criminal intent. That story is still unfolding. I know only small parts of it and have reported what I know.

But I would not be surprised to learn that Marc Lane may have somehow been involved in the push for GIN members to invest in that animated boondoggle. If anyone has any insights into this I'll be glad to add that info to this post, and of course you can remain anon if you wish.

The infomercial wizards of Oz
Speaking of Oz, which also happens to be another name for Australia, I wonder if the investigators were ever able to uncover any more of Katie's hidden assets Down Under, which the receivers were going on and on about last September.

And partly because my mind is jumping around all over the place today, but mostly because so many of these stories are interrelated in some way (because they are all part of the same, much larger and grimmer story), I'm reminded of another Oz character and Katie b.f.f., the late Rene Rivkin, who killed himself in 2005 and whose assets were also mysteriously hidden. He and Katie had a few things going together, for a while.

I think the authorities finally gave up looking for Rene's riches. But something tells me that if the right authorities did a little more digging, they might be able to find some more Rivkin assets as well as some more Katie assets -- in some cases, maybe even under the same rocks. [Although someone who knew Rivkin just told me that it's very doubtful if he had anything left, which may have been one reason he ended his life. Tragic story, there.] Anyway, I really should get off of my duff and finish that half-finished Rivkin post that's been in the hopper for a year or so. But I'll leave you with a pretty picture for now -- Rene and Katie and someone else (maybe one of you can tell me who it is?) in happier days. Rub-a-dub-dub!



Update: Someone just tipped me off that the other guy in the tub is the UK's Andrew Malcher, currently of High Street TV, "the leading multi channel retailer of direct response TV products." Here's a July 2012 article about him in the UK's Financial Times). From the article:

If the mark of a great retailer is not selling you what you want but selling you what you didn’t know you wanted, Andrew Malcher must be a great retailer.

And here's a November 2013 article about High Street and Alliance Health Care signing a lucrative As Seen On TV-ish agreement. High Street has also signed deals with Disney and Hasbro.

So Andrew is basically an infomercial mogul. My correspondent says he's a super nice guy.


More updates and addenda, 13-14 May 2014:
Return to Oz...
Since I published my post yesterday, I've heard from a couple of people. I inserted a brief update in the body of the original post above (in green text), but here's more.

One person wrote to me:

The name of the [GIN member pushing the investment in the Oz movie] is John King. He is listed as one of the Co-Executive Producers. If gin people raised more than $1M I would be impressed. There were a bunch who invested, but gin wouldn't have had anything to do with it other than John pitching it to people he met there.
The movie may stink but I wouldn't hold any negativity toward it because of GIN.

Another friend, an ex-GIN member, wrote to me, also mentioning John King, who was the head of his local GIN chapter:

He is an executive producer on the film. ...I got to know him and his wife pretty well.

He never pitched the movie to any of the GIN folks in [our local] group, as far as I know.  And he and his wife seemed like pretty nice folks.

Apparently he was in great despair, with a failing career and marriage (this is public knowledge as he said it on stage), when he came across Your Wish Is Your Command.  He truly believes that GIN and KT turned his life around.  As far as I can tell, he is not simply a sociopath, nor do I think he sought any gain other then typical commissions and the chance to go "Hollywood."

There WAS misleading info.  On stage he implied that HE had raised 100 million for the film.

In a subsequent email my friend wrote:

...We were all impressed by his Platinum status and by the fact that he had raised millions of dollars as a venture capitalist, under the GIN rubric, to "make" a movie. One takes a person for their word, or should.  And words can mean everything and nothing.  When someone states, "we just raised the most money in the history of independent films, $100 million, I just got word as we were boarding the ship"... and if that person is someone whose house you had visited, and whose friendship you wanted, why wouldn't you trust them?

Why, indeed? Well, at least my friend wasn't suckered into investing in this lemon. What I find interesting is that according to THIS article (which I also linked to above), Summertime Entertainment says they spent only $70 mil on production, and the author of the piece speculated that they may have been exaggerating because "smaller production companies often inflate budgets to make a production appear more legitimate." So where did that other $30 mil or so go? Well, maybe to promotions and parties -- who knows. If I were a GINvestor, though, I'd be asking some serious questions rather than crowing about this bloated cartoon on their Facebook pages.

Anyhow, as far as I am concerned, the Whirled angles specifically in regard to the movie remain the same:

1. Some GIN folk are taking undue credit for this flick
2. It's a stinker -- so those who invested and are so GIN-proud of it probably won't see any decent ROI... meaning that once again GIN fell flat as a networking op.

In other words: I am not the one who spiked this insipid punch with GIN. Various GINfolk did this themselves.

Then there is the Marc J Lane connection, however tenuous it may be. As noted on my post, Marc was hugely instrumental in helping Katie structure GIN to hide money from the Feds. It's all there in the court docs. Marc was also an attorney for the production companies responsible for the Oz debacle -- and he even wrote a rebuttal on their behalf on Ripoff Report, threatening to sue the anonymous complainant for defamation. It could, of course, all just be a big fat coincidence. Or it could be something as simple as a common hometown connection. Marc is a Chicago lawyer and Summertime Entertainment's Carroll brothers were born, raised, and went to school in the Windy City. Maybe they all knew each other from back in the day. As I said, I welcome insights from others.

By the way, the friend I quoted at length above also reminded me that a Trudeau entity called TruStar Productions, Inc. -- an enterprise in which Marc Lane was also involved -- had invested in a failed movie project called Hellbenders. It was noted in the Receiver's Third Report (17 March 2014), and I mentioned it on this blog post.

You can find a lot more about the Trudeau/Lane/TruStar relationship -- and their other business relationships -- in various court documents, such as Document #713 from Katie's civil case, filed on July 15, 2013, titled, "PLAINTIFF'S PROPOSED FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW." I've written about and inked to this before, but here's a handy link on the receiver's web site.

For more, check out this link and the individual name links on Advanced Background Checks. 

Not surprisingly, on Marc's Wiki page there is no mention whatsoever of Trudeau or any of the Trudeau entities, or of Marc's involvement in this high-profile case. A shame, that, since Marc worked so hard on his client's behalf, including trying to get data under the Freedom of Information Act regarding some of the ongoing investigations of the various Katie companies. Here's some interesting correspondence from 2011 and 2012. It's in .txt format and you'll need to scroll down to the bottom and work your way up.
 
I have put all of this on my Whirled and have included links in order to raise legitimate questions and encourage others with more resources than I have to continue the investigations.

At any rate -- getting back to the current cinematic flop -- here are some more links. This one handily lists all the major folks involved in the Oz project:
http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/legends-of-oz-dorothys-return/5071489.article

Here is John King's Facebook page. He doesn't seem to be very active, except for a few nods to the Oz project, which currently dominates his cover photo and profile pic:
https://www.facebook.com/john.king.14019338

Here's John King's IMDB link, which links back to the IMDB page for the project: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6359182/

Here's John King's stik.com link: http://www.stik.com/king_john2

And here is a link to Elevate Entertainment, one of whose principals claims to have been involved with John's "110 million dollar private equity raise" for the Oz movie.

Natalie King - CEO
After graduating cum laude with a degree in Finance from Jacksonville University, Natalie moved to Los Angeles to work with Executive Producer Greg Centineo and Co-Executive Producer John King on a 110 million dollar private equity raise for an upcoming movie Franchise titled Legends of Oz - Dorothy’s return. It is set to be released worldwide in May 2014...

...Natalie enjoys bringing her analytical and creative side to develop powerful content that will reach a diverse audience.

But wait... there's more! Other peeps are claiming credit along with John King for raising some of those millions for the Oz thing. Here's one Franco Rosado, who describes himself as a "Youth Empowerment Specialist," on Linkedin:

Excited to be brokering our first motion picture deal with Mr. John King and Summertime Entertainment COMING SOON - MAY 9TH - OVER 3000 THEATERS LEGENDS OF OZ, DOROTHY RETURNS (3D Animation Film) MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! We raised the $5 million needed for our film! Stay tuned for more to come! Franco Rosado CEO, Deep Sea Innertainment Youth Empowerment Specialist [email and phone number redacted ~CC]

So I'm sure there's a whole tangled story here. I don't know much about the film biz, but what I do know is that many movies go through a long and sometimes contentious process in their journey to release. So no doubt there were a lot of the normal Hollywood egos and financial struggles, which ordinarily would not interest me all that much. But when there is even a marginal Scamworld connection --- when, in other words, it intersects with my beat in some way -- you can bet your last flying monkey that I will jump on it, especially if it's a slow news day.

By the way, here is the link to page 1 of what is currently a 15-page, five-and-a-half-year-long thread about the efforts to get people to invest in the Oz movie (I linked to a few pages in this thread above). http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-818-909-6800.

WIN, GIN... I just phoned this in

So while we're waiting to see what kind of protests will be launched against the pending sale of jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's huge scam, the Global Information Network (GIN), there's plenty of entertainment to be had for those who are following this and related Scamworld sagas. Just a few snippets today, Dear Ones. And if some of you have a feeling of deja vu, it's because most of this post consists of comments of mine that I lifted from various Facebook conversations. I'm lazy that way, sometimes.

A sepia-tone scam with a portrait of Winston Churchill in the background = still a scam

Well, the long awaited introductory video for the new GIN ripoff, WIN (World Information Network) has been uploaded to YouTube. I watched it. And wow. Dignified sepia tone! Big important looking desk! Portrait of Churchill on the paneled wall!* Slow, careful, 'hypnotic' speech!

What could possibly be wrong?

What's not to trust?

A friend of mine watched the vid and noted that WIN spokesman and exec-direc Perry Kiraly is no KT, and comes across as a tad creepy. My pal remarked, "At least KT had charm while he picked your pockets." Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. Another Facebook friend noted that Perry seemed kind of like Neo-tech's Mark Scamilton. Yep.

At one point Perry says, "I could tell you that I believe WIN will make you rich... but I'd rather say that WIN will remind you that you are already rich." That's a paraphrase (Perry-phrase?), but... hey, nice dodge, Perry!

KATIE still begging
Meanwhile, Perry's mentor and inspiration, Kevin Trudeau, is still begging, or letting people beg on his behalf. As reported on one of several updates to my April 17 ("AXS of evil") post, Katie's legal defense fund managers are still pleading for money to help his cause, and there's going to be a big to-do in L.A. on May 10. As I also reported, Katie's appeal has run into a roadblock: his alleged "poverty," which he claims is preventing him from being able to come up with the filing fee. Here is the docket for the Appeals case so far (click to enlarge).

Kevin has until May 27 to either come up with the filing fee for his appeal, or convince the court that he really, really is poor. But since his request to file as a pauper and waive the fee has already been denied (as of April 24), I doubt if he will have any luck with the poor-boy tactic. But no worries! Since the fees only come to a little over $500, perhaps one of his prosperous pals could step up to the plate. Now, I'm not talking about the legendary GIN Council. I'm talking about some real peeps who are still defending him to this day. Fred Van Liew? Morters? Lee Kenny?

Or maybe the guys from AXS -- the group who is trying to buy GIN -- could pool their resources and pay the fee for Katie. Troy? Blaine? Chris? Greg? Jeff? Come on, guys. Y'all said you were his friends! On second thought, I can see why Troy and the gang would be reluctant to openly give money for his appeal, at least until after the judge approves the GIN sale. The purchasers have to be on their best behavior and not do anything to annoy the judge. But what about all of those other friends?

Or what about some of you loyal fans? If you're so rich from the stuff that Katie taught you, surely you could donate a few Benjamins to the cause. Anybody?

My understanding is that if he doesn't come up with the money to file by May 27, that kills the appeal, unless the judge changes his mind and decides Katie is a poor boy after all. Which isn't likely, considering that, as noted above, the judge already rejected his pauper claim. The April 24 court doc denying the poor-boy excuse has the exact figures, including the amount Katie has in his prison piggy bank. I shared it on Facebook the other day and there is a screen shot on my blog too, on my "AXS of evil" post. Here is that shot again.


So if he doesn't come up with the filing fee, and this appeals case is dismissed, I wonder if he can start another one, or if he only gets one chance. I am not sure how these things work.

If his appeal is dismissed for lack of fees for filing, and if he doesn't get another chance at an appeal, I wonder if it will even be valid for the fundraisers to keep on begging for money for his legal defense fund going forward. No doubt he owes his lawyers money for what they have already done for him, but it seems kind of sleazy to beg his fans to give money with the implication that it will be used to help overturn his conviction and set him free, when there is no chance that this will happen.

I am just thinking ahead and speculating; this may all be moot. As I noted, the big rally is May 10 and he has till May 27 to come up with the $500.

But I still wonder why none of his buddies stepped up to pay his filing fee. Fair-weather friends? Is it that they're all too willing to still talk about him like he is a hero, but apparently not willing to put their money where their lying mouths are?

On the other hand, knowing how manipulative Katie is, he may still be orchestrating a lot of this from jail. Maybe someone did offer to pay his filing fee but he said no and decided to make a big drama-queen thing of it to win more sympathy and ultimately get more money from suckers. After all, even if he got the money for the filing fee now he would still be in jail. He has nothing to lose by waiting a few weeks.

While we're waiting for the story to unfold, here's a lovely song for Katie by the late genius Nick Drake.



Katie is still on TV, and here's why.
Ever since Trudeau was convicted, and even before, people have been wondering why his infomercials still run on TV. Actually Katie hasn't been in charge of most of those for quite some time now, at least on paper. Other people are making money off of those atrocities; well, at least on paper they are "others." The Chicago Tribune's Jason Meisner, who has been providing excellent Katie coverage for many months, posted this story today. A reader wondered why Katie's "Free Money" infomercials are still running. Meisner explained:

The "Free Money" infomercial that Churchman saw was actually shot years ago and produced by a California company called Free is My Favorite LLC, which also owns the rights to Trudeau's book, records show. Under their sales agreement, the owners of Free is My Favorite were to pay Trudeau a small percentage of the sales in royalties.

That money is now being forwarded to the government and being held in a trust. Eventually it will go toward paying off a whopping $37 million fine levied against Trudeau by the Federal Trade Commission, a fine that Trudeau has long claimed he's too broke to pay.

Repeated efforts to reach owners of Free is My Favorite were not successful.

I strongly suspect that Free Is My Favorite, which was founded in 2009 (the same year GIN was launched) has some connection to Trudeau beyond the royalty deal. (When following the links to the LLC companies, click on the "Officers" tab.) The same guy who owns Free Is My Favorite, Nicholas J. Esayian, also owns Debt Cures, LLC, and those Katie-mercials are still running on the tube too. In 2008, Nick wrote a five-star review on Amazon for Trudeau's Debt Cures book. Hmmm.

Nick owns a couple of other entities that also seem to be Katie-ish, such as Natural Press, LLC. Apparently Katie was one of his "clients" at one time for one of Nick's many bidness entities, Revenue Solutions. But on Katie's profile page, it seems that they never got past Lorum ipsum (the dummy-text placeholder).

Google has some interesting search results for Nick E. He's a pro car racer who was nabbed for misdemeanor DUI back in '03. A March 2014 UT San Diego article describes him as an infomercial mogul. That makes sense. Here's a 2012 piece that describes him as conservative, family-values oriented, proudly politically incorrect, and "a shrewd businessman." And here's his Linkedin profile.

Here is Nick, looking rather hair-pluggish and very well fed, proudly posing at the 2013 Opening Day of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club outside San Diego with a woman who is showing off her Opening Day hat. According to the buzz on Hatlife.com, it was quite a party.

Photo may have been slightly embellished by blogger. ;-)

And here's a 2012 discussion forum that shows that some folks "get" Nick.
 
The point is that Trudeau still gets a percentage of the Free Money infomercial sales, as part of his agreement with Free Is My Favorite, LLC, and now that money is supposedly being forwarded to the gummit. But I wonder where and how the rest of the revenue is being funneled. Maybe Nick can take some time out from his busy schedule to write to this blog and tell us. But if Jason Meisner's comment above is any indication, Nick doesn't seem to be very interested in talking to the press.

Jason is the reporter I emailed a few months ago about Katie's jailhouse Facebook ramblings (I sent him a link to my December 19, 2013 McMiracle post. I had been blogging about these silly posts since November 2013; here's my first one.) At the time I sent him the email, Jason said he hadn't been paying attention to Katie's jailhouse ruminations but would start doing so. I'm glad to see he has been doing just that. In his piece he confirms that Katie is actually writing at least some of those schlocky posts and emailing them to a "colleague" so they can be posted on the Kevin Trudeau Facebook fan page.

In addition to the TV spots, Trudeau also maintains an active Facebook page, where missives he emails from the Metropolitan Correctional Center to a colleague are regularly posted. In the writings, Trudeau often likens himself to jailed civil rights leaders of the past and waxes poetic about the positive effect life behind bars has had on him.

"Had a great nights sleep after the sentencing!" Trudeau wrote in a March 19 post. "Mandela got 28 years, I was blessed to get only 10. I have deep love and appreciation for the Judge and the prosecutors."

The traffic Trudeau's posts attract suggest he still has a large number of devotees, despite his convictions for fraud. His Mandela posting, for example, received more than 1,200 "likes" and 323 comments. Most of the comments expressed support, but some were less than kind.

This is what the admins on the page had indicated some time back. So Katie does indeed have limited email access at the MCC, per their policies and procedures, despite what Katie's ex-b.f.f. Mocktor Leonard Coldwell had been saying. But I continue to refer to them as being posted by Katie's proxy (usually his long-time friend/business partner/past co-defendant/ex-gal pal Janine Nubani Contursi) because his Facebook page is indeed being admin'd by others, and they sometimes write posts for him, referring to him in third person. I imagine some of those first-person screeds are ghost-posted as well.

And even in jail, and despite the occasional "less than kind" comment to his Facebook posts, Katie still has a larger and more loyal following than Coldwell. And my guess is that he always will.

* Re the Churchill portrait, Perry seems to be imitating his idol Kevin Trudeau, who had pics of Churchill and other great historical leaders in his tacky McMansion.

I wrote about the rummage sale at the McMansion on this post.

Lunatics, lawn chairs, and sweet little lies

One of the weapons of choice in the arsenal of certain types of New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality gurus is some version of the cause-and-effect fallacy, or to put it in more snooty and educated-sounding terms, cum hoc, ergo propter hoc. Basically it goes like this: "If A and B regularly occur together, then A is the cause of B." But the hucksters often take it a few deceptive steps further, either exaggerating, cherry-picking or outright lying about "the effects." Generally this is in the service of convincing people that the guru in question was the cause of the marvelous, miraculous effect that they are claiming occurred or is occurring. If they're really clever, they'll bring the followers in on the miracle too, like Whirled favorite Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale did a few years ago when he led his followers in an effort to redirect Hurricane Rita -- which actually did quite a bit of damage, but never hit his area (which was never in any real danger anyway).

Still, his followers believed and praised him. Some were no doubt thrilled that he gave them credit for helping him "stop" Rita.

A few years later, Joe tried the same tack with Hurricane Ike. He selected and replaced "Rita" with "Ike," and basically sent out the same email to his followers. Ike did some devastating damage, including in my area. But Joe's neck of the woods, which once again was never in any real danger, remained unscathed, and while the Houston/Galveston metro area reeled from the devastation -- some people were out of power for weeks -- Joe, from his Hill Country hideaway, was tweeting away about sitting out by his pool on a sunny day, reading an Abraham Hicks book about attracting money.

Still, his followers believed and praised him.

Logic be damned: the gurus' fawning followers will continue to believe and heap praise upon their idols, which is why it comes as no surprise that serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's followers continue to believe and praise him as his proxy pours more stupid posts onto the official Kevin Trudeau Facebook fan page. In this April 21 post, which is mostly recycled crap about the paradise of diversity that is the MCC, Katie's proxy clearly implies that Katie is raisin' those jailhouse vibes, just by his very presence.

(My friend Julie Daniel wrote on a Facebook conversation: "[He writes that] you get what you expect. kt never expected 10 years." On more than one occasion, in fact, Katie cried and begged to the judge to puh-leeze set him free.)
 
I bet that if someone were to actually go and ask the wardens and other workers at the MCC, or even some of the prisoners, if things really have become more calm and balanced and harmonious in Katie's cell block over the past few months, we'd get a far different perspective.

But I suppose it doesn't matter. There are people who need to believe in Katie. There are those who seem to thrive on their gurus' sweet little lies.

Consider the now-famous miracle story, spread by our pal Mr. Fire, about the ward of criminally insane patients in Hawaii State Hospital back in the 1980s. Supposedly, "the world's most unusual therapist," Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, cured that entire ward without ever seeing a patient. And, the legend goes, he did it all by working on himself, sitting in his office using techniques from a modern, "proprietary" form of an "ancient" Hawaiian healing method called Ho'oponopono.

Joe first wrote about the miracle cure on a blog post around 2005. It spread around the Internet "like crabs on '60s hippies," as a certain Whirled blogger put it in Part 1 of her review of Zero Limits, the book that ultimately resulted from this amazing story of the miracle cures in the loony bin. (If you follow that link you'll be able to get to Part 2 as well.)

Since 2007, when Zero Limits was released, that "proprietary" form of Ho'opo has served both Vitale and Hew Len quite well, individually and together. Dr. Hew Len was doing his own thing with Ho'opo before that, but no doubt Joe's book gave him tons of new exposure.

I have heard credible buzz that in more recent times, the two had somewhat of a falling-out (no surprise, in light of Joe's ego), which is perhaps why Joe appears to sort of be throwing Hew Len under the bus in his sequel to Zero Limits, At Zero: The Final Secrets to "Zero Limits" -- The Quest for Miracles Through Ho'oponopono. (Final secrets? Huh.)


A friend who bought and read the book sent me some quotes from Chapter 17, which Joe titled, "Did It Really Happen? The Big Fat Lie." He begins:

People who've read Zero Limits often ask if the story was real. “Did Dr. Hew Len really heal the entire ward of mentally ill criminals? If so, why didn't I hear about it on the news? Where's the public record of it?”

Joe explains that he didn't believe the story either when he first heard it, but after talking to Dr. Hew Len on the phone, he did. Subsequent workshops he and Hew Len did further convinced Joe of the latter's authenticity. He says that while researching Zero Limits, he contacted social workers who were at the hospital when Hew Len was there, and they told him they "felt something" in his presence, but never claimed he was a messiah, and never attributed any healings directly to him. No one said the inmates were cured or the ward closed directly because of any of Dr. Hew Len's actions. Joe continues:

That doesn't surprise me. Life is so interconnected that my breath out affects your breath in, but you'd never consciously look at me and say, “Hey, thanks for breathing!”

The fact that the media never reported on the hospital doesn't surprise me, either. Years ago ABC News came to my home and interviewed me for an hour. We covered a lot of territory, including my books and people who have been transformed. Yet they didn't select the positive news for airing -- instead, they edited out the good stuff and broadcast a few seconds of me fumbling for an answer after they blindsided me with a question. [More on that below. ~CC]

Mainstream media aren't designed to tell you positive news. They need you to stay in fear so that you'll buy their advertisers' products. (I say this as I'm cleaning on it.) This is why they broadcast horrible, tragic, and unhappy news. When nothing bad happens locally, the news stations look for an unhappy story from another area, even other countries...

...But I don't want to dodge the question: Did Dr. Hew Len actually help heal 99 percent of the inmates in the mental hospital for the criminally insane? I believe so. But how can we be sure? Look at it this way: if I secretly pray for your well-being, and one day your sickness is gone, will you give me any credit? Probably not. How could you if you didn't know I had been praying for you?

...Now stop and consider: if someone silently cleans on something you want, and you get it, will you give him or her any credit? Of course not. How could you? You had no idea he or she was doing anything for you. He or she did it covertly and benevolently.

The same may be true for the story of Dr. Hew Len and the hospital. His clearing of himself sent out an attractor field that affected everyone else. They got better but can't give him any credit since they had no idea he was doing anything for them.

Mainstream news has no way to report on a story like this. They want to see visible cause and effect. If Dr. Hew Len dispensed horse pills and people got better, they might give him airtime. (Most likely they would find something wrong with the pills, though, and report on that.)

In short, believe in the story of Zero Limits, if for no other reason than it gives you power to create your own miracles. And if that still seems incomplete for you, clean on it.

Nice dodge, Joe. I mean, really. For someone who says he doesn't want to dodge, he does seem kind of dodgy, in every sense of the word. But the point is probably moot, because, as I've said so many times before, people who want to believe will believe, no matter what. Sweet little lies are better than bitter or even bland-tasting truths any day.

Here's another perspective, though. I recently heard from a real, legitimately credentialed psychiatrist who says he was actually at the Hawaii State Hospital when Hew Len was supposedly working his magic. Actually, Dr. George Gharda-Ward is recently retired, but I've seen and checked out his CV, which he sent me without my even asking for it, and he has authentic creds (he's also a J.D. but never practiced as a lawyer). Long ago and far away, Dr. G. was at Esalen for a while; this was back when the self-realization, touchy-feely movement was in its infancy. He spent the majority of his lengthy career in more buttoned-down settings than Esalen. (The things that this properly credentialed and qualified, board-certified psychiatrist (and that's a real board, not a made-up board) has to say about this Whirled's favorite psychopath and armchair diagnostician, Mocktor Lenny Coldwell, are truly amusing, but I'll save that for another blog post.)

Dr. G. became marginally involved in Trudeau's huge Ponzi-like Global Information Network (GIN) through someone close to him, but early on saw what a scam it was, and what a liar Trudeau was and is. Like so many others, he says that he met some really good people through his short-lived association, but he agrees that GIN was a scam and Katie a scammer. In the process of making these discoveries he stumbled upon my blog. His initial messages to me were about Katie and GIN, but in an early email he also wrote (and he has given me permission to quote him):

I worked at Hawaii State Hospital in 1987.  I did my psych residency at the University of Hawaii.  Guess what?  I worked on the forensic unit where all this Ho'oponopono was supposed to have happened...I worked there in 1987 as an attending psychiatrist.  I assure you there was no "magical" healing going on there. It is all a fairytale.  There is a letter from a social worker, identified as Omaka-O-Kala Hamaguch on page 180 of "Zero Limits." Sorry, don't believe a word of it...

Dr. Gharda-Ward was further inspired to write a book review about Zero Limits.

THIS BOOK IS TOTALLY FALSE, March 25, 2014 By G. Gharda Ward MD
This review is from: Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More (Paperback)
I am a Board-Certified Psychiatrist. In 1987 I worked at Hawaii State Hospital. ON THEIR FORENSIC UNIT, where Joe Vitale says these "miracles" took place. I can assure you this is completely phony and false. IT NEVER HAPPENED. There were no psychotic murderers and rapists that were "cured" by this Ho'oponopono. It is false and misleading. Many of the things in the book are completely untrue. There were no car washes (can you imagine letting murderers and rapists off the unit to go outside and wash cars?), patients did not walk around in shackles nor were they held for long periods in seclusion. This is a STATE HOSPITAL!! Can you imagine what would happen if the Honolulu Advertiser (the local paper) had gotten wind of these patients being allowed outside? What if one of them escaped?? The Doctor, the hospital administrator, heck, the Governor of the state would be in big trouble. Think about it!! The events described in the book simply did not happen.

PERIOD!!

Joe addresses these issues in Atzero by saying that if it didn't happen it doesn't matter. Sorry Joe, that baloney doesn't wash in the light of reality. Joe bases the ENTIRE BOOK and Atzero on the premise that it DID work. If it didn't happen as Hew Len said it did and as Joe "believes" then there is no validity to the book.

THIS WHOLE BOOK IS BASED ON A MYTH, NOT ON REALITY!!

Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with the 4 magic sentences. There is nothing wrong with loving people or asking for forgiveness or trying to be as kind and thoughtful as one can be. And there is nothing wrong with myths.

But anyone who "believes" that repeating a mantra, no matter how well [meaning] it might be, can cure a whole ward full of psychotic criminals lives in Fantasyland.

The book should be labeled a fairytale, because that's what it is. It should sit on the same shelf as the books that say,
"When you wish upon a star......."

Well, you get my drift.

Dr. G. and I continued our correspondence over the next few weeks. I asked him:

During your time in Aloha Land were you even aware at all of Hew Len's presence in or around that ward? He said he never saw patients, but supposedly he was hanging around the place and attended the occasional staff meeting. He was a psychologist, of course, not a shrink.

His response:

There was no Hew Len in my consciousness.  One thing that might help you in your pursuit of what is or is not truth, is that NO practitioners, be they psychologists or psychiatrists or social workers or nurses, were outside the radar of the administrators.  They always knew what you were doing, how many hours you spent on the ward, etc. The most specious thing about Hew Len is that he sat in his office all day, never went on the ward (except to bake cookies and run a car wash)  and never saw patients.  THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN.  The activities of all the professional staff were continuously monitored. 

Hew Len admits he was "fired" (in so many words.) He was fired because he didn't do anything...
Just the fact that you still cling to some belief that this dude was hanging around Hawaii State Hospital and "may have", "maybe"' "even though it seems crazy" "cured" even ONE person with this hocus-pocus, just shows how much ALL of us want to BELIEVE!!
I want to believe.  It is just my damn mind getting in the way!!

To which I responded:

The only belief I cling to is that Hew Len might have physically been working in the vicinity -- not that he actually cured anyone. But thank you for the additional insights...I still like my satirical version of the story the best. :-)

Just in case you haven't read it yet and don't want to interrupt your flow right now, I'll tell you that in my satirical version, "Mahalo, Dr. Yew," a "therapist" named Dr. Ihavascama Fer Yew admits, among other things, that all he ever did at the Hawaii State Hospital was sit in his office reading naughty magazines and "working on himself."
Dr. G. responded to me:

I think your satirical version is closer to the truth than the truth.
He probably was reading Playboy.  I did when I worked there (LOL),
What else can you do.  Those people [the criminally insane] are, literally, incorrigible.
Which is why the whole FANTASY that anyone, or anything, can cure these people is completely insane.
And why people who cannot handle reality HAVE to believe they CAN be CURED with a prayer.
Otherwise, LIFE is too complicated.
I think your "satirical" version is 1000 times more likely then the Vitale version.

Mahalo, Dr. Gharda-Ward.

Dr. G. cited some other examples in Joe's writing that, in Dr. G.'s view, indicate Joe has, at best, a casual relationship with the truth and a penchant for exaggeration. He doesn't even really buy the bed-wetting story that Joe tells in his "spiritual autobiography," Adventures Within. (Wrote the doc: "He claims that his URINE burned THROUGH the mattress and then THROUGH PLASTIC.  Why not metal? Does he pee ACID? Did he watch ALIENS one two many times? [Could he be] making it all up???")

But I don't want to piss anyone off too much, so let's move away from that subject. In a recent email Dr. G. wrote to me:

One of the MOST vexing things about people like Fireball [Joe Vitale] and Katie is that they take some really good things and distort them to fit their pocketbook. Ho'oponopono is a wonderful concept. It is a meditation or mantra. Those are useful tools to guide us humans in our quest to live a more peaceful and harmonious life. I frequently find myself repeating the mantra: I'm sorry Please Forgive Me I Love You Thank You. It is a lovely mantra and the spirit of Hawaii (though overstated) has its place.What is truly disturbing is that psychopaths do a better job of spreading this message then us regular folks. I wonder why that is so?  

To which I responded:

Keep in mind that the "Thank you/I love you" etc. is part of a "proprietary" form of Ho'opo invented and taught to Hew Len by his late mentor, Morrnah, a woman for whom he apparently left his wife and family to go live with for many years. The traditional Ho'opo is a form of conflict resolution, from which Morrnah supposedly borrowed a few concepts and then made up her own stuff. No doubt Hew Len added to that, and Joe of course took it and ran with it.  

I even admit on my own blog (in my 2007 review of Zero Limits) that this modern Ho'opo can be used as a meditation and a way to inner peace (yes, I even use the four phrases sometimes to calm my whirling mind), but it's not a miracle cure for everything, the way Joe strongly implies it is.

Psychopaths do such a good job of spreading good messages for their own bad purposes for the obvious reason: because they are master manipulators and will use every tool at their disposal. Pander to people's deepest secret longings and/or fears, and you've got it made.

They do it for the same reason that a dog licks its private parts: because they can. Ron and I call it the DLB (Dog Licking Balls) syndrome. When all rational explanations fail, DLB explains a multitude of atrocities, from psychopaths to governments to those infamous neighborhood Nazis known as Homeowners Associations. "Because they can."

And yes, I confess that I do rather like that four-phrase mantra. Really. But I don't think it has any magical powers. I even liked parts of Zero Limits, as I wrote in my 2007 reviews. I thought that Joe sounded relatively honest in some parts, and to me the book read as if he had put more work into it than he had in many of his recent (at the time) books, and in several of those that were published after Zero Limits. 

By the way, Joe also used up a whole chapter in his new Ho'opo book to slam another ex-friend and business partner. Here is some perspective on that. For such an optimistic, positive-thinking kinda guy he seems to be quite the whiner.

* * * * *

Looking over the chapter from At Zero, I notice how Joe once again slams the mainstream media, even though they've been his friend as much as they've been his foe. (Remember how the media fawned over The Secret, back in its early days? Joe has had numerous mainstream media appearances since then, such as appearances on Fox and Friends (though he probably paid for that exposure).)

As I've mentioned here a few times before, Joe is always nattering on about how the media refuse to run positive stories, instead preferring to focus on the negative. But that is incorrect. From what I've seen, the media are all too willing to run "positive" and even woo stories stories on miracles and angels and so forth. They go for the ratings, and it seems that both horrendously negative and sappily positive stories get good ratings. Joe is clearly still steamed because of that ABC debacle a few years ago, which he mentioned in the above-cited chapter from At Zero.

He's miffed because ABC refused to portray him and his beloved selfish-help industry in a completely positive light. In fact they made him look a bit foolish. As many of you may recall, ABC's Dan Harris went on one of Joe's Rolls-Royce ridealongs a few years ago, and also interviewed him at length. Despite Joe's hopefulness and proactive kissing-up, Dan ended up not portraying Joe in the most flattering of lights.


Recently Dan got in another potshot on a Nightline segment. You need to watch the whole thing for context, but the lead-in to Joe starts at 7:29 and really begins in earnest at 7:50. Dan Harris' declaration that Joe Vitale "folds like a cheap lawn chair" in an interview will go down on my Whirled as one of the classic comments.


So now, in addition to his other fine credentials, such as the Buddha of the Internet and the Charles Atlas of the Internet, Mr. Fire can boast that he is the Cheap Lawn Chair of the Internet. Or maybe the Cheap Lawn Chair of ABC. The CLC of ABC... it almost sounds like a credential to add to his faux-hDs: Joe Vitale, PhD, MSCD, CLC.
 
But at least Joe isn't behind bars like his good friend Kevin Trudeau (whom Joe defended several times online while helping Katie push GIN). So I guess that's something. Besides, even if Dan Harris' amusing simile doesn't sit well (so to speak) with Joe, cheap lawn chairs have their place in the world too.

I write all of this knowing full well that in the end, no matter how much I jab at Joe, make sport of Mocktor Loony, or kick at Katie, the lure of those sweet little lies will continue to win more hearts and wallets than a snarky little hobby blog ever could.

But if you think that knowing this is going to stop me, you have seriously misunderestimated me.

* * * * *

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AXS of evil: GIN sale pending

Note: This post was originally published on 17 April 2014. Several important updates have been made since then; they are below the original post, so be sure to read everything. ~CC

Remember what I've been saying all along about there being
no neat and tidy endings
in Scamworld?

Well, after months of speculation and flying rumors, it seems there's a sale pending for jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's huge scam, the Global Information Network, or GIN. Yesterday GIN sent out an email (screen shot courtesy of Bernie O'Mahony at GINtruth.com):

Seems there's this group called AXS Investment Group, with Troy McClain, longtime Trudeau buddy/cheerleader and hustledork in his own right, at the helm.

I wonder what AXS stands for. Could the "A" be for Athorn, as in Blaine Athorn, an even longer-time Katie buddy and co-huckster? (Here's an April 24, 2013 Whirled post with a bit of Blaine and Katie's history.) Some speculate that Athorn is indeed involved, along with two other slimy Katie buds, Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan and Jeff Devine of the Hybrid Group money-funneling operation... oops, I mean EVENT PLANNING COMPANY. Other buzz has it that Jeff isn't part of the purchase group but that Greg Kramer, of GIN Store fame, is.

My understanding is that as a private investment group, the AXS of evil is not under any obligation to reveal the names of all of the parties involved. So at this point I have not been able to confirm for sure if Athorn et al. are involved; the only name on the "official" announcement was Troy's. I'll let you know when/if any more documents become available for public consumption. But given that Athorn's nose has been up Katie for decades, it would be surprising if he didn't have his fat little hand in the pie somewhere, somehow.


At any rate it goes without saying that a lot of people will be pretty ticked off if this sale, which of course is subject to final approval by Judge Robert Gettleman, goes through. As I understand it, the court has wiped away the liabilities so any purchaser(s) will be buying GIN free and clear (at least from a monetary standpoint; courts don't directly address matters of karma).
 
In case you don't recall who Troy McClain is, he was one of Kevin's cheerleaders, and one who was pushing hard to keep people from leaving GIN in droves in the latter days. He's apparently most famous for having been on the comically repulsive Donald Trump's "reality" show, The Apprentice. Troy was the country boy that everyone fell in love with, according to Troy. He failed three times as project manager, and got fired on Week 12 of Season 1, original air date April 1, 2004. He was fired mostly because he sometimes used unethical business practices during the interview process, and partly because he only had a high school diploma. 

The Jan. 12, 2014 update towards the end of this Whirled post has a bit about him, as do some of the comments.


Troy was/is a proud member of the GIN "faculty."

Troy has been very close with the GIN United group of GIN"leadership" and Katie buds, who have been talking for months about purchasing GIN.

And here's Troy in 2011, shilling with old-school hustledork Ron Ball on behalf of Katie and GIN. I think this one is pretty disgusting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgr9UjW1Ops


And here he is around the same time, lying to people about how easy Katie's version of the hCG diet is (he seems a little coked-up, but maybe he just had allergies):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WRIkLBhegY

Besides the KT Radio Network web site URL on that video, there's an hCG web site URL that, when you attempt to follow it, redirects to http://hcgchicago.com. According to that site, the "hCG support team" is led by one Thomas Drost, M.D., N.D., F.A.C.S., and his wife Lisa Drost, N.D. An alert reader pointed out to me that Dr. Drost is also a hemorrhoid doc who treats hemorrhoids and cures anal fissures in DuPage County and Chicagoland. Funny. On that 2011 KT vid I linked to above, Troy yammered on a bit about he LOVES to go fishing and always has. He gabs about both literal and metaphorical fishing. So... Troy is a fisherman. Dr. Drost is a fissure man. This opens up a whole new world of interesting Photoshopping possibilities. But I digress.

Here's more about what a superstar and master brander and co-brander our Troy is. http://theitfactorradio.com/alycia-kaback/tune-check-factor-features-troy/

And here's more about why you should hire Troy for all of his expert expertise.

Anyway. You get the drift. Troy seems perfectly poised to be a front guy who will take GIN to the next level of scamming. (His web site does say he specializes in "turnarounds.")

And besides, Katie has been on his client list for a few years now; note the "Natural Cures" and "Stand With KT" (his original legal defense fund) logos in the lineup below:

I see new infomercials in the making, with Troy as one of the spokes-hucksters. Maybe they can even get some really big names in Scamworld to join in the fun. It remains to be seen whether or not the GIN MLM/"affiliate" program will be reinstated; I do know that several of the prospective purchasers were very interested in exploring this possibility.

It also remains to be seen how or if the SciWINtologists, led by former GINtervenor and ex-con Perry Kiraly (and Scientology fan Yon Vetter Cole) will be involved. When their Plan A to snatch GIN from the clutches of the receiver failed in court, they began focusing in earnest on Plan B, and have been trying for months to cobble a GIN ripoff called WIN, or World Information Network. In the process they probably ran up a huge attorney bill, so expect some Shimkos to still be hovering around somewhere. But they have been kind of silent for the past several weeks, although Yon did send me a private message on Facebook explaining exactly why he is NOT a Scientologist. I told him to tell it to the blog. He said he might, but hasn't yet. [NOTE: See April 20 update below. ~CC]

The heads of another failing GIN ripoff, the IMBS-ing U MasterBaiter's Society, are already telling folks to write to the judge, though.


In his blog post about this pending sale, Bernie made note of this bit from the announcement email:

AXS and its management team will now be actively working hard to make our club the best it can be with the commitment to never over promise and under deliver.

Spoken like a true Scamworld scammer. "We promise not to screw you; trust us!"

At this point it seems entirely possible that even the hopelessly caged Katie might still have a hand in the club, even from behind bars. (Unless Judge G says no to the sale, of course -- but another group of Katie pals could always step up to the table.) The point is that Trudeau's legacy lives on. And despite the many folks who will be outraged if the sale is finalized, there are also many, many people who still love Katie nearly to the point of worship, and think that his conviction and sentence are gross injustices, and want more than anything for his legacy to continue through GIN. As I've noted on this blog before, the GIN "leadership" are going to have to find a way to pander to both the Katie lovers and the Katie haters.

But one way or the other, it seems that GIN is still alive and kicking.

As I said... no neat and tidy endings. There rarely are, in Scamworld.
Update, 20 April 2014:
We didn't have to wait long to see what the SciWINtologists are up to. They are apparently going ahead with their plan to compete head to head with GIN. Time to stock up on more popcorn and beer! This was sent out early Easter morning:

From: [email address redacted]
Sent: 4/20/2014 1:41:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: WIN Update 04-19-14

April 19th 2014

WIN Update:

Dear WIN Members & Supporters,
March 31st concluded the time line of the Private Placement Memorandum and we did well.

The launch of WIN’s Website is currently on target for early May.

An introduction video was professionally filmed on April 10th and should soon be completed and up for viewing and release to everyone for use in the promotion of WIN. The video outlines what the club is all about as well as the benefits and value of membership.

After months of consulting with WIN’s MLM attorney Thayer C. Lindauer, WIN has completed a sponsorship compensation plan Member/Affiliate program that I think will excite nearly everyone.

A few of the highlights of the Member/Affiliate program are:

Commission eligibility requires only one non-affiliate member in good standing personally sponsored in your downline; period. Not one per month – one non-affiliate member; period (and it doesn’t matter when that member was sponsored in as long as they’re in good standing you are commission eligible).

High percentage commission’s payback on the first four levels:
L-1: 20%, L-2: 20%, L-3: 5%, and L-4: 5%.

Our MLM attorney has thoroughly vetted this sales program for compliance with MLM rules & regulations and has authorized its use on a worldwide basis.

Upon the launch of the WIN site the Member/Affiliate program will be up and running.

To further start WIN’s site launch off right and in honor of former GIN Members - for thirty days from the date of launch the membership fee of $1,000.00 will be waved.

To join and become a member, initiation of your monthly dues of $150.00 is all that is necessary. To take advantage of the waved membership fee you will simply use the sponsor/affiliate code WIN or the code of the WIN Member that sponsors you in.

To all former GIN members that had downlines, and plan to participate in WIN’s Member/Affiliate program, now is the time to begin calling your downlines in preparation for the launch of WIN’s Website. Once the website is launched you can sign up using the WIN sponsor code. You will then be given your own code to sponsor Members under you. If any Member of your former downline inadvertently uses the WIN code and actually wanted to be and requests to be back in your downline that request can be granted.

Additionally, all former GIN member training levels achieved will be honored in WIN if you join within the 30-day period from launch. There will be additional testing requirements to acquire the equivalent Pin Level in WIN but no charge for the upgrade.

Lastly, negotiations with the Wynn Hotel Resort in Las Vegas http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/ are underway to do WIN’s first major event there. Details will be forthcoming.

Finally, WIN’s official Facebook page is up and running. Click on: https://www.facebook.com/WINFDN?ref=hl to connect with us. WIN’s official Linkedin and Twitter page is also under construction and will soon be available.

Thank you and have an excellent day,
Perry Kiraly,
Executive Director, World Information Network

With a convicted felon at the helm, WIN members who miss GIN should feel right at home. 

Update, 21 April 2014
Here is the court document filed today, regarding the terms of the proposed sale of GIN. Proposed sale price is $200k, with a few terms and conditions, including, for a period of one year, payments equivalent to 8% of the member dues for existing members, and 4% for new members. Favorite Whirled wag Tim Donohoe noted, "Essentially they are paying for a mailing list of suckers and paying the FTC a commission on everyone who stays suckered or gets suckered into GIN in the future." (At least for a year, anyway.)

Tim mused, "Not a bad deal for an up and coming scammer." Yep.

But as I noted above, if the sale is approved, the purchasers will not be purchasing any liabilities incurred by Kevin Trudeau's mismanagement. There may be some lawsuits filed by disgruntled ex-GINfolk, not to mention some justified ill will. But they won't have much luck getting any of their money back, since the court has wiped away the liabilities. And as I've said, there are still plenty of folks who love Katie.

What the purchasers will have is the intellectual property, including those all-important mailing lists. The various GIN ripoffs such as IBMS and WIN are probably seething with envy over the lists alone. There's still a chance that the purchasers can make money with the new, rebranded GIN. People seem to have an endless need to feel "special," and they'll pay dues to feel special, particularly if they think they can make some money from selling other people a chance to feel special. And the prospective purchasers have indicated that they will explore the possibility of starting up a new affiliate program. Hold on to your wallets.

As I've noted before on this Whirled, there is a bit of historical precedent here. Landmark Forum grew to a worldwide multi-million dollar company after the sleazy Werner Erhard (supposedly) sold the intellectual property that was est. So the people who are crowing that the prospective purchasers of GIN are making a bad business decision don't really know what they're talking about.

Meanwhile, Katie struggles to get his appeal going. He's claiming to be too poor to afford the filing fee, so he filed a form stating that he's a pauper. I saw the court docs the other day and shared them on Facebook. ABC7 (Chicago) picked up the story too.

UPDATE: Motion denied on April 24. The judge isn't buying that Trudeau is a pauper and can't afford the filing fee (click to enlarge).


Update, 24 April 2014
So apparently there was a GIN Conference call on the evening of April 23, 2014. My friend John Foster, one of the Founding Members of GIN and author of the new book, Kevin Trudeau's Road Kill Victims "He" Doesn't Want You To Know About (I'll be writing about it soon), informed some of us on Facebook that the call was "to announce the new GIN club owners, now the Five Amigos, Blaine Athorn, Chris McGarahan, Jeff Devine, Greg Kramer, and Troy McClain. The new GIN saviours."

So it appears that the buzz that Bernie and I had been hearing for months, and had heard more about recently, was pretty much spot-on. Apparently both Jeff and Greg are part of this deal.

Of course, the sale is still subject to final approval by the court. The receiver was scheduled to have formally appeared in Judge Gettleman's court today to present the Receiver’s Motion for Entry of an Order (A) Setting Hearing for Approval of the Sale of GIN Club Assets and (B) Approving the Form and Manner of Notice (which I linked to above, but here it is again). I'll post any updates but there's nothing on PACER yet as of this writing.

Meanwhile, the begging continues for caged Katie
As expected, Trudeau is going to appeal that ten-year prison sentence, but that costs money. So his good buddy in the UK, Lee Kenny, current "owner" of Natural Cures, used the NC platform to send out a begging email. Here it is in its entirety, with the usual Cosmic annotations:

Can you make a miracle happen for Kevin Trudeau?
For those of you who’ve been following the case of Kevin Trudeau, original author of the Natural Cures books, you’ll probably be aware that he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his infomercial for the Weight Loss Cure book.

Reports of a former congressman having to be hauled out of court after showing outrage, tells you all you need to know about the fairness of the sentence.

What will you watch on TV tonight?

As you watch TV this evening and see the incredible before & after shots of the latest Diet or Fad, or hyped-up claims for some life changing vacuum cleaner, spare a thought for Kevin, but also for any other would-be advocate for Natural health or process that bucks the system.

Money, Money, Money
Like in any case there are appeals that can be filed, but after 10 years the Attorneys still need paying, research needs to be thorough and maybe, just maybe his legal counsel can find a way to release him much sooner. The lawyers must go back and review every word said in the case and research the law to its fullest.

Now Kevin is a resourceful guy.

If it were up to Kevin, He’d write a book or some marketing for a firm who could pay him what its worth and he could use that cash to defend himself. Unfortunately though every penny he could earn would not be his own, it would be turned over to pay the crazy $37m judgment. So his friends have created something to try and help him raise funds for his next round of legal challenges. [Actually, on a vid last June he babbled a bit about how he pretty much knows he is going to prison, but will take the time to write a book while he's there. I wrote about it on this June 7, 2013 post. So don't give up on the book dream yet, Lee, even if he doesn't complete it in time to fund his appeal. ~CC]

Los Angeles 10th May:
There will be a huge rally in honor of Kevin in Los Angeles on Saturday 10th May. All of his close friends, well-known speaker and many others will be on hand to help raise money on Kevin’s behalf for his continued legal defense. No contribution is too small and every little bit will help in the quest to free Kevin!

Can’t Make Los Angeles?
There are no other planned events, the deadlines mean the lawyers either get on this or not, so if you can’t attend, then any donation would be greatly appreciated. You may have already given in the past, but if you feel like Kevin improved your life in any way, and you can afford to, then it would be wonderful to have you support Kevin one last time.

I wouldn’t ask you to do something I wouldn’t do.

I’ve known Kevin a long time, just over 15 years in fact. I know his good and his bad points and I know this is not a fair fight. Whether people agree with what he has said, no-one can feel that 10 years is a just sentence for what he said in an advertisement.

As many of you know Court records have shown that I’ve donated a 6-figure sum so far from my businesses towards these legal fights. [See info below. ~CC] Not because I owe Kevin anything legally but because I believe in him and what he stood for. I don’t tell you this to brag, believe me there are days my businesses could use that money, but to demonstrate that this is a cause worth supporting.

Donate Now
If you’ve read Napoleon Hill’s books…
The similarities between the inmate that Napoleon Hill describes in his Laws of Success books and Kevin are incredible. No he’s not a saint, but his personality will lead him to use the time he has to help others.

Through friends and email (Who’d have thought email was possible in these circumstances!) Kevin has been sharing his high, lows & pearls of wisdom on Facebook continuing to help people and think of others, even whilst incarcerated. [Ha! Those 'pearls of wisdom,' written by Katie's proxy, smell more like the 'nuggets' in my cats' litter boxes. ~CC]

So if you can, here’s the website to make a donation. http://ktlegaldefense.com/KT_Legal_Defense/Welcome

If you can attend, you’ll get tremendous value. Sharing a common goal with some wonderful speakers and of course with the other attendees too. If you can’t attend, please do consider donating anyway, it will be very much appreciated.

Thank you for your consideration.

Best Wishes
Lee Kenny
Owner & CEO: NaturalCures.com

PS - Once you contribute and are confirmed you will be sent our hotel discount link)
PPS – I just heard that the people operating the Website are closing it after the event, so this will be your last chance to help other than sending money directly to Kevin’s attorneys.

Funny. I had just mentioned Lee Kenny the other day on a thread, wondering what he was thinking or doing since the sentencing, and mentioning what a "deal" he got when he bought Natural Cures for $100k (as reported by former GIN CFO Michael Dow in a May 2013 deposition).

As you may know if you've been following this saga, Lee has been pretending to be cooperative with the courts, but apparently the receivers ultimately gave up on getting any useful info from him about hidden money. But more importantly, as I also recall from court docs, and as I wrote about last August, Natural Cures was set up in the first place to feed KT's legal defense fund. Here is a direct link to some August 2013 court documents that clearly state when and why Natural Cures Health Institute (NCHI) was set up.

So this all makes sense. And Lee's claim that he has already donated six figures from his own pocket towards Katie's legal defense... well, that seems a little deceptive.

Of note, Lee has also used the Natural Cures platform more than once to send out email promos for his and Kevin's $997 Baccarat scam (also mentioned a few times on this Whirled). I wonder if all of that dirty money goes to Katie's defense.

The terms on the current KT Defense Fund page are simple: Everything goes to pay Kevin's "management and legal fees," and all amounts are strictly nonrefundable.

I still believe that the ten-year sentence is a little harsh, particularly in light of the fact that convicted killer and star of The Secret James Arthur Ray served less than two years for killing three people (and hasn't even been called to account for a fourth death at another event). And now he's back in the Scamworld pool, teaching people how to "turn crisis into opportunity." Kevin wrecked many lives, but as far as I know didn't kill anyone.

Even so, he's a serial scammer, and most likely incorrigible. And I feel for the well-meaning people who are suckered into continuing to throw money at him, believing that they are somehow fighting the good fight.

Update, 26 April 2014
This "Message from the Receiver" was sent out by GIN to the GIN mailing list on the evening of April 25 (click to enlarge). The receiver will appear before the court on May 27 to seek the judge's approval of the sale of GIN's assets to Troy, Blaine, Chris, et al. (AXS). Protestors have until May 12 at 5:00 PM CDT to file their objections with the court. This should be interesting. I wonder if any of the sleazes and lunatics running the GIN ripoffs will bother to protest. Of course I'm not suggesting that everyone who protests this sale is a sleaze or a lunatic. I think the sale is a bad idea myself. But Scamworld runs on bad ideas, and for the most part the government and the courts turn a blind eye.

In addition, the receiver finally has finally uploaded the April 16 court document regarding the sale. Here is that link. And here is the link to Robb Evans' Kevin Trudeau page.

Update, 5 May 2014
More documents in the Kevin Trudeau civil case; filed on April 28, 2014. These are regarding the pending sale of GIN to AXS Consulting, LLC. Here the receiver explains in more detail than in previous docs why they want to sell GIN to AXS and not to others. Also, as discussed previously, they want to sell GIN "free and clear." (Hence the document title: RECEIVER’S MOTION FOR ENTRY OF AN ORDER APPROVING SALE OF GIN CLUB ASSETS FREE AND CLEAR OF ALL LIENS, CLAIMS AND ENCUMBRANCES.) As mentioned previously, the deadline for filing objections to the sale is May 12, and a hearing will be held, and the sale presumably finalized, on May 27.