Monday, June 30, 2014

Coldwell rolls out hilarious new bio site, tightens rope around his own neck, Part 1 of 5




NOTE: ALL links to web pages, and comments about the content on those pages, were accurate at the time this post (and updates) were originally written. In this post, information about said content was accurate at least through February 2015, but it appears that subject may have subsequently taken steps to redesign/"clean up" some of his sites.

Not-doctor Leonard Coldwell has outdone himself, stupid-wise, with his new, lie-filled bio web site. That's the first thing you need to know.

The second thing is that this is one of those long-ish posts, and if you have grown bored with reading about Coldwell and wish I would write about someone else, feel free to skip this post altogether. You won't hurt my feelings. However, if you've wandered over here because you want more information about accusations on that loony new web site, you've come to the right place. Just be glad I am merciful enough to write this post in two parts. As is always the case with my long posts, if you're reading this on your computer and your eyes get tired easily, feel free to print this out and highlight the links you want to follow later.
~CC
 


UPDATE 2 August 2014: Due to numerous complaints to the Web host about the defamatory lies Coldwell told about his critics on the "Defamation" page of his new site, that page was ultimately removed. Even so, I am leaving this blog post up because I believe that it is important to track and document the lies Coldwell has been telling.

Gosh, June is almost over -- it's already gone, on some parts of the globe -- and I've been neglecting my Whirled again. Sorry about that. Let me tell you, though: there's nothing that can shake a Whirled blogger out of her summer snooze like a big burning (or Bernd-ing) pile of stupidity. Imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's ex-b.f.f. Not-Doctor Leonard "Loony" Coldwell, the former Bernd Klein of the Republic of Germany and in recent years a fairly frequent unwilling guest on this Whirled, has surely outdone himself in the stupidity department.

In a laughably transparent attempt to shore up his reputation (a rep totally built on falsehoods anyway, since he's pretty much a nobody in his native land and his entire U.S. platform was created by mega-liar Trudeau in the first place), he has just damaged said rep even further, while committing some of the most blatant acts of defamation against some of his critics that I've ever seen. Earlier this month
he rolled out a comically defensive and hilariously garbled -- yet seriously defamatory -- web site to counter the growing body of criticism and questions about his credentials and his credibility.

Though I just found out about the site a few days ago, he actually announced it on June 20, 2014. I took these screen shots from
Bernie O'Mahony's GINtruth.com post about Loony's new site, because they were already pre-redacted (pre-dacted?). I'm lazy that way.




Coldwell obviously intended for the new site to vindicate and validate him, while increasing his martyr/hero creds by playing on that whole lunatic "conspiracy to destroy" theme. And indeed, a few Coldwell loyalists and obviously clueless knee-jerk responders jumped on the martyr thing by immediately sharing his announcement post on Facebook. Oh, woe is us, the medical establishment is out to destroy all good natural-cures "doctors!"

 
Nice work, Peter Wink! You and some of
Coldwell's other close buddies
know full well that Coldwell is LYING about me on that site.
And you probably know his other allegations
about other critics are desperate lies too.
And yet you support him and call him a "warrior."

But in the sane world, which I like to think still includes the majority of thinking human beings, all Coldwell has really done is vindicate his critics by shining a harsher light on his own inanities and outright lies. And he has gone beyond the pale in committing the very types of lies and defamation of which he has long accused critics. I will have more on that in a moment.

As noted above, I didn't find out about the new site until a few days ago, when some friends of friends of friends stumbled across Coldwell's June 20 Facebook announcement of the launch. There's sometimes a bit of an info gap because Coldwell has me -- and most of my Facebook buds -- so thoroughly blocked that it's hard to see anything he writes. Evidently he keeps the vast majority of his Facebook posts pretty private, even on his "public" page. It's hard to be a "public figure" when you hide in such a cowardly manner from the public. But it appears that his aim is to set things up so he can talk about his critics behind their backs on Facebook like a junior high girl, and the critics won't be able to join in the conversation or even defend themselves. That's his typical sniveling way of handling things.

Of course, I talk about people here too, often snarkily and, some have said, mean-girlishly. But my posts are public and the subjects are all welcome to join in the conversation. Few ever do.

So let's take a leisurely look at Loony's new site, which is public. Please note that everything I am writing about and sharing screen shots about is current as of the time I am publishing this post: Monday, 30 June, 2014, at 4:14 PM CDT
. This being the web, where things are subject to change, and Loony's site being filled with actionable lies, it is possible that some of the content may not be there for long. But for now, it's up there and it has been duly recorded. [See 3 July 2014 update above. ~CC]

Fighting imaginary defamation with real (and disgusting) defamation
My pal Bernie at GINtruth was on this one first -- here's that link again -- and I don't blame him because he was the target of some of the most egregious defamation on the new site. On Coldwell's DEFAMATION page -- aptly named, as it happens, though not for the reason Coldwell intended -- he posted a picture of a very beaten-up Bernie, accompanied by an outrageous lie. (Can't Lenny even feel the noose tightening around his fat little neck?)

That picture of Bernie was actually taken during the New Year 2013, after Bernie was beat up by a group of young Japanese thugs. Being New Year's Eve/Day, alcohol may have been involved, but the egregious crime of which Coldwell accused Bernie emphatically was not. Bernie explains the true story on his blog post and links to his original Facebook post. (If you are on Facebook you should be able to get to that link; if not, suffice to say that LEONARD COLDWELL WAS LYING. Again.)

In addition, as Bernie noted on his blog post, he isn't "hiding" in Japan; he has lived there for 15 years. He isn't being paid for his blog, and as far as I know he has no criminal record. His main "crime" seems to be trying to get to the truth about Loony.

By the way, if you follow that link you will notice that the "Leonard Coldwell Defamation" page is supposedly written by "Nicolas Coldwell," who claims to be Loony's brother. Actually Coldwell's 12-years-younger half-brother does sometimes go by the name "Nicholas Coldwell" (with an "h"), but his real and legal name is Jens Wilhelm Anskohl.
I wrote about him here. At any rate the "Defamation" screed was very obviously written by Lenny himself.

Anyway, I guess you can't blame Lenny for being a little sore at Bernie, who in addition to GINtruth.com has several other blogs and sites related to some of his areas of interest. But GINtruth is the blog that gets Loony's little pink panties in a bunch. (Note: I don't actually know if his panties are pink, but he does like to wear pink so I am just assuming that his panties match his shirts and socks.)

For the next few paragraphs I'm going to be going over a backstory that you may already know. Be patient; I'll get back to newer stuff very soon.

Bernie started GINtruth in spring of 2012 when the Kevin Trudeau/Global Information Network (GIN) sh-t started hitting the fan big time. He wrote in detail about Trudeau's lies and broken promises as they became more apparent, and he wrote about some of the other speakers and principals in GIN. He shared stories and opinions from ex-members and members who felt they had been taken by Trudeau's extravagant promises and lies. Bernie's blog has been a great resource for those with questions about GIN, since Bernie himself was a GIN member and is still in contact with many current and ex members and insiders.

And for a while, thanks to that "common enemy" factor, he was in alliance, more or less, with the most vociferous anti-GIN voices, including one Abe Husein, self-proclaimed GIN Destroyer and
media star, and even Leonard Coldwell. They were all bros back then. Abe even made sure that Emmy Award winning journalist Ryan Kath mentioned GINtruth.com on his first story about KT/GIN (the mention is on the last page of the article).

But then as more information came out about Coldwell throughout the summer of 2012, and particularly as Bernie got wind of the infamous 2007 Mount Pleasant, South Carolina police report (and no, I did not send it to him; apparently someone else did), he began writing critically about Coldwell on GINtruth. By December of 2012 it had dawned on Coldwell that Bernie was not going to back down on calling out Coldwell on his lies, lack of credibility, and general ickiness. So Coldwell began threatening Bernie. This is from a private message exchange between Bernie and Coldwell, circa December 13, 2012.


 
(Here's a brief May 2013 blog post, with picture, about some of that cash that Lenny showed Peter.)

And this is from a public post, also from December 2012, when Lenny was trying to get Bernie to "pick a side":

And here are two of the follow-ups (same date):




Okay, that's enough of that. You get the idea. (And if you're new-ish here and are puzzled by the talk about prostitutes and so forth, keep reading.)

The point is that by December of 2012 Bernie had clearly drawn his line in the sand, separating himself from Coldwell and not long after that from Abe Husein, who continued to vigorously support, defend, and even promote Coldwell. As indicated in one of the shots above, Abe was and presumably still is in business with Coldwell, selling his overpriced BePure "cleanse."

So that's the origin of Coldwell's beef with Bernie. It also explains why Abe has also made a point of trying to discredit Bernie to various producers and reporters, who nonetheless seem to have no qualms about reading GINtruth. (Or about reading my blog either, for that matter. Or Salty Droid's.) While all of this background may seem trivial, and probably is in the larger Scamworld picture, I recounted it here because I think it is vital for people who care enough about this matter to research to see why Coldwell has gone after Bernie so viciously. Very simply, it is because people read Bernie's blog, and I think that scares Lenny big time.


But on his new site, Coldwell didn't stop at lying about Bernie. He posted a picture of one of his former ghostwriters (and yes, he uses ghostwriters for his English language books because his written English is so comically bad). He wrote:
Here is a women [sic] that Never ever even meet Dr Leonard Coldwell in person, but filed a false police report that she is sure, if he ever would meet her, he would want to rape her.
Coldwell seems to be implying that she was having rape fantasies about him, but with his garbled writing it is difficult to tell. In truth, this person wrote an email to the Mt. Pleasant Police Department back in July of 2012, and that email became part of Coldwell's permanent file, added to that 2007 police report I mentioned above. But the email itself was not a police report. And the ghostwriter did not say she thought Coldwell wanted to rape her. Here is the context of the rape mention in the email:
Dr. Coldwell is a dangerous person, very narcissistic and mean-spirited... Dr. Coldwell's former [employee] warned me, "It's a good thing that you never met him face-to-face -- he would have tried to rape you!" [Former employee] told me stories about getting his college friends jobs at [a company run by Dr. Coldwell's former partner]. These were friends straight out of college, with no work experience. It was tough for them to find jobs... so they'd start working for Dr. Coldwell. Eventually, they would all quit, one after another... and when [the former employee] followed up with them, each story was the same...
You get the drift. I may have provided more context than necessary, but maybe not. And by the way, although I redacted names, all of the ellipses, with the exception of the ones I inserted at the end of the passage, were in the original email, so I wasn't leaving anything out.

I think it is pretty clear that the ghostwriter's email was not a formal complaint or "false report" filed with the police. It was an opinion based upon her own experiences working with Coldwell, and with her impressions from conversations she'd had with others who had worked with him. The email simply became part of Coldwell's file at the Mt. Pleasant Police Department.
For more information see here.

Incidentally, I have not and will not publish the police report, and I will not send it to you if you ask. I do not want to compromise the safety of the alleged victims or of anyone else whose names and contact information appear on the very poorly redacted report.

Lenny didn't stop at posting his accusation and a picture of his former ghostwriter. He also posted pictures of her minor children -- all without her permission. Bad, bad move, Loony.

And then there's
Omri Shabat at the Glancingweb blog, who, though neither named nor pictured on the new site, was also slammed by Loony. Lenny, claiming that the cancer industry hired Omri to defame him, described Omri as a gay Jew, and he accused Omri of the same heinous crimes against children as he'd accused Bernie of committing. That accusation seems to be a new obsessive theme with Lenny. We can only speculate as to why.

What seems apparent is that Coldwell thinks that being Jewish or gay is on a par with sexual crimes against children. I have seen several posts that indicate Coldwell is both anti-Jewish and homophobic. He has been known to make crude homophobic jokes and remarks, even at his live events where presumably he is supposed to be playing the role of a leader, worthy of emulation. And Coldwell's hatred and suspicion of Jewish people has been reflected in some of his Facebook rants -- as well as in private correspondence to which I was made privy but am not yet at liberty to share. I'm sure that the Jewish screenwriter who had been hired to do the screenplay for the fictionalized Kevin Trudeau movie (currently titled The Platinum Bonus) -- and whom Lenny had boasted that he spoke with to give her his valuable input for the project -- was really impressed with some of the stupidly anti-Jewish things he wrote on Abe Husein's page on the Facebooks.

And then we have the artist
formerly known as the Cosmic Slut. AKA Cosmic Connie. AKA your Whirled host. On his "Defamation" page on the new site, Lenny writes:
There also is a Woman out there that tried everything to have sex with Dr. Coldwell and because he refused, she started to post lies, libel, slander, and defamation against him. She posted hundreds of hours’ worth of posts on her own, created websites and web addresses under fake names to verify her own fake posts with other fake posts on fraudulent websites she herself created. If you see how many posts she made with the help of her buddies creating fake Facebook pages pretending she was Dr. Leonard Coldwell, and the hundreds of hours’ worth of hateful posts and absurd attacks, you can easily conclude on your own how obsessed she is with Dr. Leonard Coldwell. There could not even be another reason, besides jealousy and feeling rejected by Dr. C, since she does not even get any money or benefit out of the hundreds of hours’ worth posting hateful posts.

Though the little twerp was careful not to call me by name or to post my pic, it's pretty clear from context that he was talking about me. After all, there's a precedent, as I've noted here before. This is from November 6, 2013; Coldwell's remark, by the way, is completely out of context with the rest of the conversation:



Coldwell also recently told a reporter that I had hit on him. So I think we can all conclude that he's talking about moi on that new site. And I have just this to say to him:
Really, you pathetic little twerp?!?
Coldwell, you and I have never met in person and I hope to Goddess we never do. So just how would I be "trying everything" to have sex with you? Where are the emails, snail mails, voice-mail messages, Facebook posts, private Facebook messages, or whatever I supposedly used to convey my undying lust for you? Surely you would have those, if they existed, and you would share them with the world if you did. They would be right there on your demented new web site. But they aren't, because they don't exist. Moreover, even if I were in the market for a new partner, which emphatically I am not, it would be someone of my own species. And actually, I strongly prefer Jewish guys. Sorry, Loony.
As for the rest of the lies in that paragraph... as I explained in my comment on Bernie's post, I have never made up any accounts or written any posts pretending to be Coldwell, and I write all of my posts about him either on Facebook under my real name, or on my blog, which also displays my real name. However, someone pointed out that he may be claiming I have been impersonating him so that if I decide to pursue any action against him because of some of those screen shots that bear his name and pic, he can say they were either a result of hackers or of my spoofing his account.

As I also noted on my comment to Bernie's post, Coldwell's lie that I sexually harassed him is a relatively new angle. Previously he claimed I was an ex-prostitute (with AIDS and other STDs) being paid by Big Pharma. He also said I am a "cancer tumor of society" and need to be "eliminated." This is from late October 2012:

 
If you are completely new to my Whirled and/or to this part of the Loony Coldwell saga, you might be saying, "But he still didn't mention you by name, Connie! And there is actually a Cosmic Slut on the Interwebz!" Why, yes there is, which I discovered as soon as Loony began rambling about the "cosmic slut" back in October of 2012. But clearly, from context, he was talking about yours truly, because I do use the moniker "Cosmic Connie" on this blog (though my real name appears right below that moniker on this blog, and I use my real name on Facebook). And I am the Cosmic one who has written about Lenny; to my knowledge, the group of creative artists/musicians using the name Cosmic Slut haven't even heard of the pervy little skeev who named me the "cosmic slut."

And he carried on the slut/prostitute/paid shill theme for well over a year (references were made to that in those December 2012 Facebook shots I shared above). At some point this year he dropped the "cosmic," and I was just "the slut." This is from early March 2014:

 
At some point prior to that, he had apparently decided I wasn't being paid to write posts about him, so he began formulating a narrative that the only reason I could possibly have for writing about him was sexual obsession. Uh-huh.

But given what he wrote about Bernie, Omri, and his former ghostwriter on the Leonard Coldwell Defamation page on his new site, I'd say I got off pretty easy. Of note, he really didn't specifically reference Salty Droid at all. Maybe he is still smarting from
being humiliated when he tried to sue Salty (and Omri). More on that below, under "Timing & Context = Everything."

 
Even so, he told nothing but lies on the entire page: SOP for that SOB (no offense intended to mother dogs or their progeny). Here's another lie...

The imaginary Katie conspiracy
Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, gets a category of his own here. And it's well deserved, because it was Katie on whose scam-encrusted shoulders little Lenny stood for a few brief shining moments, and whose GIN scam gave Lenny a platform he never would have had in the U.S. (and for that matter, didn't really have anywhere in Europe, near as I can tell, despite his numerous boasts that he is the most well-loved motivator and healer of our time).

Here's what it says on the new site:

Other defamation was ordered and paid for by Kevin Trudeau who acted for decades like he was my brother’s best friend. The now 3-time convicted felon who is sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, Kevin Trudeau, founded a great organization that was helpful and was a great idea, to educate people every weekend with the best speakers on earth for just 150 dollars a month and he involved Dr. C as the leading motivational speaker. As soon as Dr. C found out that greed took over the thinking and the actions of Trudeau, and that Trudeau built the entire organization with lies, fraud, false and misleading advertisement, Dr. Coldwell, contacted the FTC, wrote to all the members he could reach about the fraud and also made sure the FBI and the US District Attorney’s office were informed about the potential crimes Trudeau committed. Instantly, Trudeau paid people, enticed his followers and ordered many of his employees to use every lie and attack possible to discredit Dr Coldwell
.
Here is just one of the emails Trudeau himself send out.

Well, that was a less than impressive piece of evidence, I must say. To begin with, the email in question was sent out in March 2013, as a result of Trudeau being spooked by ABC's reporters showing up at his luxury digs in Zurich. If Trudeau had "instantly" begun a defamation campaign against little Lenny, as Lenny claimed, you would think that Lenny would have some earlier emails to share with us. After all, Lenny was jettisoned from the GINtanic some time in May 2012.

Moreover, the email is heavily redacted. Here is the full email, as well as another one sent out by Kevin around the same time.


Now compare that top email to the one shared by Coldwell. Notice one of the lines in that email that Coldwell redacted on the version posted on his new site. He totally blacked out the penultimate line on the 11:01 AM email: "-send him dr c email proloting [sic] HIS deal... showing his TRUE motives for lying about me and gin." (Kevin is apparently as bad a writer as Lenny is.)

Now, I'm not saying that I automatically agree with liar Katie that liar Loony was lying about Trudeau and GIN. They're turds of a feather to this day; both are liars, in my view. And I don't know what if anything Loony told ABC; Coldwell was not mentioned at all on the final story. But if Loony simply said that Trudeau was a liar and GIN a lie, then yes, even I have to side with Loony. So I just wonder why Loony would want to redact that line on the email. Maybe he didn't wish to draw any attention on his new site to the thing to which Trudeau was no doubt referring,
the IBMS Master's Society scam, a GIN ripoff that provides a painfully obvious motivation for Coldwell to try to turn people against GIN. Or maybe he just got carried away with his redacting. At any rate, his shot of a single heavily redacted email written by Kevin Trudeau to Trudeau's staff in March of 2013 does not prove anything remotely resembling a paid defamation conspiracy against Lenny.

You may recall that I wrote about those Katie emails and their context
in the PS to a December 2013 blog post. In case you don't want to follow the link and wade through the verbiage, here is what I wrote:
PS ~ Self-proclaimed GIN destroyer Abe Husein is excited because he, Peter Wink and Loony Coldwell were mentioned in a March 2013 email from Kevin Trudeau to some of his cohorts. Katie apparently panicked and clumsily tried to do some damage control after ABC News showed up outside of his luxury digs in Zurich in March. It was apparently those "ambush journalists" who spooked Katie into trying to discredit some of his detractors. It's almost as if he didn't really realize what they were up to until he got shaken out of his complacency by ABC's visit. More than likely he was also inspired by his looming court cases and upcoming hearings and trial. But his main concern besides discrediting his detractors seemed to be to get tons of pro-GIN testimonials into the right hands. In fact, he seemed more concerned with getting those testimonials than with discrediting Abe, Wink, and Loony. Word has it that no one in the GIN offices actually embarked upon a campaign to discredit the Three Stooges, reasoning that the Stooges did their own self-discrediting better than anyone else ever could.
Following that, I posted a shot of the emails that I just shared above.

I continued:
Obviously any efforts at damage control that may have been made in the wake of the ABC "ambush" were ineffective; ABC aired their episodes of The Lookout, one in May and a followup in August, with, it must be noted, a segment featuring Abe (but with no mention of Loony or Wink). I think that most journalists who have had any interaction with Loony or Wink, particularly Loony, can sense that showcasing them as sources would not be the best move, credibility-wise, for any news media outlet...
I actually had spoken to a former GIN principal who was still with GIN at the time Trudeau sent out those emails. This person said nobody at the GIN offices bothered to try to discredit Lenny, Peter, or Abe "because they did such a good job discrediting themselves." And I stress that this source wasn't necessarily anti-Coldwell; in fact this person had previously told me that Trudeau was actually becoming envious of the attention Coldwell was getting in GIN, and in this person's informed opinion, Katie's resentment of Coldwell's growing popularity was a secondary reason for Trudeau's decision to remove Coldwell. (The primary and overriding reason, according to this source, was that Coldwell and other speakers were costing GIN too much money -- money that Katie wanted to put towards his legal defense.)

The point here is that in the wake of the ABC reporters "ambushing" Trudeau in Zurich, Trudeau's people were apparently much more focused on getting pro-Trudeau testimonials for ABC than on getting anti-Coldwell information. Technically, however, Trudeau was paying the people to whom he sent the above emails, because... um... they were working for him.

But was it a conspiracy? Only in Coldwell's twisted little mind.

As for the rest of the narrative, it's patently absurd that Coldwell makes himself out to be the hero who exposed Trudeau's fraud after he "found out" about it. He was fired from GIN, pure and simple. He didn't give a crap about the lies; in fact, later he insinuated that he knew for a long time that there was no GIN Council, and so forth. No doubt he would still be happily promoting or at least defending Katie even now had he not been booted out. The truth is that Coldwell lost a very hefty income stream when he was fired from GIN. Granted, the income stream would have dwindled by now anyway, due to the investigations of Trudeau that had begun long before GIN did. But Coldwell would have had at least another year and a half of raking in money from GIN and Katie, had he not been booted out.

An accuser recants, raising more questions
One of the hot-button items on Coldwell's new site is his sharing of an affidavit by one of the women whose accusations against him were recorded in the aforementioned 2007 Mount Pleasant, South Carolina police report. Although the report did not result in any charges against Coldwell, and although under South Carolina law the most serious charge against him would have been "forcible fondling" -- NOT RAPE -- it's still pretty disgusting. (Salty Droid wrote about it first, back in September 2012.
Here is that link again.) The woman, whose first name Coldwell had the enormous bad taste not to redact when he shared the screen shot of the affidavit, apparently recanted her accusation. Lenny crowed about it:
The main false accusations and lies are usually based on the payments from the enemies of Natural Cancer Cures, and are told to use and make up, or to create on their own. One of the usual accusations they use are sex related accusations, so they created a false police report to destroy Dr. Coldwell’s reputation and at the end of this article you see that the person that made the false police report did retract it and confirmed that she was forced to make these false accusations against Dr. C! Another women they used could not even live with her false accusations and took her own life. This is what these criminals and special interest groups are causing- people going to jail for the lies and false accusations they made and others even kill themselves. (You can get the names and addresses of these people and groups if you write to [EMAIL ADDRESS REDACTED]. [More on that last sentence at the end of this post. ~CC]
Interestingly, although the woman's original complaint was filed in 2007, her affidavit was dated April 23, 2014, a mere six days after Coldwell's stupid Cook County lawsuit was "dismissed for want of prosecution" (see the section immediately following this one). Probably just coincidence. Maybe Coldwell had actually been pressuring her for months or even years to recant, and she finally folded.

But even if she did recant her accusation, there were several other women who made accusations as well, so this does not render the police report invalid. And it's just horrible that Coldwell would say that a young girl who was murdered not long after her alleged experiences with Coldwell killed herself because she could not live with her "lies" and "false accusations." Moreover, Coldwell's claim that the "enemies of Natural Cancer Cures" was behind the police report is... well, I hope the Mount Pleasant, South Carolina police department is reading this. They'll get a good laugh out of it.

Again, I want to stress (as I have on previous posts) that this report did not result in any criminal or civil charges against Coldwell. But Coldwell's implication that only one woman filed a report about him and that because she recanted, the entire report is fake, is absolutely false. And that old saying, "Where there's smoke there's fire" seems to apply here. In my opinion.

One more thing: I heard from what I believe to be a reliable source that Coldwell or someone representing Coldwell had approached a couple of the women last year, offering them money if they would recant their accusations. I have not followed up on this. But I can't help but wonder if instead of making her accusation under duress, the woman who reversed her accusation was recanting under duress. Perhaps it is a matter worth looking into.

Timing + context = everything
Some might be wondering why Lenny chose to roll out this smarmy scrapbook of misinfotainment after spending years clumsily and defensively dodging the very questions he pretends to answer on his new site. I'm not the only one who sees the new site as a clear sign of desperation, but I find the timing and context interesting. I'm thinking that a combination of factors finally drove him round the bend.

The Whois information indicates that
the domain was actually registered in March of this year, but the site itself was apparently not completed and launched until just last week. And again, Coldwell has been dodging these questions for years. Why is he finally trying to "answer" them now?

I can't help thinking that it might have something to do with his recent lawsuit humiliation, which has been well covered on several blogs, including this one (
here and here); as well as Salty Droid and GINtruth and GlancingWeb. In the event that you don't feel like taking the time to follow all of those links, but you want to know the background, I'll give you a relatively abbreviated version.

On
February 10, 2014, Coldwell filed a defamation per se complaint in a Cook County, Illinois court (because he thought that Jason Jones, aka Salty Droid, still lived in Chicago). One problem with the lawsuit was that it named, "Omri Shabat, aka Jason Michael Jones," because Lenny stupidly thought the two men are one and the same. The other problem was that at the time the complaint was filed, nobody named in the complaint lived in Cook County. And though the defendant address listed was indeed Jason's former address -- which Jason himself had posted on his web site back when he really lived in Chicago -- all of the blog posts cited at length in the complaint were Omri's, from his blog, GlancingWeb. Needless to say, it was impossible to serve papers on the defendant(s), as one was in another state and one was in another country entirely.

No matter. Shortly after the suit was filed, Coldwell was all over Facebook bragging that he had sued Salty and that Bernie and I were next. Clouding the issue, Abe Husein posted on his Facebook page that Coldwell had sued Salty and Bernie. (I guess Abe got confused
because his buddy had only threatened to sue Bernie.)

As it became more apparent that serving process was not going to be easy, Coldwell wrote a series of little rants about how Salty had found out Lenny was suing him and had gone into hiding -- a total lie, of course. But Lenny vowed that his private investigator and/or his loyal fans would hunt Salty down so he could be served.

On February 27, 2014, a little over two weeks after the suit was filed, Loony's own lawyer, Dennis Kellogg (a personal-injury attorney whom Coldwell apparently got through one of those Lawyers R Us monthly-fee services)
filed a motion to withdraw from the case "for professional reasons." The motion was granted by the court on March 17.

Shortly after the lawyer's motion to withdraw was granted, Coldwell was on Facebook saying that he had been informed that the case was a criminal one and involved multiple jurisdictions, so he would be seeking a new lawyer and filing new criminal cases against all of us bloggers. He continued to figuratively shake his chubby little fist, warning that we "criminal" bloggers might soon find ourselves in a jail cell with Kevin Trudeau.

Meanwhile, Salty/Jason, who had become aware of the lawsuit only because a loyal friend notified him and another one obtained copies of the complaint from the courthouse, responded properly. (I do not know any details about Omri's responses, although apparently he did respond,
according to the LexisNexis summary page.) Jason filed a motion to dismiss the case (due to its utter stupidity) as well as a motion for sanctions against the lawyer and Loony (due to their utter stupidity). Those motions became moot, however, when on April 23, 2014, the case was dismissed for want of prosecution. Obviously, Lenny had not found a substitute lawyer, and nobody from the plaintiff's side showed up -- including Lenny, is my guess. So the judge duly dismissed it and said, "Next!" I imagine that Jason still has an option to pursue sanctions if he so desires, but at this point he's busy chasing down other bad guys so he probably has other things on his mind.

Of note, during the back and forth about the case, Jason had asked Lenny point-blank about his degrees and was prepared to bring his lack of credentials up in court if it had come to that. Perhaps Lenny was growing increasingly uneasy about someday being pressed to prove his creds. In any case, the lawsuit was a major fail -- not exactly a feather in the cap of someone who so frequently boasts, "I will not start the fight, but I will finish it!" and "I have never, ever lost a fight!" In this case, he started the fight, didn't finish it, and he lost. So there's that. Of course the ending of this saga is not mentioned on his new web site, or on any of his sites, including his Facebook page.

Maybe Lenny's desperation was further escalated by the fact that a few mainstream journalists have been poking around his business in the past few months, asking him those uncomfortable questions about his credentials. And perhaps it also has to do with the cumulative effect of the questions that people have been asking him for more than two years now via blogs and Facebook posts.

I also toyed with the possibility that Coldwell had some sort of twisted entrapment scheme going on in his little brain -- deliberately writing lies so his critics would respond vigorously, and then he could try to jump on them for defaming him. Apparently he did something like this in Germany back in the late 1990s; he sent somebody to trick a cult expert into privately speculating that some of the techniques he taught were cult-like and reminiscent of Scientology. Then he turned around and sued that person for defaming him. He lost.

What's clear is that his new site is indeed an expression of deranged desperation.




Echolalia and projection
As I have noted here before, when it comes to his critics Leonard Coldwell has a history of taking accusations that have been leveled against him, and turning them right back around to the accuser. It's like a written form of
echolalia, or echophrasia, the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person. My husband Ron has a simpler explanation: it's the Pee Wee Herman defense: "I know you are, but what am I?"

For instance, as I have mentioned here before, shortly after
Salty Droid published his September 2012 blog post about the 2007 Mount Pleasant police report on Coldwell, longtime Kevin Trudeau buddy and frauduct peddler Fred Van Liew (Whirled name Fred Van Loony) posted a link to that post on Facebook, tsk-tsk-tsk-ing about the allegations that Coldwell had exploited his position as a fake doctor and health "expert" to take advantage of numerous vulnerable women.
Fred Van Liew Thursday at 7:01pm

This is not good news regarding Coldwell. Sorry to have to post, however my radio program and my life is about health, and this man evidently represents anything but. The article will keep you from going anywhere near this man.
http://saltydroid.info/dr-leonard-coldwells-handson-healing/
An extended discussion about the allegations followed. I wrote about that and other aspects of the Coldwell-Van Liew pot-and-kettle saga on this September 2012 post.

Very shortly after Fred "exposed" Lenny on Facebook, Coldwell was on Facebook accusing Fred of molesting women while pretending to "test" them. This is from October 24, 2012:


And a year later he was still accusing Fred of putting his hands on the ladies and practicing medicine without a license.
I wrote about that here.

That is just one example. Coldwell also seems to love threatening his international critics -- that would be Bernie and Omri -- with Interpol. Bernie has some hilarious things to say about that, and has actually contacted Interpol to find out if they really are after him, as Coldwell claims. He will be keeping us posted on his blog. I imagine that the purpose of Lenny's Interpol meme is partly to impress his more dimwitted followers, who might be taken in by the air of international intrigue that the word "Interpol" lends to his lunatic rants. But I also know from reading the police report that Interpol and other international organizations have been contacted during investigations into Coldwell's activities. Once again... echolalia. Or projection: scenes from his own life, projected outward.

Now, as for Coldwell's false claims that I am an ex-prostitute, on first glance that seemed to me to be just a gratuitous tactic to further discredit me. I don't think the echolalia factor applies here, as I do not believe anyone has accused him of being a prostitute (though I could be wrong). But the projection factor may apply. I have heard that he has an affinity for prostitutes and paid escorts; I really don't know and don't care. Perhaps he has some sort of love-hate relationship going on with that profession. Many men do.

As for the pedophilia accusations he has leveled against others, I really don't know where that's coming from. However, Bernie did share a screen shot on
his first post about Coldwell's new web site. Someone who knows Coldwell very well wrote this:
...he is obviously really desperate...this info is coming from a pedophile which is why he calls everyone else pedophile. He projects who he is in all that he says...Desperate is my conclusion the walls are closing in!
It would appear that Coldwell's statements about his critics reveal a lot more about him than about them.

Slithering idiot
For all you herpetologists and serpent fans out there: when I use the word "slithering," please know that I mean no offense to snakes, which actually serve a useful purpose in nature. On his "Defamation" page, Coldwell seems to be taking his usual tack of indirect directness, apparently attempting to slither his way out of any liability for the content by (1) pretending his brother wrote the screed on the "Defamation" page; (2) not actually naming any names in his lies about his critics (although those pictures he posted of Bernie and of Coldwell's former ghostwriter would seem to open him up to liability should the owners of those pictures choose to pursue legal action); and (3) claiming that (in the case of his accusation against Bernie), a "source" sent him the beat-up picture and told him the supposed story behind the picture.

Just like "sources" told him that I am an STD-infected ex-hooker.

As I have noted here before, Lenny has a long history of giving himself what he thinks is an easy out should anyone actually come after him. On several occasions he has claimed that his Facebook account and/or web site were "hacked." He has blamed his "assistant" for some of the rants on Facebook. And then, as discussed here previously, there is the disclaimer at
the bottom of the page on his main site:

The Dr Leonard Coldwell Foundation e V is responsible for the content of this website, all legal issues have to be addressed to Dr Leonard Coldwell Foundation e V Germany. Due to a hack on our sites we cannot retrieve the origin of some articles used on this website. We apologize for that. Articles are also from our friends, colleagues and fellow freedom fighters like: www.rense.com, www.seedsofdeception.com, www.goodlifefoundation.com, www.robertscottbell.com, www.healthfreedomusa.org www.dorway.com, www.prisonplanet.com, www.nvic.org, www.naturalnews.com and www.mercola.com. We appreciate the great work and research of Jeff Rense, Dr. Rima E. Laibow, Dr. Betty Martini, Dr. Thomas Hohn, Jeffrey Smith, Dr. Mercola, Mike Adams - The Health Ranger, Alex Jones, and others
.
Yakaru, a friend and fellow blogger who lives in Germany and is familiar with the way things are done there, says that the Dr. Leonard Coldwell Foundation e V seems to be a nonexistent foundation. You can read Yakaru's take on it here (scroll down to find "The Dr Leonard Coldwell Foundation e V").

But it is quite possible that Lenny's slithering won't get him out of any liability should someone choose to pursue action. I understand that several complaints have been sent to the host of his new site, and there may be other actions taken as well, so it is quite possible that some of the content discussed above will be removed at some point. But as I mentioned above, I am telling the truth here about the site as it exists at the time I am writing this post. In other words, as one of my long-time favorite humorists Dave Barry always likes to say, "I am not making this up." [Again, see 3 July update above. ~CC]



Who's defaming whom?
I have been told by more than one attorney that I have a very good case against Coldwell based upon the lies he has written about me. I imagine that the other critics he's slammed have a pretty good case too. These attorneys have said that Coldwell's statements -- falsely accusing critics of prostitution, of having sexually transmitted diseases, of committing criminal sexual acts -- are the very textbook definition of unprotected speech.

In my case, these attorneys were referring specifically to First Amendment protection, which of course only applies in the United States. But I imagine that there are equivalent points -- related to freedom of expression as opposed to defamation -- that would apply in international litigation. I have not made any decisions myself about pursuing action against Coldwell and I do not know if his other targets have made any decisions. But at this point, this poorly worded statement on his site -- at the bottom of his main bio page -- seems to be tempting fate:
Defamation, Libel, Slander and the Conspiracy to Destroy Ground of Business: To preempt any form of doubt creation: Dr Leonard Coldwell has never been sued, arrested, indicted, trialed [sic] or convicted of any crime.
Is Coldwell trying to incite vigilante "justice?"
Coldwell's perverse sexual fantasies about his critics are disturbing, but even more disturbing to me is the fact that in the context of lying about some particulars of the 2007 police report, he invites people to write to him at a certain email address, and he promises that he will give them all of the names and full contact information of everyone who is involved in his purely imaginary “conspiracy” to “destroy grounds of business” and to “defame” him.

Because of the context in which he wrote this, I believe that this list includes the numerous women (and as I noted earlier, there wasn’t just one) whose accounts appear in the police report, as well as bloggers and journalists who have done nothing more than raise legitimate questions -- questions that he has still not answered with anything except another round of ungrammatical lies, though admittedly this time those lies are enhanced with jpegs of spurious credentials and old German newspaper clippings.

By threatening to share our contact information it seems clear that he is trying to incite vigilante justice -- one step below actually posting all of the names and personal information on a public web site, as, for example, certain extreme groups have done, with the results that some of the groups’ targets have been stalked and murdered. The fact that reportedly Coldwell has also -- with apparent seriousness -- talked about sending hit men after people should also be considered, as should the fact that
he has previously threatened me -- and others -- via private message on Facebook (once again pretending to be his brother, and using still another fake name: "Rudi Kauder").

Ron and I take his invitation to his fanatical fans as a bona fide threat and we are taking appropriate actions.

You might think that after all of the above, there's not much more to be said about the pack of lies on the Leonard Coldwell bio site. But if you are thinking that, you don't know me. I'm not quite finished. In Part 2 we'll take a closer look at some of those "certifications" of which Mocktor Coldwell is so unjustly proud, as well as other odd bits and pieces on his new site.

Meanwhile, here is Bernie's followup GINtruth.com post about Loony's new site. Enjoy!

 ..........................


The rest of the story...


Monday, June 16, 2014

The "new" GIN: as summer tunes up, Scamworld hums on

Tempus fugit, y'all! I just noticed that June is more than halfway over, and I've yet to make a June entry on the Whirled, except for a June 5 update on my May 29 post about imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (plus a few remarks in the comments section on various posts). It's not that there's nothing to write about, because there is. There always is. I blame my lack of activity on a heat-induced torpor caused by summer bearing down upon my part of the planet. But a blogger's work is never done, so let's get busy.

Voldemort holds court
As reported earlier today by my friend Bernie at GINtruth.com, Kevin Trudeau's largest and arguably most successful scam, the Global Information Network, or GIN, has hit the ground running with its first pow-wow since the new owners took over. "And," Bernie writes, "it all starts with Chris McGarahan."

Ah, yes. Chris "Voldemort" McGarahan, long-time MLM huckster and one of the new co-owners of GIN (the others reportedly are Blaine Athorn, Troy McClain, Jeff Devine, and Greg Kramer). Chris is a loyal Trudeau buddy and was always one of the hard-sell spokes-thugs in GIN. (Here's an older "new" GIN page listing Chris as a "faculty member" -- it still lists Katie too, so is obviously not updated.) Numerous ex-GIN members have said they think that Chris is just as culpable in the GIN scam as Katie. But so far, everyone except Katie has gotten away with it.

Good for Bernie for providing this GINtruth update. I confess, though, that when I first started reading his post, I thought he was being far too kind to Chris just because he'd met him on a GIN cruise and Chris seemed to be a likeable bloke. Bernie called Chris' efforts to talk to the GIN members "commendable." I suppose that in light of the elitism of some of the New-Wage scalawags who were shining stars in GIN -- including Katie himself -- that sociability was somewhat noteworthy. But Bernie also noted that McGarahan practices what he preaches, and sticks with what works. From my perspective, what this really means is that McGarahan sticks with what works to extract money from people's pockets.

 
Indeed, numerous ex-GIN members have said that Chris was always one of the most aggressive pushers of the GIN Kool-Aid and was sometimes abrasive, nearly to the point of being abusive. And his being nice? Another one of my Facebook friends who has seen him in action said that making the rounds at tables was done begrudgingly; he was just working the room. My friend said, "At the first 5-star he even said that Kevin sent him to the bar to check up on people to see who was following Kevin's instructions to mingle and stay up late to network, and he was going to report back to him...I have seen Chris be very rude to people who didn't deserve it. He was always nice to members who followed his orders and upgraded, bought packages, and went to major events."

My friend added that Chris' "How To Go Platinum in 90 Days Seminar" was torture, "especially if you witnessed the aftermath." Yon Cole, Former dedicated GIN member, Scientology enthusiast, and current member of retired safecracker
Perry Kiraly's GIN ripoff WIN, took notes at one of those Platinum seminars, and shared it on his mygin web site.

Other friends, correspondents, and ex-GINthusiasts have had encounters with Chris where he was extremely rude and/or even verbally abusive.

Yet Chris apparently had his charms, and what he did was quite effective. He drew them in with his own personal story, even though like many scam artists his backstory wasn't always consistent -- he reportedly told GIN members back in the day that he made his first fortune with Trudeau in the MLM scheme Nutrition for Life back in 1996, but his own web site indicates that his first huge gains were in Rexall Showcase, now Unicity. (Oddly enough, there's no mention of Katie or GIN on that page, which features a pic of Chris in pre-Voldemort days). Chris' bio, shared often at live events, also includes the common narrative of coming up on "mean streets" and whatnot. Yawn. As another friend of mine said, he had a scammer's personality long before GIN. 




Here is what a former GIN Level 6 candidate wrote to me recently:

The more I’ve thought of it, the more I see Chris as incredibly dangerous. He was always the one to sell at events, the one on stage who could get more people to buy more crap than you can imagine. And he was always called The Bearer of Good News because his offers came as 'deals.' He has a gift with crowds and bragged about that to us, as if we were part of the inner circle.
Lesson: Beware of nice blokes bearing gifts.

This person had also spoken with some GIN folks who had been persuaded to join MLM scam Vemma under Chris' son, Chris Jr., who seems to be one of the poster children for Vemma "success" (and, I'm told, drives a Vemma Mercedes). Chris Sr. has also been pushing Vemma, using his and some of Katie's other close buddies' "success" with the scam to lure people in. This screen shot (which coyly fails to mention the name of the scam) was taken on November 27, 2013, a few days before the GIN MLM ended:


Anyway, just after the GIN Leadership Cruise in January 2013, Chris Sr. reportedly told select people to stop upgrading in GIN. Yet Chris -- and the rest of the GIN leadership, such as it was -- apparently continued to urge others to join and upgrade, as if nothing were amiss.

According to reports, at one of his exclusive, invitation-only, $5,000.00 (excluding airfare and hotel costs) scam-shows in spring of 2013, Chris Sr. boasted that he had purchased an island in Belize with another, much bigger Scamworld player,
Jack Canfield. Canfield, as you may know, is co-creator of the Chicken Soup series, star of the New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, and founder of the Trained Liars Cartel... oops, I mean, the Transformational Leadership Council (also known as the Transformational Leadership Council of Death).

I'll say one thing for the TLC, as they sometimes call themselves: at least they had the good business sense to kick founding member
James Arthur "Death" Ray out of their org after the sweat lodge thing happened. But who knows, they might let him back in again now that he's out of the clink.

In case you're interested, according to
the TLC official web site, Chris Sr. is not currently on the membership list. But I digress.

Chris Sr. reportedly told the attendees of his 2013 flimflamboree that in 2014, exactly a year from then, he was going to fly all of them down to Belize to "change their lives." Well, last month he sent out emails inviting attendees to a follow-up seminar taking place from "Friday July 25 through Sunday July 28." (Never mind that Sunday is the 27th.) This follow-up event is only $495 plus an extra $100 if you want to have dinner with Chris on Saturday night, "which you will," he assured his recipients.

There was apparently no mention in the email of Belize; only if you RSVP "yes" will you get directions to the wingding. Some of the invitees suspect that it's just going to be a three-day Vemma pitch. If anyone has any other details about this, or about Chris' supposed co-purchase of an isle in Belize with Chicken Soup Jack, drop me a line, okay?

Incidentally, the Voldemort wallet-drainer overlaps with the time that the Trained Liars Cartel will be holding its summer meeting,
July 23-27 (location not announced on the TLC web site; for some reason they never announce the location publicly in advance). There's also a Death Ray "Live Group Mentoring" event in Seattle on July 25 & 26. And July 25 is the five-year anniversary of the day that Colleen Conaway, another James Ray vic, died at a Ray event in San Diego.

But, once again, I digress.


The Yellow Brick Road to nowhere
Speaking of Chris M the Elder, it seems appropriate to mention again that he's one of the folks who just last month was gloating over the claim that some GIN members "used their GIN training" to help raise $100 million dollars for the animated box-office bomb,
Legends of Oz, Dorothy's Return. As you may recall, I wrote about this at length on my May 12 post (see "Good buy Yellow Brick Road? Well, not so much," as well as the various updates that follow, and several of the comments following the post).

Though some GIN members, most notably "co-executive producer" John A. King (a venture capitalist type who reportedly lives in luxurious digs in Florida; one visitor to his home said he served dinner on plates made of gold) were laying claim to raising the $100 mil, executive producer Greg Centineo, a non-GIN member, claims that he was the one who orchestrated the big raise. King was reportedly working under Centineo and was able to sucker several other GIN members into coughing up some bucks. Long before the movie's release, Centineo was boasting about the big money he'd raised; here's a mention on
the bio page on his main site. And yes, I know I've mentioned and quoted this before, but it is so deeply worthy of revisiting and quoting once again:
In 2008, as the funds for Legends were coming in, his role in the operation grew. The investment presented multiple ancillary opportunities due to its being a multi-industry franchise, and people could see the potential that a typical live-action movie didn’t offer. Captivated and undaunted by Greg’s honest approach (“This is the greatest opportunity of a lifetime in which you will lose all your money.”), client after client bought in—and eventually bought in big—to what has now become a $110 million unprecedented global phenomenon.

As the first phase of the Legends project draws to a close, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-raised father of two reflects on what he calls his greatest accomplishment of his lifetime by far and his multi-faceted career. “As a leader, I was looked to for answers, and then as I matured, I came to understand that true leadership is about helping people ask better questions and letting them lead themselves,” he says. “I approached this project, building a serious community of investors the way I built everything else. Whether it was leading large constituencies, opening the coffee shops or educating people on money, I have learned to apply the same universal assumptions.

“In everything I have done in my life, I had the privilege of creating it with others and giving them a different paradigm of the world we live in.”
Uh-huh.

Alas,
a week after the movie was released, Centineo was making excuses for its failure. It was, he 'splained, a conspiracy by the mainstream movie industry. Why, of course. A couple of days later, some of the "investors" who were required to contribute a minimum of $100k shared their take on the "conspiracy." 

But I guess that the Global Information Network's May issue of the GIN Report had already been published and distributed before it became known that the movie was such a stinker. A friend of mine shared this the other day:

Nice work, GIN!

I am still wondering how much Katie's asset protection lawyer and co-creator of GIN, Marc Lane, was/is involved in the Oz project. He certainly came to the defense of the movie's producers, his Chicago home boys the Carroll Brothers, on
the discussion about this "investment" op on the 800notes.com site -- which has now expanded to 24 pages. People are royally pissed off about this thing. A couple of examples...

According to one participant who wrote in on June 15, the large entertainment site
The Wrap is working on a story about the Oz investment scam and and wants to talk to investors. If you have information, contact Jordan.Zakarin@TheWrap.com.

New chapter, same old story
I think we already know where the GIN story is going: it's the same old scam under new ownership -- all of whom just happen to be Katie buddies. And I think Bernie made that pretty clear in his GINtruth post.

But at least now that GIN has been liberated from the receiver, they've taken down
that disclaimer they had about the non-existence of Trudeau's big marketing lie, the fabled "GIN Council."

Speaking of which, in case you haven't visited the GIN site lately, you haven't missed too much. The MLM is still dormant -- for now, anyway -- even though
the Legal Member Agreement has yet to reflect its absence

And... oops... I think GIN forgot to take this page down when the Affiliate program was discontinued.
https://www.globalinformationnetwork.com/Affiliates-Program/
Here is another page, which is more noncommittal...
https://www.globalinformationnetwork.com/Membership-Rewards/

Prior to the sale, the leadership had been talking about the possibility of restoring the MLM once the company was out of receivership; I wrote about that on this January 2014 post. And the "GIN United" group is still up on the Web. This was a group of GIN members interested in purchasing GIN, headed by members of GIN's Leadership Round Table (including Greg Kramer, who, as noted, is reported to be one of the members of the group who actually purchased GIN).
http://www.ginunited.com/our-plan.html
http://www.ginunited.com/endorsements.html

Moreover, as many are aware,
the "initiation" fee has been even more deeply discounted from the old days; it used to be $1,500 if paid over time, but it was $1,000 if paid all at once, then it went down to $600, and now, "for a limited time only," it's $500. But if you're poor like Katie-in-a-cage* and can't even cough up half a grand...
...you may choose to pay the initial fee over time. We are currently offering a $250 payment plan for 6 months. This includes $100 towards the initial fee along with the $150 monthly Membership dues. After 6 successful payments, you will only be charged $150 per month for Membership dues. A credit card is required for this payment option.
Or, you can sign up as a free Associate Member (a membership that is only good for twelve months and will be automatically cancelled when your time is up). If you successfully sucker four paying members into joining under your personal Invitation Code, you will have enough Reward points to join GIN for free. Heck of a deal.

Most notably, after the receiver took over in August 2013 the site was pretty well wiped clean of its Trudeau presence, although
the current descriptions of "benefits" -- particularly the "Lifestyle Experiences" -- are rife with mentions of events that took place while Katie was still at the helm.

As for the rest,
it's the same old "you have to be there to understand it" b.s., promising exclusive, confidential, never-before-released information.
Some of the Member benefits are described on the Global Information Network website. Most Member benefits, however, are confidential and revealed only to Members in good standing. When you understand all the privileges and benefits you receive by being a Member, you will grasp that this invitation is truly the opportunity of a lifetime. If you have goals and dreams, if you imagine being financially secure, maybe you would like to start a business of your own, maybe you have a dream car you've always wanted, or you've dreamed of traveling first class to exotic locations all around the world...
we believe you could make more of your dreams come true with the Global Information Network than you could ever imagine. Imagine being your own boss and having total freedom and time to do what you want and when you want. Imagine being able to associate personally with almost anyone from around the world. Imagine having access to experts in various fields, VIP events, and knowledge and information that is not available anywhere else. You can now join a worldwide private group that can help build your success in life.
Yes. Just imagine. And the GIN "leadership" hopes you will keep on imagining, because apart from greed, envy, fear, desperation, longing, boredom, and a lot of hot air, imagination is one of the forces that keeps the Scamworld balloon aloft.

* Note: After months of vainly pleading pauper status, Kevin did finally come up with the $505 filing fee for his appeal; deets are on the June 18 update on this post.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Kevin Trudeau: GIN sale approved, Katie's in Alabama, still crying poor, and still selling coaching sessions


So it's time for more of the latest news on caged serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, Whirled name Katie. I would have blogged about all of this yesterday, but that whole Death-Ray-on-the-comeback-trail video thing had me kind of upset. It's important to continue to keep our focus on the entire context of Scamworld, and James Arthur Ray is such a huge, horrible, glaring example of that. But still... there's Katie. And there's his big boondoggle GIN, the Global Information Network. And the fact that there are no neat and tidy endings in his or any Scamworld story. So here goes.

GIN sale: Motion granted on 27 May 2014
As expected,
the court appointed receiver's motion to sell GIN to a group of Katie buds, the AXS Investment Group, was granted on May 27. It seems that GIN, despite the best efforts of the GIN destroyers, will live on. Below is the notification of docket entry; that's all that's up so far. But I'm sure the judge's signed, dated order, and possibly other docs, will be up soon. I will share as soon as I get them.

UPDATE, 30 May, 2014: Judge Gettleman's order approving the sale, which was signed and filed on May 27, is finally available on PACER (I did check every day, and now here it is).Word is that the GIN sale was actually finalized yesterday (May 29) and all but three staffers were let go... which is pretty much as expected. My pal Bernie has details on GINtruth.

I've also heard that the women who work for new GIN co-owner JeffDevine (who months ago had told me he wasn't in the market to buy GIN) are safe because they are on a different payroll -- Jeff's company, The Hybrid Group.

Word is that in an effort to get back some of the best ones they let go, GIN has dangled the carrot of a promise of a job, at reduced salary and commission-only basis, which is consistent with the buzz we'd been hearing for months. Reportedly, though, they can only get their jobs back if they can lure people back into the club. I don't know if they were given quotas or not, but in any case I've heard that at least some of the fired staffers aren't biting, and are actually relieved to be out of the drama. They are realizing that it is time to start a new chapter in their lives. I wish them well. I hope they can find good jobs outside of Scamworld. Despite what some of the GIN principals have told me, and despite their efforts to convince me that GIN is just another professional org like thousands of others, in my view GIN is part of Scamworld, and always will be.


Sweet home Alabama: Katie's new digs
As you may have heard, Katie has finally been moved to his new home-for-the-next-decade-or-so. He's now in a federal prison camp in Alabama, FPC Montgomery. You will be delighted to know that it has been rated as THE best prison camp in the United States. "Way to manifest, Kevin!" wrote his proxy on a May 28 Facebook post (which was met with the usual round of "likes" and adoring responses).

FPC may be cushier than your normal everyday max-security lockups. But it's still prison.

But still.

So now with his big club GIN in control of his loyal buddies, and Katie staying in a prison camp that's about as good as prison can be in the U.S., and thousands of fans still adoring him and thinking he's a hero and a martyr... Well, you know what that obnoxious Cosmic blogger likes to say: "No neat and tidy endings." Personally I'm glad he's in a nice place, because if I'm going to end up in the same cell with him due to my criminal blogging activities,
as Loony Coldwell predicted a few months ago, I'd rather it be a nice place than a not-nice place.

Anyway, if you want to write to Katie, here's his new addy:

Kevin Trudeau -- 18046036
FPC MONTGOMERY
Federal Prison Camp
Maxwell Air Force Base
Montgomery, AL 36112

And the poor boy drama continues...
There's another Katie drama that I have
previously mentioned here and on Facebook, and I thought it was more or less over, but no, it continues. This has to do with Trudeau's criminal case -- or rather, the appeal, which is now a separate case, Case no. 14-1869. Ever since his conviction, Katie and his lawyers have been going back and forth with the courts trying to convince them that Katie is too poor to afford the $505 filing fee for his appeal. The court has already denied him the right to waive the fee, per the government's request; the government has cited all of the money that Katie has had in his prison account since his confinement, and has spent.

But Katie -- or rather his law firm Winston & Strawn, who have said they will now represent him pro bono -- wouldn't give up, and tried again. They are the ones who were pushing to have the filing fee waived, and they also wanted to be reimbursed for their travel expenses and whatnot. At the very least, though, they want the court to appoint a new lawyer,
Christopher M. Bruno, as counsel of record. (Bruno is with Winston & Strawn and is a winner of the 2012 Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll, High Honor Roll.)
 
Anyway. Here are two of the latest appeals documents, filed May 21 (the government) and May 23 (Katie's lawyers).
Trudeau-criminal-appeal-14-1869-Documents-12-and-13-re-In-Forma-Pauperis-etc-05-21-and-05-23-14.pdf
(Note: this is a Facebook download. If you can't access it don't worry;
here is the Scribd link.)

But... personal coaching from Katie is still available!
Someone forwarded an email to me announcing that Katie is still doing in-person or over-the-phone "coaching" sessions, now for the bargain-basement price of only $2,000.00 for two hours (formerly $5.000.00 for one hour):

Spots still available for coaching with Kevin Trudeau
You still have an opportunity to buy a 2-hour coaching session with KT, either in person or via energy work for $2,000. This offer has previously been sold for $5,000 for one hour. It is only being offered to those in our company.

KT is now in Montgomery, Alabama.

Please respond if you are interested or have more questions.
Brenda Maetzold
The Secret To Life Coaching
That's right... the man behind bars, who claims to be too darned poor to afford a $505 filing fee for his criminal appeal, will teach YOU how to be successful. Heck of a deal!

Here's the link to a page on The Secret To Life Coaching company, which is run by long-time Katie bud Coral Thomas. You'll see Coral's bio and Brenda's as well. I've mentioned Coral a few times on this Whirled. A couple of C.I.s have told me to watch out for her and her pals, because they're still actively involved in enterprises that will benefit Katie. Coral and gang reportedly have an agreement with Katie to raise a certain amount of money -- $100k or so, according to some sources -- for his legal defense in exchange for rights to market some of his frauducts and flopportunities and/or other benefits. (A few months ago I was also told that Katie's old ITV Direct buddy Donald Barrett is somehow involved in some of the enterprises as well, but haven't followed up on that line of inquiry.)

Interestingly enough, although Coral's company has reportedly made claims that they will have $200 million in revenue,
The Secret to Life Coaching Company is listed on Facebook as being "Permanently Closed. Hmmm.
The road goes on forever, and the scamming never ends.

But no worries. TheSecretToLifeCoaching.com still has an active Facebook page
 
You know... no neat and tidy endings.



Addendum 5 June, 2014:  My pal Bernie at GINtruth.com did a short write-up on a June 3 story about the GIN sale, presented by Emmy Award winning reporter Ryan Kath (KSHB-TV/41 Action News (Kansas City, Missouri NBC affiliate). Good for Ryan. As noted on this Whirled a few times, he's one of the few reporters (outside of Katie's former home base, Chicago) who has kept on this story since he did his first one in November 2012. That story even got a positive nod from Salty Droid, who isn't easily impressed.

Addendum 18 June, 2014: On June 16, just in the nick of time (he only had until June 20), the pauper Kevin Trudeau came up with the $505 to pay his filing fee for his appeal. Whew, close one!


Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Death Ray hones his comeback shtick, while sister of one of his victims pleas to Oprah to break her silence

Looking a bit chunkier than before, and sporting a scruffy-chic long-haired look, star of The Secret and convicted killer James Arthur "Death" Ray is honing his comeback shtick (previously covered on this Whirled here and here). He is exploiting the hell out of the fact that he served a (much too short) prison sentence for cooking three people to death in a phony sweat lodge at an October 2009 event in Sedona, Arizona. As he has been doing almost since it happened, Ray is still framing the deaths of Kirby Brown, James Shore, and Liz Neuman as HIS tragic story. But now he has turned it into an actual Live Event dog-and-pony show (no offense to dogs or ponies), promoting the whole thing as an inspirational tale of how anyone can successfully battle the slings and arrows and come up smiling (if a little more red-eyed).
 
Here is a link to the promo clip; nausea advisory in effect.

"Let me tell you...how much labels DON'T mean anything," he says in a croaking, fake-heartfelt voice towards the beginning of the clip. What about labels like "KILLER who served a ridiculously short sentence and is hot on the comeback trail?" This is disgusting, of course, but not unexpected. Once again...
No Neat and Tidy Endings.

Here is another perspective, published yesterday (May 27, 2014) by Jean Brown Allison, the sister of Kirby Brown, one of the three Death Lodge victims. Jean takes Oprah Winfrey -- a big promoter of The Secret and its "stars" -- to task for Oprah's roaring four-and-a-half-year silence about the tragedy in Sedona.
You helped make this sham of a man what he was. In fact, it was after seeing him on your show that my sister, Kirby Brown, read “The Secret” and became a fan of James Ray. I remember, when we were together for my wedding at my parents’ house in July 2009–3 months before she’d die of heat stroke in a plastic tent in Arizona–I remember Kirby telling me that I had to read this book, that it was amazing, that James Ray was amazing, that he’d been on Oprah, that she was looking forward to the Ray event she’d be attending a few months later… That’s right. She mentioned YOU by name.

Why am I getting on this, nearly five years later?

James Ray is out of prison and has quickly jumped right back into the self-help world. He is positioning himself as a man who has seen the greatest heights, and then fallen to the greatest lows, and is now climbing his way back up. He is telling/selling the story of how life has been so hard on him, and how these challenges are what make him the man who can help others. He is selling this story of a tragedy that happened to HIM, just like days after the deaths when he called our house and told my mother that this was the worst thing that had happened to HIM and he was sorry that it had happened.

But it does not appear that he has learned anything. He talks of the deaths of my sister and the other victims in Sedona as an “accident,” saying nothing of his role in what transpired. It’s the same tack he took right after the incident, passing blame to others, or worse, trying to spin the deaths as something that was meant to happen, something that the victims brought upon themselves...

Jean follows by mentioning
SEEKSafely.org, the organization founded by Kirby and Jean's parents, Ginny and George Brown. I've written about it a few times, including here. One of the first things Seek Safely did was to create the Seek Safely Promise, a simple document that encouraged self-help leaders to agree to basic principles and practices to ensure the safety and dignity of participants in their events.

As of this writing, 34 have signed the Promise (pretty much all of them are B- and C-listers at best):
http://www.seeksafely.org/seek-safely-promise/who-has-made-the-promise/

And 167 have not signed it (including all of the A-listers who were approached -- and that includes Oprah):
http://www.seeksafely.org/seek-safely-promise/who-has-not-made-the-promise/

Are you surprised? Me neither.

But I applaud the Browns for their efforts, and I will continue to support and promote those efforts. Apropos of that, the organization will be holding a summit in Sedona on June 6, 2014;
click here for more info.

My pal Salty Droid, who has been much too quiet lately,
wrote a blog post last week about the word "retarded" and his decision to stop using that word. This is relevant here because, of all the bloggers in the blogosphere (and all the media on the Interwebz, for that matter), Salty has, in my opinion, provided the best James Ray coverage over the past four and a half years. In his May 22 post he mentioned, and linked to, the Seek Safely Promise.

But I’m the one who’s learned the big lesson here :: primarily … that making progress is really … really … really … super duper fucking hard. You think just because you’ve noticed something terribly wrong with the world :: and pointed at it with bells on … that people will care and shit will change. But it ain’t like that at all. People mostly care about themselves … and inertia is a belligerent bitch.
I don’t think eliminating words is the right way to earn #respect for kids with disabilities. Just like I don’t think trying to get cartels of intentionally vicious manipulators to sign the SEEK Safely Promise is the right way to get self-help reform.
But what the hell do I know? Almost nothing. My bright idea was insane-a-tron fake robot asshole … not exactly a catchall solution.
There is no right way to do the impossible :: there’s only trying … and I can sympathize/relate to anyone attempting to accomplish a hard thing against long odds.
Just do :: something … anything.
Yeah, what Salty said. Just do something.... anything. One thing you can do is to keep an eye on James Arthur Ray. Watch for any organizations that book him as a keynote speaker, and/or might be promoting him in any way. And if you see that Ray is being showcased somewhere, say something to the promoters. Call them on it. They might not care, but if they don't, you can publicize that. Write emails, notify the media, stage protests if you're so moved.

Ray may very well try to go it on his own and hold solo events, with no other scammers and psychopaths involved. But no Scamworld guru is an island; there's a lot of cross-promotion in Scamworld. For instance, I've written numerous times on this blog about the promotional relationship between now-jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau and James Ray --
here and here, for starters. (I have commemorated it pictorially as well.) If you don't feel like following those links, here's a recap: Trudeau defended Ray on his radio show a few years ago, and later, while Ray was in prison for killing people, his organization was busily promoting Your Wish Is Your Command, the 14-CD upsell for Katie's Global Information Network (GIN).

In addition, for quite a while, some of Ray's products were being sold in the GIN Store.
There's a bit of discussion about that here.

And since Ray got out of prison, Trudeau's former marketing guy, Peter Wink, who now has
a GIN ripoff of his own (in partnership with one of this Whirled's least favorite lunatics, Mocktor Lenny Coldwell), apparently made overtures to Ray. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth mentioning again. This is from August 3, 2013.


There are no neat and tidy endings in Scamworld, but I believe that building awareness is a good and helpful thing to do.

Just do something.

 
Addendum, 9 June 2014: Mincing no words, Omri at Glancing Web weighs in re the Death Ray comeback shtick. Go Omri! (Have I told you lately how good it is to see that you're still blogging even after Loony C, mistakenly thinking you were Salty Droid, tried to shut you down?)

Omri lovingly addresses Ray:

… you rapacious swine, you soul plunderer, you misery merchant, you death dealer, you sociopath whose narcissism is only equal to his megalomania, you murderous bastard, you emotionless parasite, you walking ruination, you Orwellian buffoon, you ignominy of a Homo sapiens, you uneducated sham, you hellish nothingness, you cancerous feces and overall a very disagreeable person … please take your newly dyed mane and go f--k (the only person whom you’ve ever really loved) yourself.
Couldn't have said it better myself.

And one point really stuck out for me after I saw
a June 5, 2014 Facebook post by Connie Joy, author of Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle. (On the first anniversary of the sweat lodge incident, I published a rather lengthy post citing this book.) Connie cited the "live mentoring" events now being advertised on Ray's web site. The point that really got to me was that Ray's Seattle event will be held on July 25, 2014 -- the five-year anniversary of Colleen Conaway's death at a Ray event in San Diego. And that's a death for which he has yet to be held accountable. Somebody in the area needs to organize a protest.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Some Whirled snippets while we're waiting for real news

I've been remiss this month -- only one May-dated post so far (although several of the April posts have various May updates, and I have been adding info and links to the most recent post in the comments section). It's not that it's been such a slow news month; there's always something on this beat, even if one of my favorite snargets, the lunatic not-doctor from Germany, has been rather quiet-ish on the Facebooks since he got his Krautsack kicked in court by Salty Droid.

Well, technically, the little Teutonic twerp's civil defamation case against Salty (who was mistakenly identified in the legal papers as
another blogger, Omri Shabat at Glancing Web) was dismissed on April 17, 2014, "for want of prosecution." That basically means that no one showed up during the scheduled hearing to argue Loony C's case (the lawyer who filed the suit, Dennis Kellogg, withdrew from the case fairly early on, which didn't stop Loony from boasting on Facebook about how he was going to decimate Salty in court). Anyway, ever since the dismissal the Loonmeister has been relatively silent; either that, or he just has all of my peeps blocked so nobody in my circle can see his manic blathering. But oh, well, there are plenty of other things to keep me amused.

Ozgate: behind the curtain
Not surprisingly,
jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau has been one of those diversions, providing rich fodder even when he presumably wasn't directly involved in the items in question. One example of something that doesn't overtly have Kevin's stamp on it, but still seems to be one of those guilt-by-association things (particularly since, as I noted here previously, his former asset protection attorney Marc J Lane seems to be involved) is the animated movie flop, Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return. I wrote about Oz-gate at length on this post, and in the comments. The Katie connection -- apart from possible (until proven otherwise) Katie connection Marc Lane -- is that certain members of Katie's big boondoggle, the Global Information Network, or GIN, were flogging this project to other members as an "investment opportunity." And as the initial release date neared, some GINners were boasting that the impressive amount of money raised for the film was an example of a few members putting their GIN training to work. Uh-huh.

I guess that could ultimately be true, regarding GIN "training"; in its less than five years of existence so far, GIN has taught many people the hard way that liars will tell any lie in order to get you to give them money. Some of the screwed "investors" may yet come to embrace Ozgate as a valuable lesson, while others, no doubt, will stay in denial. For now, one of the film's executive producers,
Greg Centineo, the guy who reportedly got GIN member John King involved with bilking the GIN rank and file, has been busily rationalizing the floppiness of the project. And "investors" who each paid $100,000 or more are embracing the theory that a Hollywood conspiracy destroyed the film. This fits right in with the mindset of GIN members, whose willingness to believe all sorts of nutty conspiracy theories made them easy marks for Trudeau in the first place. There's a lively discussion of the Ozflop on the 800Notes.com web site; the thread has been going on since 2008 and currently has 19 pages. Here's the link to page 1. In particular, pay attention to the comments on some of the more recent pages from a person going by the moniker "Legends of OZ Scam Expert."

GIN is not dead, despite Katie being caged
Meanwhile, the fate of GIN itself seems to be sealed. People have been speculating about this since long before the court-appointed receiver took over GIN and other Trudeau assets and business entities in early August 2013. Self-proclaimed "GIN destroyers" (bolstered by the likes of the aforementioned Loony C) have announced the death of GIN and the "final nail" numerous times,
but AXS Investment Group, a small band of investors and Katie buds with money, earned the receiver's approval to purchase GIN. Their proposal will be presented to Judge Robert Gettleman's court this coming Tuesday, May 27, 2014 at 1:30 PM Central Daylight Time. Although protestors had a right to file their objections in the court (that deadline was May 12), the sale is expected to be approved.

And while all of this is going on, Trudeau's proxy continues to spew bits of inspirational "wisdom" on
his official Facebook fan page. Katie is due to be transferred to a new facility soon, where he will be serving the rest of his ten-year sentence, but I haven't seen any particulars about this yet. But at least his parents' home is officially safe; on May 21, Judge Ronald Guzman finally signed an order to exonerate the bond that had been holding their home hostage since July 2013.

While we're waiting for news about the GIN sale finalization and Katie's new address, here are a couple more tidbits to snack on.


A WIN-Wynn situation?
On Sunday evening, May 18, Perry Kiraly, the executive director of the WIN (World Information Network), one of the newest GIN ripoffs, sent an excited email to the membership.

WIN Family-Reunion Event
Wynn Encore Resort in Las Vegas
With keynote speaker: Gregg Braden

October 31st thru November 2nd 2014
Dear WIN Members & Supporters,
It wasn’t easy since he was booked solid for the remainder of 2014 but when
WIN asked Mr. Greg [sic] Braden to be the keynote speaker to launch its major event on October 31st he went out of his way to make it happen.

Mr. Braden’s biography includes being a New York Times bestselling author whose works have been publish in 27 languages and 30 countries. The following are some of the many books/CD’s he has published:
  • The Spontaneous Healing of Belief
  • The Divine Matrix
  • Deep Truth
  • The Turning Point
  • The Isaiah Effect, Fractal Time
  • Beyond Zero Point
Please click here to read Gregg’s biography: http://www.hayhouse.com/authorbio/gregg-braden
Please click on the following YouTube links to view some of Gregg’s seminars:

The Spontaneous Healing of Belief:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8DeBePK3Wg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLPahLakP_Q

The Devine
[sic -- unless he's talking about
prospective GINvestment group member Jeff Devine ~CC] Matrix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyCiL8ql7bs

This event will take place at the fabulous
Wynn Encore Resort Hotel in Las Vegas. Click on this link to view the Resort:
http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/

The event package will include:

  • 2-night stay in a Wynn/Encore resort suite (Oct. 31st/Friday & Nov. 1st/Saturday)
  • Keynote speaker Gregg Braden ( on Friday Oct. 31st /Event starts at 7 PM)
  • Other speakers (to be announced) on Saturday/Nov. 1st
  • An exclusive private banquet/party for attendees on Saturday evening at the renown Wynn Resort Nightclub The Tryst (please click on this link to view): http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/NightClubs/Tryst
In addition to WIN Members this event is being made available to all who wish to attend to accommodate those that follow Gregg Braden’s work as well as other interested guests. Please consider also that seating & rooms are limited so this event is likely to sell out quickly. Register now to reserve your seat. If you register before May 31, 2014 you will receive a $100.00 discount on the package price.

You will want to be at this event!

For reservations, questions, and further details please call: Beverly Weaver (WIN Events & Member Services) at [redacted].

Thank you and have an excellent day,

Perry Kiraly,
Executive Director, World Information Network
Admittedly, Braden is a bigger "name" in the biz than some of the speakers GIN has been parading around at their recent pathetic events, such as the "Family Reunion" in DC in October 2013. But, alas, he is still full of New-Wage crap. In fact I wrote about him years ago; this is from February 2007.

At first I wondered what sort of deal WIN was giving him and/or vice versa. Maybe, I thought, Braden's star is fading and he is desperate for attention. But then I went back and looked more closely at Perry's letter and noticed that bit towards the end, where he said that in addition to WIN members, the event is being made available to all who wish to attend, in order to accommodate Gregg's fans and "other interested guests."

So, obviously, Braden wants to be ensured that he will have an actual audience that will make the appearance worth his time. In any event, he seemed to have a fairly long blank spot in his busy schedule,
judging from the listings on his web site. After October 26 and before November 13, he doesn't really seem to have anything going. So far the WIN/Wynn thing isn't listed on his page. It kind of looks as if WIN and Gregg are exaggerating about the momentous nature of this event. I know, I'm as shocked as you.

Natural Cures is feeling poorly these days
If you've been following this blog, or for that matter, the press about Katie, you probably know about his Natural Cures scampire, and how its creation was sort of a big turning point for him.
Salon.com published a good article about the phenomenon back in July of 2005, nearly a year before this Whirled was born. Katie's first Natural Cures book was the tool used to suck thousands into his sales vortex; it was lauded by co-creator and marketing strategist Reno R. Rollé as a breakthrough that "could revolutionize the book publishing industry." (And yes, I know I've mentioned this before, but sometimes it's good to review.)
It was Reno Rollé who initially urged Trudeau to combine his extensive experience in infomercials with the book business. “I suggested he focus less on hard products, ingestibles, and more on information and newsletters,” he says. “That way he could find a safe harbor under First Amendment protections.” They teamed up to see if, and how, it would work. “No one knew how a book would behave,” he says. “Initially we treated the book as just a product that shouldn’t behave differently than a stomach exerciser or kitchen utensils.” It’s a strategy that paid off handsomely.
“The infomercial business is very standardized,” Rollé continues. “You put the product on TV first to create awareness and sell a large number of ‘units.’ Then, after a period of time, you pull trigger and head out to retail.” And once a product hits retail, as “Natural Cures” did just four weeks ago, Rollé says, the industry standard is to sell two to 10 times as many “units” as were sold on TV.
See, Kev had already been in trouble with the Feds for years; he'd been out of prison since 1993 but had gotten himself into trouble again in short order. Essentially Reno helped him with strategies that would allow him to keep on telling lies without getting into more trouble. Ultimately that didn't work, but Reno apparently jumped out before more serious troubles began and the Feds really started turning up the heat. In fact he was Trudeau's CEO for a while, but spins his resignation from that position as his discovery that Katie was doing some dodgy things. Somewhere along the way, some of the ill will Katie is known to attract got stuck to Reno too, and he felt obligated to defend himself on Ripoff Report. This is an excerpt from his defense, which for some reason was published in triplicate:

I have never in my life been convicted of a single crime. I have never partnered with a convicted felon.

I believe the author [of the complaint] has the false idea that I am some how "partnered" with Kevin Trudeau. I was employed briefly by Kevin Trudeau as his CEO and resigned almost immediately. He and I had very different philosophies with regard to handling his legal challenges with the US Government. These challenges had NOTHING to do with me and were the result of actions that occurred prior to my joining his company.

After resigning as CEO, I stayed on as an INDEPENDENT executive consultant. I had moved my family across the country. Yes, I was involved and even co-created Kevin's best selling book but I did NOT write the book.
And now, as I've noted here before, Reno is a co-producer in a fictionalized film project about Katie and GIN, The Platinum Bonus. I wonder what sort of fund raising shenanigans are going on with that project. I wonder if it will ever be completed, much less released.

But I digress.

One of the bad things the Natural Cures book did, besides luring the unsuspecting masses into Katie's sales funnel, was to elevate nut cases like Coldwell --
and for that matter, this guy -- to prominence, by virtue of Kevin recommending their frauducts and flopportunities. But it gave me more blog fodder, so there's that. Although the book was widely panned by reviewers, real-as-opposed-to-fake health experts, and customers, that didn't stop Katie from perpetrating a Natural Cures sequel (without Reno) and numerous other books, all of which were promoted in infomercials, and one of which, The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You To Know About, ultimately landed him in the slammer for civil and criminal contempt (the ten-year sentence is for criminal contempt; he still faces a $37.6 million fine for the civil matter).

The Natural Cures web site thrived for several years. But now, alas, it seems that the site is down for the count. A friend forwarded an email that was sent out earlier this month.

From: support@emailnaturalcures.com
To:
Sent: 5/7/2014 10:23:04 A.M. Central Daylight Time
Subj: Latest news for Diabetes | NaturalCures.Com site down


As regular visitors to our Natural Cures site you will have noticed the site is currently down. I’m sorry to say it’s a combination of factors. Firstly, a minor technical glitch, secondly a more sinister one, for which I can’t go in to too much detail, but sadly will probably involve lawyers & regulators. Clearly the information we are providing for free is causing some issues out there.

The technical side also impacts our support email addresses, so if you have emailed in over the past few days, you will receive a bounced email. This also looks like it will take some time to resolve.

Social media: How to reach us

If you need to reach us, you can visit our Social media sites which we will be monitoring. You’ll find us at:

Facebook.com/NaturalCures
Twitter.com/NaturalCures

If it is a private matter, be sure to use the message service on both platforms rather than an open post otherwise everything is visible. For Twitter, you can’t Direct Message (DM) us if we don’t already follow you. So if that happens, just tweet us from your account that you’d like to DM us and we’ll follow you to open up that function.
..
The rest of the email was a promo for some "natural" something-or-other for diabetes.

As you may know if you've been following this blog, long-time Trudeau bud and UK resident Lee Kenny is the current "owner" of Natural Cures.
He bought it for a mere $100k towards the end of 2012.

So why is the site down? Beats me; the best I can do for now is read between the lines of that email. I have a feeling that Natural Cures -- or, more specifically, Lee Kenny -- is being investigated because he is a good buddy of Kevin's and he probably knows a lot that he hasn't told the investigators yet. Even the receiver noted that they thought Lee wasn't being completely forthcoming about "where the money is." Plus, he has been promoting
Katie's $997.00 baccarat scam through Natural Cures (and he was processing the proceeds through Future Transactions Company, aka the FTC (ha, ha, get it?)). I've been ragging about this matter on this Whirled for months and months.

I have mentioned this a few times on this Whirled (
most recently here, and I wrote about it last August), but here it is again, because you know how I love to repeat myself. 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.

Anyway, judging by the recent-ish email to the Natural Cures mailing list, it appears that Lee Kenny is trying to get a good Trudeau-style martyr thing going: "Clearly the information we are providing for free is causing some issues out there." But that's the way the alt-health hucksters roll; the aforementioned Loony C has the martyr thing going too,
even claiming that Big Pharma thugs have shot at him and tried to kill him with a car bomb. In 2012 he was quoted by a natural health blogger as saying, "I have death threats -- about twenty a day -- but I do not have any fear."

In any event, another site called
The Natural Cures Store is still open. It sells all sorts of health frauducts, including those to support the various phases of Katie's infamous "Weight Loss Cure." But it claims not to be connected with Katie or his companies in any way. (Prolly like the GIN Store is a separate entity from GIN... sort of, anyway.)
The NaturalCuresStore.com is dedicated to bringing you high quality products recommended by Kevin Trudeau and health care practitioners, Dr. Thomas Hohn [a Leonard Coldwell buddy ~CC], Dr. James Rotello and others.

The NaturalCuresStore.com is in
no way affiliated with these health care practitioners, nor with Kevin Trudeau, Natural Cures, Inc. or Alliance Publishing
.

We are just the a "One-Stop-Shopping" store for all the products recommended in his various books and newsletters.


Although we do not know Mr. Trudeau personally, nor agree with all of his conclusions, we appreciate his labors in bringing such valuable information to the public.

Items sold on the site include all sorts of cleanses, including a "Heavy Metal Cleanse" (I don't think it involves music, though), a "Colon Cleanse," and something called "Dr. Coldwell's Stress Reducing System" for $99.99, which is also listed in the site's Bookstore.

On the promo page for the Coldwell product, we're told that "Dr." Coldwell of Germany has "treated over 35,000 cancer patients, and has the highest cure rate in Germany. That's a version of his amazing bio that has been published elsewhere on the Net as well. It is, as you may have noticed, somewhat different from
his other common claim, which is that he cured over 35,000 cancer patients, "many in a terminal state," and has the highest cure rate in the world. But like most narratives in Scamworld, Loony's stories have never been consistent.

The Natural Cures Store,
which lists one T. Payne of Dover, Idaho as the registrant and admin contact, doesn't seem to be wildly popular. But I guess it -- and the official NaturalCures.com social media sites -- will have to do till the NaturalCures.com main site comes back...if that ever happens.

That's it for now, and I'll be back soon with some more substantial fare.