File 02 · The recordDoc 02.01

Is GIN a scam? The record, and my answer after fifteen years

You searched this because you found Kevin Trudeau's legal history. Good. Here is all of it, in order, followed by what I have actually received for my money since 2010.

The question

Is the Global Information Network a legitimate club or a scam?

The record

Trudeau was fined $37.6 million by a federal court and served a prison sentence for criminal contempt. GIN was placed in receivership in 2013 and sold in 2014.

Today

GIN operates as GIN Unite, LLC. Trudeau teaches in it. His FTC case closed with a consent order in December 2024.

What you pay

$1,650 to join, $150 a month, cancel anytime

Verdict

Legitimate. I was inside it through the worst years, and I am still here.

Get the free training →Free to register. Start here before you spend anything.

The record, in order

1990–1991. Kevin Trudeau pleaded guilty to larceny in Massachusetts state court and then to credit card fraud in federal court, and served a federal prison sentence.

1998–2004. The Federal Trade Commission brought a series of actions over claims made in his infomercials. A 2004 order barred him from most infomercials but allowed him to sell books, provided he did not misrepresent what was in them.

2007–2010. A federal judge in Chicago found that his infomercials for a weight-loss book misrepresented the book's contents, held him in contempt, and ordered him to pay $37.6 million.

2013. The court found he had not paid and placed his assets in the hands of a court-appointed receiver. The FTC argued that GIN belonged to him in practice, that it had been used to keep assets out of reach, and that its affiliate program — which paid members for bringing in new members — made it a pyramid scheme. The receiver took over management of GIN and ended that affiliate program. In November a jury convicted Trudeau of criminal contempt over the same infomercials.

2014. He was sentenced to ten years. The court approved the receiver's sale of GIN to a group of his associates, and the buyer became GIN Unite, LLC, which runs the club today.

2022–2024. He was released in January 2022 and went back to teaching as an employee of GIN Unite. The FTC asked the court to jail him again over the unpaid judgment. In September 2024 the court refused. In December 2024 the case closed with a consent order which, according to Trudeau's announcement, caps what he owes at $8 million, paid from a share of his income, and lifts the travel ban and the reporting requirements.

What the record does and does not say

The fine and the prison sentence were about infomercials for a weight-loss book. They were not about the content of GIN's training, and no court has ruled on whether that training works. The pyramid-scheme argument was about the old affiliate program, and that program ended in 2013. GIN's members kept their club through the receivership, the sale, and the eight years its founder was in prison.

What those years looked like from inside

I joined at the end of 2010, so I was there for all of it. I was at the first Major Event Kevin was not allowed to attend. It was hard, and we were all a little sad. I was a full level six member by then, one of fewer than a hundred, and I never doubted the club would survive and end up better than before. I was ready for a long cycle. Not everybody was.

It was a long cycle. The club changed hands a few times, and some of the leadership was better than others. People left, mostly because they felt Kevin was the source of the material and nobody else could replicate it. I leaned that way myself. While he was in prison he and I wrote back and forth, and he sent me personal guidance, at his own expense, during a hard stretch of my life.

When he came back — first by video at an event at The Mirage in Las Vegas, then in person, then producing Level Eight — the driving engine of the club came back with him.

My answer

A scam takes your money and delivers nothing. GIN tells you the price up front — $1,650 to join, $150 a month — delivers a leveled training, events, and chapters, and lets you cancel from your member portal whenever you want. The full review lays out what membership includes. You can also test the material before you spend anything: the opening of the training, Your Wish Is Your Command, is free.

The people I have watched leave saying they were ripped off were, every time, people who arrived broke, desperate, or entitled and expected the club to hand them a life. That is not what it is for.

Who should stay away

If Kevin's history is something you cannot get past, do not join. You would spend your membership looking for the catch. And if $150 a month is money you need, wait until it is not.

Sources

• FTC v. Trudeau — FTC motion summarizing the case history (ftc.gov)
• FTC v. Trudeau — September 2024 opinion, N.D. Illinois (CourtListener)
• ABC News, January 2014 — the receivership and the sale of GIN
• Chicago Sun-Times, June 2023 — Trudeau as a GIN Unite employee
• Trudeau's December 2024 announcement of the consent order