Eennie Meenie Chili Beanie

Eennie meenie chili beanie, the spirits are about to speak.

Bullwinkle the Moose

This story is way too good to pass up. Sean David Morton, who has anointed himself as “America’s Prophet,” was charged with investor fraud by the Security and Exchange Commission. The complaint lists the defendants as Sean David Morton, Melissa Morton (his wife), Vajra Productions, LLC, Magic Eight Ball, Inc. and the Prophecy Research Institute. Now truthfully, would you invest your money is something called Magic Eight Ball, Inc? The complaint states that, “All together, Morton fraudulently raised more than $6 million from more than 100 investors for the Delphi Investment Group.”

A copy of the complaint can be found at:

http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2010/comp21433.pdf

Sometimes I use to listen to the Art Bell show during my morning commute. For those of you who are not familiar with Art Bell, his show featured an entertaining assortment of UFO kooks, conspiracy crackpots, “fringe” scientists with perpetual motion machines and 100 mile per gallon magic carburetors, astrologers, psychics, witches, ghost hunters, and new age prophets. It is amazing how many intelligent, articulate crackpots are out there selling books and giving lectures. Generally, I found his show more entertaining than the classic rock station or sports radio, but not as good as a book on tape.

One of my favorite guests was Sean David Morton. His claims were absolutely outrageous and changed dramatically from appearance to appearance. One year he was a Buddhist monk and an expert on Tibetan astrology. The next year he was a science fiction writer who helped Gene Roddenbbery create Star Trek. After that, an expert on UFOs and finally a self proclaimed expert on “spiritual remote viewing.” Unlike Baron Muchausen, he never flew to the moon in a balloon constructed from women’s undergarments, but he did take a psychic trip to Mars to visit the beings who lived there 5,000,000 years ago. Throw in his secret knowledge of conspiracies and you have a kook for all seasons.

While Morton was routinely debunked by organizations like UFO Watchdog and the James Randi Educational Foundation, he happily sold subscriptions to his newsletter, gave seminars, and even organized tours of UFO hotspots. Ah, but when he went from giving stock market predictions in his newsletter and on Art Bell’s radio show to actually taking money from investors, he crossed the line. Now the Feds are after him and it appears that he will be the guest of the Federal Government at some low security facility for relatively harmless felons.

About ten years ago I started learning about investments. It was very difficult to find anyone who was actually willing to teach me investment basics. By the way, The American Association of Individual Investors is not a bad place to start. There are people who really know what they are doing. You read about their activities after the fact in publications the Wall Street Journal. However, they are not going to share any of that information with you. That knowledge is their power. Because I often subscribe to a very conservative investment newsletter, I receive all sorts of advertisements from various other such services. Some of them are almost as wacky as Sean David Morton. They claim secret knowledge of the future, play upon my fears, and try to excite my problems with greed. If they were all that good, they would not be selling newsletters to people like me. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true…….

And, Hey, let’s be careful out there.