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Is John T. Reed obsessed with Russ Whitney?

A number of people have accused me of being “obsessed” with Russ Whitney. His lawyers said it at least once in legal papers. His Schenectady buddy Dan Kelly said it in a letter to the editor of the Fort Myers New Press. And I get it in emails from people—most of whom I suspect are Whitney himself or working for Whitney.
This allegation is amusing to me and my family.
The answer is, No, I am not obsessed with Russ Whitney.
Apparently, this is really a compliment about my investigative and writing efficiency. That is, although I have made little effort thus far to investigate Russ Whitney, it apparently seems to him and his associates that I have made a massive effort.
In 2003, I was actually accused by various people of being obsessed with three different things: football, Robert Kiyosaki (author of the book Rich Dad Poor Dad), and Russ Whitney. By definition, you can only be obsessed with one thing at a time.
Here are some things I did in 2003 that I was not accused of being obsessed about.
1. Money. 2003 was my best financial year ever. (Russ’s too, sort of. His public corporation’s gross income went from $62 million in 2002 to $95 million in 2003. Unfortunately for his shareholders, it lost $1.6 million. I made a profit.) Whitney’s lawyer would no doubt claim I made more money because of diverting business from Whitney. Bull! I would have made more money if I had never heard of Whitney. Doing court stuff in the Whitney litigation takes me away from writing, which is how I make money. The point is if I had been obsessed with Whitney or anyone else in 2003, I would not have had my best financial year.
2. My newsletter. I put out the usual twelve issues of my newsletter Real Estate Investor’s Monthly in 2003. That’s harder than it may sound. The vast majority of newsletters stop publication primarily because they simply cannot get it out the door every month.
3. New books. In 2003, I came out with four new books. One—Succeeding—was written from scratch, that is, a first edition. Writing a book is far harder than you think. That’s why most guru books are full of white space. They *beep* out far short of the page count of a full-length book.
4. I travelled. Visited Southern California a couple of times. Visited my middle son at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Attended my son’s graduation from Columbia University in New York City. Took my youngest son on college tours.
If and when I am obsessed with Russ Whitney or anything else, I will devote full-time attention to it. In 2002, I did devote full-time attention to Russ Whitney for five days. The result was the article I worte about his various adventures in Schenectady, NY. Plus articles on Whitney’s properties and financial success in Schenectady. In 2003, I spent probably less than one full day tracking down and interviewing Russ Whitney’s stepmother in Atlantic Highlands, NJ. As with my trip to Schenectady, it was tied in with a visit to my son at Columbia University in NYC. That is, I did not travel all the way across the country just to research Russ Whitney.
I have never spent a full day on Russ Whitney other than those two periods (Schenectady and Atlantic Highlands).
Those two brief periods of focusing on Russ Whitney resulted in a handful of extremely detailed articles that, if you print them out, are about 50 pages in length. (I did not count them.) That means I generate about 8 pages per full-time day of extremely detailed, fact-laden stuff about Russ Whitney whenever I devote full-time attention to him.
He originally sued me on 6/25/02. That is about two years or 365 x 2 = 730 days ago. If I were truly obsessed with Russ Whitney, I would have generated now about 730 x 8 = 5,840 pages of extremely detailed, fact-laden stuff about him. In fact, I have only written about 200 pages on him.
Consider some of the things I have not done. I have never been to Florida since Whitney sued me. He has spent most of his adult life there and, reportedly, an interesting period there as a teenager. I have not yet been to Utah where his boiler room telephone salepeople operate.
I have never been to Costa Rica, Canada, or Great Britain since the litigation started—places where he has business interests.

If you read what I have written about him, you will find all sorts of gaps in the record like the police records and court records from his second-degree robbery conviction.
Actually, I do plan to “become obsessed” with Russ Whitney in the near future. To put it in more sensible terms, I plan to start investigating him full-time because trial is approaching. I call this my “All the President’s Men” mode. That is the name of the book and movie on the investigation of Nixon during Watergate. In my “All the President’s Men” mode, I work morning, noon, and night at investigating Russ Whitney. When I was in Albany and Schenectady, I studied my Whitney documents while I was eating each meal. I got up early to eat so I could be at locations of pertinent records when they opened at nine A.M. I was still there at closing time at five P.M. There were some sources I could visit after normal business hours and that’s what I did in the evening—like police, libraries, newspaper reporters, Realtors®, and so forth.
Not only do those increased hours result in increased investigative results, they also increase my efficiency dramatically. That is, you get into a rhythym. You do not lose any time reviewing stuff to remember the details of it. Ideas for other investigating sources come in rapid fire from everyone you speak to.
I told Whitney’s original attorney, Louis R. Ghilotti, when this first started that, before it was done, I would know more about Russ Whitney than Russ Whitney knows about himself. That has literally already come to pass and I have not yet even gotten into full-time mode.
So, the best answer to the question, “Is John T. Reed obsessed with Russ Whitney?” is, “Not yet.”
John T. Reed
John T. Reed on real-estate-investment information | Real estate investment page | Order form | Real estate investment books
John T. Reed, a.k.a. John Reed, Jack Reed, 342 Bryan Drive, Alamo, CA 94507, Voice: 925-820-7262, Fax: 925-820-1259, Email: johnreed@johntreed.com

CONSUMER WARNING NOTICE: I recently saw Russ Whitney on a late night TV infomercial and then attended one of his "free" seminars. Unfortunately I believed all of their LIES and FRAUDULENT CLAIMS and I paid thousands of dollars to go to his "training camps". Needless to say I was clearly ripped off, cheated and lied to by Russ Whitney and his employees (band of thieves). My mistake was not searching the Internet to find out more about Russ Whitney and his company's HORRIBLE reputation for fraud, deception and illegal activities. Had I searched online I would have found out about THOUSANDS of customers being cheated, HUNDREDS of investigations by the Attorney General into the fraud of Russ Whitney and his company's, and that Russ Whitney himself is a CONVICTED VIOLENT FELON and spent years in PRISON. I saved the cached pages from the major search engines of the John Reed lawsuit with Russell Whitney and the TRUTH and FACTS that Reed discovered during his investigation of Whitney. I am posting this information on real estate discussion boards so other people do NOT get cheated and ripped off like I did.