The 2nd Most Asked Question about Galt’s Gulch Chile

“I have nothing to hide… [sic] that is why I returned to GGC to oust the ‘rescue’ team criminals from the GGC property…” Future convicted felon Ken Johnson on Facebook.


“But if he is just a conman, why not run off with the money? And why waste so many man hours, and go through the stress of cleaning, planting and transforming the property?” –Joshua Harris.


Workaway “volunteer” Joshua Harris told us that he worked for 2-3 weeks at the Galt’s Gulch Chile farm in exchange for room and board. This backpacker, young and inexperienced, can’t understand why future convicted felon Ken Johnson didn’t just, as they say, take a powder with our bucks. This is the second most common question we get about the GGC affinity fraud.

In fact, FCF Johnson did run off with his tail between his legs and kj jailbirdloot in hand when two of the GGC Recovery members went to the farm to negotiate his departure. Reports were that after he voluntarily abandoned the farm, he fled to Paraguay. Wherever he went, he stole upwards of $630,000 in the final months of his tenure. This data were gleaned from investors’ wire receipts and doesn’t include any lemon sales he pocketed on his way out the gate.

Of course Johnson’s a drinker and gambler so some or even much of the money may have been scattered to the winds before he ran off, but he must have had enough to start over. It would have been difficult for us to find him, and even if we had, more difficult to drag him back to justice. Yet he returned. Everyone wants to know why.

Psychopaths Have Their Reasons

We reckon on two reasons. First, being a sadistic psychopath, Johnson wanted to get us investors back for daring to challenge him and take “his farm.” After all, he had stolen it, fair and square.

If Johnson were an honest man, he would have returned by simply walking onto the property and moving back into the house. We would have done nothing but ignore him.

That wouldn’t have worked for Johnson, though. To him, it was unthinkable to be ignored and irrelevant in his former kingdom. No, Johnson had to stick a red hot poker in our collective eye. He hired armed thugs to terrorize and threaten our employees, then re-installed his lackeys to run the operation.

The funny thing is we didn’t care as much as he thought we would. We investors were being bled dry paying the expenses of a money-losing farm. We were glad to be relieved of that pressure. Also, we then knew where to find him. So much for the red hot poker.

THE Reason: Play Acting to Stay out of Jail

The second reason, and the more important one, that we immediately deduced and announced to the investors was that returning to the farm was his only defense against our overwhelming criminal charges against him.

The quotation at the beginning of this post says it all. Johnson has to act as if he has nothing to hide. The only way to do that was to come back to the farm. His lawyer told him that his only hope of beating our open and shut case of defrauding 73 families of over $10 million is to pretend he’s innocent. So he returned and eventually cooked up the scheme of Li'l Kenny's handcuffshoodwinking young, gullible Workaway volunteers to renovate the buildings and do all the labor on the farm. They even grow the food for the next shift of  backpackers. Johnson’s out-of-pocket is minimal and he keeps the lemon sales that these dupes provide. He can then proclaim to the world, “See, I only want to build a community and give the GGC clients their due.”

Just a fly or two in that ointment. First, his current Workaway scam does not undo his past actions which are more than obviously fraudulent–unenforceable contracts, fraudulent marketing materials, no insurance or bond to protect investors, non-payment of vendors and employees of over $200,000, wire fraud, money laundering, etc, etc. Note that intent is not required to convict on  many of these crimes.

Second, unlike gullible backpackers, prosecutors and judges have seen it all before. Li’l Kenny Fraudster can play at being a stand-up guy all he wants. It really doesn’t matter. That orange jumpsuit will be waiting for him no matter what tricks he tries to pull off.

Coward Johnson's new logo
Btw, there was immediate confirmation that our deduction about Li’l Kenny Fraudster’s motive was correct. When we sent our email blast to all investors exposing his desperate strategy to beat the rap,  within minutes we received a rather crude and threatening email in return. We had hit the bull’s eye. Claro.

And what’s the most frequently asked question? Well, the obvious: How could you have been so stupid to invest in GGC?

We wish we knew…

Galt’s Gulch Chile Con Man’s Go-To Tactic–Projection

Johnson Revives his Bitter Feud with
Cobin and Freedom Orchard

Clearly, future convicted felon Johnson is getting bored with bossing around backpackers. Facebook is infinitely more enticing. Well, fantasy is always more alluring than work, ain’t it Li’l Kenny.


John Cobin

One of Johnson’s perennial whipping boys is John Cobin (right), his erstwhile partner in a former incarnation of Johnson’s Galt’s Gulch Chile affinity fraud. We discussed this episode in our blog post “When is a Partner not a Partner.”

Soon after Johnson sabotaged the first GGC partnership to part ways with Cobin–we suspect deliberately to save himself the $250,000 fee he and Berwick had agreed to pay–Cobin began his own libertarian real estate project right next door to GGC called Freedom Orchard. So began a feud between the two that rages to this day, each one calling the other a scam artist.

In fact, we have had reports from investors who were wise enough to eschew GGC, saying that one of their main reasons was Johnson’s trash talking about Cobin and Freedom Orchard. He spoke such venom, bordering on all-consuming hatred, that just a peak into such a level of psychopathy was quite enough for them. Phrases such as, “We’ll destroy Freedom Orchard…” come to mind. Clearly, Johnson forgot one of the primary lessons of Salesmanship 101: do not speak ill of your competitors.

We had and have no dog in that fight but were bitten nevertheless when Johnson spent many tens of thousand of dollars, $30,000 in one month alone, in GGC investor money for lawyers, first paying two firms to research suing Cobin for violating an unenforceable non-compete agreement, and later suing Cobin for libel. Johnson likely could not have been successful in the libel case because Johnson is, of course, everything Cobin said he is–a liar and a scoundrel–and far worse. However, Johnson, after pissing away our money, dropped the case, so we’ll never know.

We review this sordid history because FCF Johnson revived the feud on Facebook, the current forum from which he excretes his libel and lies. Recently, Johnson accused Freedom Orchard of fraud for selling lots on a property that Freedom Orchard didn’t own.

This charge piqued our interest. We know none of the particulars of Freedom Orchard and can’t say who did what to whom (!), nor do we care. However, with this accusation we find a perfect example of one of Johnson fav tactics that armchair psychologists refer to as projection.

Yes, friends, Johnson did exactly the same thing–he sold lots on a property GGC did not own.

Johnson signed a purchase and sale agreement for the Lepe property on May 13 2013. He and the seller, Guillermo Ramirez, signed closing documents on Aug 14 2013. Between those two dates, Johnson sold lots to 14 GGC investors for over $1.6M when GGC did not own the property.

Johnson also criticized Cobin and partners for not being able to make the payments on the land they had under contract. Funny he should mention that because Johnson couldn’t make the payments to Ramirez as agreed, either. Not only was Johnson unable to pay the final installment for Lepe, he was unable to make any of the payments on the property on time.

Now, that’s projection for you.

The Lepe closing document included a nine month payment schedule. As far as we know, Johnson didn’t disclose that to these 14 investors. He also didn’t reveal it to his sales staff, instead telling them that the property was free and clear.

From the August 14th closing through December Johnson was forced to pay $600,000 of investor money in penalties for three missed payments.  Then, facing even more penalties and getting desperate, Johnson defrauded an investor for $975,000 by having Ramirez write a letter saying that all payments were made in full with the exception of the final payment due in April 2014. This was a lying scheme the two concocted to get at that money, since the investor had made his purchase conditional upon all installments being paid through December 2013.

Now, many business people get in over their heads and can’t make payments. And our lawyer has told us it is legal to sell land held with only a purchase and sale agreement or with a series of payments due, or without the required zoning. So far, you might think that this is simply bkj jailbirdad management, and maybe that’s true for Freedom Orchard, we certainly don’t know. But we do know about Galt’s Gulch Chile and if you think that of Li’l Kenny Fraudster, of course you’d be wrong.

In Chile, to sell lots before they are lots, certain requirements detailed in the Urbanism and Construction Act have to be met. For example, the seller must buy a bond or insurance to protect the investor. Johnson, however, did not meet that requirement. That is a felony punishable by up to five years in jail.

Sadly for us investors, Johnson can be caught for only one felony for this particular crime. That is because the contracts Johnson used are not enforceable in Chile. Only one investor who had his lawyer write his contract, has an enforceable contract. Read more about Johnson fraudulent contracts in our blog post “We Should Change the Name to No-contracts-ville Chile.”

Johnson tops his mendacious screed with the biggest lie of all: that he doesn’t owe anyone money as witnessed by the lack of legal Ken Pinocchio Johnsonaction against him. Oh really? He has two lawyers suing him for $34,188 and $54,000. He also owed $71,281 to Chilean vendors, and nearly $100,000 to ex-employees.

For example, Johnson’s administrative assistant from El Salvador is owed $8,132.53 which is a chunk of change for a Salvadoran. She ended up homeless around Christmas 2014. We investors put her up at the farm for two weeks and then bought her a plane ticket back to her family.

Johnson also didn’t pay his farm workers for months, salaries or benefits. They took to grabbing the lemon sales money before he could get it. We caught them up when we took over the farm. Johnson was still not paying the Chilean farm workers after he returned and has 13 cases against him with the pension administrator (see here and here).

And of course he owes all of us investors money, $10 million, in fact. (Apparently Jerry Folta hasn’t demanded a refund.)

The only number lower than Johnson’s IQ is his credit score. So for him to say he doesn’t owe anyone money is a truly fitting end to this example of his psychopathic projection.

Coward Johnson's new logo

Btw, we’ve discussed Li’l Kenny Fraudster projection before. Check out our other posts where we exposed his Paraguay passport scam, his trashing of the Lepe property, his cutting down of protected trees… we could go on and on.

If there’s one thing you can be sure of when dealing with the Fraudster: whatever he’s accusing others of doing, he’s guilty of it himself.