Complaint Review: Dr. Greg Cynaumon - Cortislim - Nationwide

The $1,000,000 Challenge to Dr Greg to Prove His Claims

A Challenge by Dr. Gary Adams to Dr. Greg Cynaumon (Revised Version 3/3/04)

Here is an easy way for Greg Cynaumon to earn $1,000,000 ($200,000 per claim), if he is telling the truth. All that he has to do is show proof of what he has said. However, it is a challenge. If he can't prove each of his claims, he must pay me $1,000,000, which I will donate to the Better Business Bureau. The task for him is simple: all he has to do is prove his following five claims to collect his money.

Cortislim will cause a 15-50 pound weight loss that will last a lifetime (as he says in his Cortislim commercial.

Greg Cynaumon is a licensed psychologist.

Greg Cynaumon conducted the family observation study described in his book Discover Your Child's DQ Factor (published by Integrity Publishers).

Greg Cynaumon is a licensed school psychologist as he claimed when he appeared on the Montel Williams Show with the top-level U.S. Department of Education administrator

Greg Cynaumon is a certified marriage and family therapist and nationally syndicated radio show host whose experiences were the basis for his book God Still Speaks through Dreams (published by Thomas Nelson).

Why would I make this offer? It started with a movie. One of the most popular movies of 2002 was Catch Me If You Can. Leonardo DiCaprio played Frank Abagnale Jr., an imposter who claimed to be an airplane pilot, doctor, sociology professor, a lawyer, and FBI agent.

The Los Angeles area has its own version of an imposter. His name is Greg Cynaumon. In the last few years, Greg Cynaumon has claimed to be more people than Frank Abagnale Jr. and fooled the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, and many national talk show hosts. Often he has claimed to be a clinical psychologist, but he isn't. Here are some of his claims. (You will notice that both Greg Cynaumon and Frank Abagnale Jr. claimed to be doctors and sociologists.):

Medical doctor [If you have seen or heard his Cortislim commercial (You will lose 15 to 50 pounds for a lifetime), Dr. Cynaumon appears to give the impression that he is a medical doctor who was involved in the development of this quick weight-loss supplement that is advertised heavily in national television and radio ads. He is not a medical doctor.]
Psychologist [He claims to be a psychologist (a professionally protected name) and has appeared on national television and radio shows and in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Orange County Register, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club, books (Discover Your Child's DQ Factor and God Still Speaks through Dreams), web sites, and print advertising. He is not a psychologist; he received a psychology degree from what the Los Angeles Times calls a diploma mill.]
School psychologist [Among places in which he made this claim, he appeared as a school psychologist with a higher-level U.S. Department of Education official on the Montel Williams Show. He is not a school psychologist.]
Career counseling executive [His company has been reported in the NY Times and other newspapers as providing fraudulent services. He has a recent default court decision against him.]
Nationally syndicated radio talk show host [He had a 15-minute talk show for a short time on a Christian radio station.]
Marriage and family therapist [He makes this claim in books and web sites. He isn't a marriage and family therapist.]
Television talk show host [He isn't.]
Sociologist [He makes this claim in an audio interview.]
President of a board game company Family Games [There was a company by that name according to the California Secretary of State Office, but its status is suspended.]
Educational therapist [This claim is on the inside cover of the The Junior Phonics Game and previous web pages.]
And more.

As you can see, Greg Cynaumon has been an imposter with many more occupations than Frank Abagnale Jr. Many of Greg Cynaumon's titles are protected titles by California State law (e.g., psychologist, school psychologist, marriage and family therapist), which means they cannot be used by someone who does not have proper credentials. Having two degrees from a defunct diploma mill does not count.

My original exposure to Greg Cynaumon occurred when I heard him provide outrageous claims about the success of The Phonics Game. Depending on the ad, he claimed to be a professional in very different fields (e.g., school psychologist and clinical psychologist) requiring very different credentials. When I called The Phonics Game company, I found out that he was actually the vice president of marketing and had designed the false claims about the program's effectiveness (raise IQ 10 points and/or improve one grade level in 18 hours of instruction). With my co-author Jan Hartleben, we wrote a 20+ page expose describing false advertising claims of The Phonics Game. (See www.edresearch.com/phonics for the full story.) Our goal at that time was for the Federal Trade Commission to stop the company's false advertising. At that time, it was reported that the company was making $50,000,000 per year.

Then I made a big mistake. When the story was released, the FTC did nothing and Greg Cynaumon had already left the company. After a few months, Greg Cynaumon called to say that he could not get a job because of our investigative report and he would testify against his old company in an FTC inquiry if I removed his name from the report. I changed the report to name Mr. Cynaumon to Mr. C. Also, he promised to go straight.

And he did. He went straight into more scams. I checked Internet search engines for about a year and it appeared that he had disappeared.

Then in November, 2003 I got a note from Micheal Fanning who had remembered our investigative report. He said that Dr. Cynaumon was doing commercials for Cortislim and giving outrageous claims of success. When I did a search on Mr. Cynaumon's name, I was stunned by what I found. Besides using many of the same titles, Greg Cynaumon

Became the president of Geneva Cross and was sued for making fraudulent career guidance services.

Wrote a book on dream analysis and appeared on national shows claiming to be a clinical psychologist. The book was supposed to be based on clients in his private practice and his radio talk show. He has no private practice or talk show.

Wrote a best-selling book on parenting with an introduction written by Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Again, he claimed to be a clinical psychologist and the recommendations in the book were supposed to be based on his self-funded study of parenting practices. The problem is that he is not a clinical psychologist and he made up the results of the study. The study was never conducted.
Gives the impression that he is a medical doctor who is recommending a fast weight-loss product that is on the radio and television ads several times a day in most markets. Actually, his company appears to be the marketing company and the company web site includes false testimony from a Utah doctor that does not exist.

To review these and other claims, visit his web site www.DrGreg.org and www.bestselling.net. He recently removed his web site www.mycareergenius.com. Maybe the legal judgment against him helped him make the decision to drop his identify as a career management executive.

Greg Cynaumon has violated fraud regulations of many California State agencies as well the Federal Trade Commission. Mr. Cynaumon needs to be investigated for these violations.

One of his products is so bizarre it would be impossible to make up. If you go to www.bestselling.net, Mr. Cynaumon states that he is the author of a book Truth or Lie: Becoming a Human Lie Detector http://www.drgreg.org/books.html.

A Partial History of Dr. Greg Cynaumon

For many readers, the above information is sufficient for this story, but I have included the following history because I let Greg Cynaumon off the hook when I removed his name from The Phonics Game story a few years ago. The result was that he continued his career of deception in many fields. For that reason, more information is included. I have over 500+ pages of documentation for this report plus over 600+ pages of documentation from the previous Phonics Game report. To save space, I have provided only partial evidence refuting his claims.



Mr. Cynaumon from Ages 21 to 31

Greg Cynaumon was a policeman for the Buena Park Police Department from the ages of 21 to 31. During this time, one of his duties was as a SWAT team member and hostage negotiator. These duties are mentioned because Greg Cynaumon mentions them over and over in almost every publication and interview. He makes it sound as if these were his full-time responsibilities. In truth, the Buena Park Police Department is small so many officers are trained in these responsibilities. Also, Mr. Cynaumon states in every book and almost every interview that after 10 years he retired. That comment has struck me as odd not only because people who leave after only 10 years normally do not say that they retired, but also because the number of times he has said retired in books and interviews. Why is he calling it a retirement and why does he mention it so often?

Mr. Cynaumon attended Sierra University for his graduate degrees. If you look up Sierra University in the California colleges and universities web site, you won't find it listed. (There is a La Sierra College, but he did not attend there.) As noted in the Phonics Game report, Sierra University, as described in a Los Angeles Times report as being a diploma mill, was closed by the State of California in the early 1990's.

1992-Talk show host and psychological assistant

Based on a Los Angeles Times business announcement in 1992, after completion of his degrees, he became the host of a 15-minute show on KBRT, a local Christian radio station. The length of his tenure at this position is unclear; the KBRT receptionist had never heard of Mr. Cynaumon even though she had worked there six years. Don Crawford, the owner of the station, refused to talk about Mr. Cynaumon. Although Mr. Cynaumon recently claimed that he has a nationally syndicated four-hour talk show, I could find no evidence to support this claim.

Mr. Cynaumon worked as a psychological assistant at the Minirth-Meier Clinic, but the dates are unclear. Mr. Cynaumon received his psychological assistant license in 1992 and surrendered it at or before 1996. He was never a licensed psychologist. (For verification of this statement, go to the following link and type his name http://www2.dca.ca.gov/pls/wllpub/wllqryna$lcev2.startup?p_qte_code=PSX&p_qte_pgm_code=7300. Also, he claimed to be a marriage and family therapist. Although this title may sound similar to the role of a psychologist, the title marriage and family therapist is also a protected title. A review of California Board of Behavioral Sciences records shows that Mr. Cynaumon is not a state-certified therapist. (For verification of this statement, go to the following link and type his name http://www2.dca.ca.gov/pls/wllpub/wllqryna$lcev2.startup?p_qte_code=MFC&p_qte_pgm_code=1800. It should be noted that as late as the late 1990's he still claimed to be a Minirth-Meier psychologist/therapist. An assistant for Dr. Paul Meier noted that his claim would be impossible because Minirth-Meier Clinics became New Hope Clinics about 10 years ago and then that company was dissolved several years ago.


1993-Author

In 1993, Mr. Cynaumon had two books published How to Avoid Alienating Your Kids in 10 Easy Steps with his brother Dana Cynaumon and Helping Single Parents with Troubled Kids (published by Cook Ministry Resources). The How to Avoid book is out of print. There are couple interesting points about the Helping Single Parents with Troubled Kids book. Mr. Cynaumon states that he has his master's degree in psychology in contrast to the other book in which he says that his master's degree in marriage, child, and family counseling. In How to Avoid Mr. Cynaumon describes his talk show Family Forum, but in the other book he says that is the name of his newspaper column (p. 14).

1995-Author

Mr. Cynaumon published Married But Feeling Alone. He said that much of the content from this book came from his experiences as a 3-hour radio show host. As stated earlier, the owner of the radio station Don Crawford refused to talk to me about Mr. Cynaumon so this claim could not be validated.

1996-School psychologist

On April 11 and 12, 1996, Mr. Cynaumon appeared on the Montel Williams Show and claimed to be a school psychologist. The other guest was a top-level U.S. Department of Education official. During the show, he provided many stories about his experiences as a school psychologist. Of course, the problem is that he is not a certified school psychologist according to the California Department of Education.

?-1998-Marketing Vice President (while giving many false professions)

As I mentioned earlier, my beginning contact with Mr. Cynaumon occurred in 1997. He was appearing in various media outlets having various professions, usually describing himself as an outside expert who endorsed The Phonics Game. Instead, he was the vice president of marketing for the company. I still have documentation about the company web site, which gave the false impression that Newsweek and other magazines had stories involving The Phonics Game, some of the stories gave false quotes of people who endorsed the effectiveness of the product. For the full report, see http://www.edresearch.com/phonics.htm. When our report was released, Mr. Cynaumon had just left the company to join a rival home reading product company. He left that company soon afterwards.

2002 God Still Speaks through Dreams author

In 2002, his book God Still Speaks through Dreams (published by Thomas Nelson) was published. His author description in the book is interesting. It says that he has his own company Family Games. However, a search of California businesses shows that there was a company by that name started in 1982, but the corporation license had been suspended. Also, Mr. Cynaumon claims to be the co-creator of The Phonics Game, which is interesting because he told me that Myrna Culbreath created The Phonics Game. Mr. Cynaumon mentions that he was on the Montel Williams Show; he didn't mention that he appeared as a school psychologist. What is odd is that he says he lives in Los Angeles when he actually lives in Anaheim.

According to page xxi, two main sources of the stories in this book were (1) his private practice and (2) his radio show. This means that there are two problems with his stories. First, he has no private practice unless he was practicing as a psychologist without a license. Second, he has no radio show. The receptionist for KBRT-AM, who has been there for several years, said that she has never heard of Greg Cynaumon. An Internet search shows Mr. Cynaumon involved in many activities, but being a talk show host is not one of them.

After reading the 21 stories in his book, many questions are raised beyond the sources of his information. For example, both Cynaumon and most of his clients sound the same. Each client comes across as flippant and, like his other books, calling him names such as Dr. Head Shrinker, Dr. Greg, or Shrink. In over 25 years of having a doctorate, no one has called me Dr. Gary, but it appears that people calling him Dr. Greg happens all of the time. Another issue is almost obvious. Each of the 21 stories involve high rates of back-and-forth interaction, which were suppose to be from private practice sessions or his radio shows. The question is Where did the conversation with almost perfect grammar from all 21 clients' come from? No audio taping was mentioned and if there was audio taping there would be gaps in the transcripts because of sound problems. Also, all 21 people have very good grammar. It is written grammar; people don't talk in almost perfect grammar. I am sure that a writing analysis of this book would show that the clients' dialogues come from the same style. Not only do they have written grammar, but most of the clients give similar puns as those given by Mr. Cynaumon.

There are other clues to questionable authenticity of the clients. For example, in the story of Wes (beginning on page 29), it mentions that he is the president of US Shopper Dot Com (p. 34). The problem is that a search of California businesses shows that there is no such California company. In the story of Ron, he tells about a mathematician friend who calculated that the possibility of the occurrence of a certain dream happening was equal to a person winning the state's lottery thirty-six days in a row (p. 41). No statistician really made that statement for many reasons (only one of which would be not knowing the amount of the lottery prize for thirty-six days in a row). Another interesting story was about Randi, a 23-year-old store clerk, who had been married 8 years (p. 159). Think about that statement; it would mean that she got married at age 14 or 15. From my reading of California law, that would not be possible. Because Mr. Cynaumon had neither a talk show nor private practice, the information in this book misleads the consumer.

His most visible interview about this book was conducted on the 700 Club. Without making any comments about the content of this interview, it is interesting that in his biography, Mr. Cynaumon claims to be a clinical psychologist http://cbn.org/700club/profiles/greg_cynaumon.asp.

2002-? -President of Geneva Cross, career placement company

For someone who claims to be a psychologist, it seems odd that Mr. Cynaumon would become the president of a career placement company. He took over the company known as Careers 20/20 and other titles and his connection to the previous president Charles Dimon (and several aliases) is unclear. (See http://www.prweb.com/releases/2002/9/prweb47073.htm for the press release.) His term as president appears to have been fairly short. In that time, the company had an overwhelming number of customer claims about false and deceptive advertising with many Better Business Bureau complaints and a class-action suit. In the appendix, I have added some of the documentation, but one of the better stories was reported by Fox Channel 11 news in Los Angeles (see http://www.fox11la.com/stories/wtk/021114wtk.asp). For those who are interested, they can go to www.lasuperiorcourt.com and purchase the default decision (BC288069) against Mr. Cynaumon and others.

2003-Author of Discover Your Child's DQ Factor: The Discipline Quotient System

According to the quote by Dr. Laura Schlessinger, MFCC on the book cover:

DQ Factor is an intelligent, compassionate, and powerful technique for parentingespecially in situations where your children's misbehaviors make you feel frustrated and hopelessly out of control.

Mr. Cynaumon says that his book is based on one of largest psychological family studies in recent years. I say that it is a total fraud. He made up his study, which was supposed to be based on audio and video tapes of 147 families. His research team was supposed to have transcribed the tapes. Then Mr. Cynaumon said that he created Discipline Quotient (DQ) system.

He even made up the information on the cover pages, Acknowledgements, and Introduction sections of the book. The Acknowledges section show an obvious issue. If this study really occurred, Mr. Cynaumon should have acknowledged all members of his research team by name. He did not provide any names. The Introduction section immediately provides more fraudulent claims. Mr. Cynaumon describes himself as an ex-cop turned therapist and radio talk show host (p. xi) and then later says Over the years of conducting a daily, four-hour talk show in Los Angeles (p. xi). Of course, he does not have a four-hour LA talk show. Later he described himself as a Christian therapist (p. xv) and I have regularly attended and have been on pastoral staff of a mainstream Bible-teaching church (p. xvi). Again, as already noted Mr. Cynaumon is not a psychologist or a therapist. The pastor of his church said (December, 2003) that Mr. Cynaumon had been a lay counselor for about 1 years six years earlier. He was never a paid staff member. His distain for psychologists/therapists from accredited universities by name calling with his phrase pointy-headed shrinks shows up in the Introduction (p. xi) and other places in this and other books and his interviews.

(It is interesting that below his name on the front cover it says that he is the Co-Developer of The Phonics Game Of course, he isn't. How do I know? He told me; he said that Myrna Culbreath was the creator of the game. Also, given my report about the fraudulent claims of The Phonics Game, Mr. Cynaumon's decision to fraudulently take credit as being the co-developer of this product seems bizarre.)

Discovering that Mr. Cynaumon's so-called study is a fraud should have been obvious based on one sentence on page 22 (in bold): Since the average family spent approximately 1.7 hours together on weekdays and 2.3 hours together on weekends. I found that one six-hour cassette tape generally did the trick. (p. 22). Of course, anyone who has purchased cassette audio tapes knows that the maximum tape length is two hours, not six hours.

Then there is the improbable statistic. Mr. Cynaumon states I asked the parent(s) of each of the 147 families to record all significant interaction they had with their children during certain hours of the day (p. 22). Notice that he states the parent(s) were to observe their children. When you add up the number of married parents or single moms and dads, the total is 147 (p. 23). When you add up the number of children observed, the number equals 147, which would mean that every family had only one child. That is an improbable statistic.

Based on the so-called observations, Mr. Cynaumon created a system that was supposed to be 93.8% or 88.9% successful in identifying a child into one of four categories:

DQ Factor #1-Bears: The Strong-Willed Controllers in the Zoo

DQ Factor #2-Monkeys: The Manipulators and Attention-Getters in the Zoo

DQ Factor #3-Porcupines: The Revenge-Seekers in the Zoo

DQ Factor #4-Lambs: The Defeatists in the Zoo

What is very bothersome about his supposed observations is the astronomically high rates of corporal punishment, often bordering on child abuse. For example, for monkeys the observers rated simple spanking effective 21% of the time and aggressive spanking (taking the child's pants down, to spanking him with an open palm, to utilizing a spanking instrument such as a wooden spoon, wooden hanger, paddle, etc.) effective 36% of the time (p. 139). Then, Mr. Cynaumon writes There were no abuse issues throughout this study (p. 139). That would be an amazing finding given the high rates of aggressive spanking. Also, because 62 of the 147 children were 13-18, it is improbable that parents would attempt aggressive spanking involving pulling down pants with teenagers. Because Mr. Cynaumon's advice is based on this zoo animal rating scale, his comments appear to be research-based when they are not. Thus, consumers are mislead.

2003-2004: Spokesperson for Cortislim

Here is what Mr. Cynaumon says about Cortislim in a nationally distributed television advertisement. The name Dr. Greg Cynaumon appears on the screen and he identifies himself as Dr. Greg Cynaumon and states that you can drop 15 to 50 pounds quickly and keep it off for life. Where is the evidence for this short- and long-term claim?

Also, Mr. Cynaumon placed a review of Shawn Talbott's Cortisol Connection book on Amazon as if he was an outside expert. He does not reveal his connection to the product. (Again, he pretends to be a psychologist.)

As a clinical psychologist, I've studied the subject of cortisol and how it affects weight loss and multiple other health-related aspects. Beyond a doubt, this is the definitive work on the subject. Dr. Talbott is ahead of the curve with his research and perspective. If, as a consumer, you are interested in the "facts" about cortisol and how it can help you to lose weight and maintain good health, this book is mandatory reading!

Other recent activities of Mr. Cynaumon's web sites

The following are Mr. Cynaumon's two web sites. I have linked every page. If the links do not connect, it may mean that Mr. Cynaumon has removed those web pages: (I have put my comments in parentheses.)

Dr. Greg.org

www.DrGreg.org : On his home page he states:

Dr. Greg is perhaps the only THERAPIST in the world with a background including VICE AND NARCOTICS DETECTIVE, SWAT HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR, AUTHOR OF 12 BOOKS, TALK RADIO SHOW HOST and CO-CREATOR of two of the best selling products on TV in the past 10 years THE PHONICS GAME and CORTISLIM.

(Here he claims to have co-created Cortislim and The Phonics Game.)

http://www.drgreg.org/about.html

Highly decorated during his ten-year law enforcement career, Greg retired and started his counseling practice. If he started a counseling practice, he would be practicing without a license.

http://www.drgreg.org/books.html

(On this page you can purchase Truth or Lie Becoming a Human Lie Detector.)

http://www.drgreg.org/infinity.html

(This page describes his advertising work. As noted earlier, there have been problems with false advertising with The Phonics Game and Cortislim.)

http://www.drgreg.org/books.html

(This is described as the Read Dr. Laura's Endorsement, but it really takes you back to the Books web page.)

http://www.drgreg.org/abouttv.html:

Dr. Greg and co-host Jonnel Goddard from Breakthroughs television program.

(I could find nothing about Breakthroughs TV, except on this web site.)

http://www.drgreg.org/viewtv.html

(This is supposed to be an example of Breakthroughs TV, but it is really a clip from his appearance on The 700 Club, in which he impersonated a psychologist.)

BooksellingBooks.net web site http://www.bestsellingbook.net/

http://www.bestsellingbook.net/aboutus.html

On this page, he says Dr. Greg opened and maintained a family counseling practice. During that period he also gained popularity as a nationally syndicated radio talk show host with his own program focusing on counseling and family issues. It was during this time that he met colleague and friend Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

Also, he says Dr. Greg is also a notable game and toy inventor with a string of successes including The Dr. Laura Schlessinger Game for Parker Brothers, The Tonight Show Game for Mattel

(According a Parker Brothers representative, the Dr Laura Game has been defunct for 4 years. A Mattel representative states that there never was a Tonight Show Game.)

http://www.bestsellingbook.net/pqtest.html

(This is his test for getting published.)

http://www.bestsellingbook.net/products.html

Again, here Mr. Cynaumon states that he is The host of a daily radio talk show and a family therapist.

The $1,000,000 Challenge

Mr. Cynaumon, the $1,000,000 is yours if you can prove the five claims you that have stated.

Appendix
Throughout the next few days I will be adding to this appendix. It will contain documentation about Mr. Cynaumon various questionable activities. This section will expand dramatically with specific documentation (e.g., a recent article in the NY Times in which he claims to be a psychologist who predicted the break up of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez based on body language).

Updates
I will put updates of this report here as I contact Mr. Cynaumon's publishers and others to ask for more information.

Again, I would like to thank Micheal Fanning, who contacted me about Mr. Cynaumon last fall, and Jan Hartleben, who was a co-author on the original Phonics Game report.

(I apologize for the many editing errors in the original report. Technical problems lead to editing mistakes. The content was correct, but the quality of the editing was abysmal. Again, I apologize.)