RedHanded - ShortHand: The Church of Kardashian

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

From crypto scams to ‘diet tea’, intellectual property fraud and everything in between, clan Kardashian has set the blueprint for turning followers and influence into cold, hard cash.This is the run down on how Kim, Kylie, Kris and the rest of the gang have put their fame to work – and how a small “community church” in Los Angeles allows them to keep their finances well behind closed doors...--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

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On the 3rd of October 2022, Kim Kardashian was fined $1.26 million for her part in an enormous cryptocurrency scandal. And we're willing to bet that's the first time. Quite a lot of you have heard that. I'm certainly one of them. Same. And I know more about the Kardashians than the average bear.

I certainly know more than you. Yeah. Not hard. No, and the fact you're very proud of. Not that you're like, I'm better than you. You're just like, I do not engage. No, I just, I know so much about unnecessary people who are on married at first sight. Whereas I can't look away.

No, it's not, it's not a moral judgment at all. Oh, well, I'm just not interested in them. It would be fine if it were. The Kardashian brand is a modern-day juggernaut, PR and celebrity influence, the likes of which have never been seen before The story goes that through reality TV, endorsements and paid promotions, the Kardashians managed to turn a savvy staged sex tape scandal into an empire of wealth. One that's actually bigger than the GDP of quite a lot of small countries.

Ouch. Which is impressive for one family. Uh-huh. A blended family. I'll give you that. But it is impressive. And to be fair, this is not sponsored. Nobody thought that skims would topple spanks, but they fucking did.

Oh, it is a far superior product. It's very good. But is there more to the Kardashians' wealth than meets the eye? Almost certainly. If you dig a little deeper, it does start to look like there's quite a lot more to their success than media strategy and Chris Jenner alone. Kim's crypto-cuffle was far from the first time that the Kardashian name has been linked to less than savory activity. From financial fanangling to lip-filler fictions, the Kardashian clan set the blueprint for how to turn fame and influence into hard cash, all bankrolled by their many, many followers.

Oh, and also the small question at their own personal family church. An institution founded by Christiana herself, which was a very small question. receives hefty monthly donations from every member of the Kardashian clan, one whose financial records are more opaque than a bottle of Kardashian bronzer. This is the shorthand. So let's get back to our crypto queen. What exactly did Kim do to land herself in over a million dollars worth of hot water? In June 2021 in the middle of the pandemic, a lot of people had a lot of time to kill in front of their phones and computers. And that meant the cryptocurrency boom was at its peak. And Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram story to her many hundreds of millions of followers. In the

caption, she said that her friends had been telling her about a fantastic crypto opportunity. I will have to say, do you know who really does know about crypto? Paris Hilton. She is all over it. There's like a clip of her on like Fallon or something ages ago explaining what blockchain is. Paris actually knows what she's talking about. According to Kim, her friends had let her know that the cryptocurrency Ethereum Max or Emacs was, quote, giving back to the entire Emacs community by reducing supply.

And what happens when you reduce supply and increased demand? the price rises I have been led to believe. Correct. I have a diesel car because I'm a piece of shit. There is no unleaded petrol in East London. Every petrol station I went to

had no unleaded signs. Why do they bother saying unleaded? Because people just got used to it. Because it's not like, oh why don't you just go get some leaded? But within our lifetime, it would have been. So we also are one of the few countries that still say petrol or have ever said petrol.

or have ever said petrol. So we're already just hanging on to convention, you know. So it's just one of those dumb things. So I do refuse to say gas. I refuse to say gas station. Oh, I'm not an animal. Yeah. Because I'm like writing a script in the moment.

It's American case and it's like very heavily featured around a gas station. And I keep writing gas station and then I change it. I'm like, no, it's a fucking petrol station. A gallon of your finest petroleum, please, huh? We know, we know. We're a, what a ridiculous nation. In the aftermath of this Ethereum Max incident, the head of the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, Charles Randell,

said that the post may have been the financial promotion with the single biggest audience reach in history. And the price of this huge promotion is that the price rose accordingly. As a result of Kim Kay's post and similar posts by other celebrities, or presumably with the same friend, like boxing legend Floyd Mayweather, Emacs did indeed rise. For a short while, it was worth 1,300% of its original value, before sharply dropping.

But predictably the people who profited from the spike were not the new investors Kim had brought to the table. Surprise, surprise. They were, of course, the sellers. That is, people who purchased Emacs before Kim Kay's Post and before the subsequent. rise in value. This is what is called a pump and dump. Artificially inflating the price of a stock, bond or cryptocurrency, and then selling at peak inflation for a huge profit. And it is very much

illegal. Now, there was a sweet spot where they could get away with it. So let's get to the ask covering portion of our episode today. There is no public evidence we have found that Kim Kardashian or her team bought Emacs before the spike and sold it. But Kim did get into hot water over this. Initially, Kim and the other celebrities linked to their friend and the promotion had tried to avoid any legal fallout through savvy captioning. What we mean is the use of the hashtag ad.

My favourite is when people used to put hashtag ad and put it in the picture and then change it to like a colour that was in the picture so that you couldn't see that it was there, but you'd be like, well, it was there. You shouldn't see it. Yeah, how the mighty have fallen. So the argument for the hashtag ad, hidden in the image or not,

is that they're telling you that what they were saying wasn't financial advice. That's gross. But this time that wasn't quite enough. Good. And on the 3rd of October 2022, Kim Kay was charged in the US.

In the United States of America, Have to disclose if you have been paid to promote a security, like a stock or a bond or a crypto or a general investment or your own butthole. I don't know. And you have to say how much. If Kim had made the same post but added a bit at the end where she said, this is an ad and I was paid a quarter of a million dollars to post it, she'd be in the clear. But it wouldn't really have had the same effect. You would hope. I've got an ear. For her advertising standards mistake, Kim agreed to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $1.26 million, as well as cooperating with their ongoing investigation. The $1.26 million included $260,000 of disgorged profits. What a disgusting word. I know. It's basically what she was paid to promote the coin plus any interest, along with a $1 million fine.

She was also banned from promoting any cryptocurrency for three years. And it is really important to note that she was not prosecuted for her participation in the pump and dump. She was only prosecuted for inadequately disclosing that she'd been paid to promote Emacs. There has never been any evidence that Kim or anyone of her team invested in Emacs before the price rise, and therefore profiting from the pump and dump. truth is we can't know however cryptocurrencies can very much be purchased and sold anonymously

that's kind of a big part of the point but they are traceable no matter what anyone will tell you bring on the off road bring home a new Honda with a great deal on your favorite Honda vehicles conquer trails and back roads and cars built

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Give 40% off paints and stains June 5th through the 11th, with prices starting at 3089. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Wilb. William Store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only, some exclusions apply. See Store for details. Delivery available on qualifying orders. Planned Kardashian has perfected the art of walking the blurry line between aggressive marketing and misleading their fan base. Another example is the groundbreaking lip kits that Kylie made. Kylie Jenner's lip kits launched to the kind of buzz that

most companies could only dream of. And that had quite a lot to do with her notice. fuller lips, which had developed mysteriously the previous year. Yeah, my favourite thing about the Kardashians is the pictures that people post of, like, their faces, and then their faces when they were younger, and they're just like, you're not ugly, you're just poor. Yeah, yep, yep, yep. And according to Kylie, all of her spontaneous lip development was to do with her new product, the Kylie Lip Kit. And repeatedly, just like all the rest of them, publicly. denied having any cosmetic help.

In the marketing spiel, Kylie said that she had been inspired to create her lip kits by a lifelong insecurity about her lips. The product claimed to achieve a perfect match between lip liner and lipstick allowing users to overline creating the illusion of bigger, fuller lips. Stop it. We're meant to believe

Kylie's lips are just overlined. That's hilarious. Stop it. The product flew off the shelves. But anyone with eyes knew that there was slightly more going on than just a bit of pencil. But this is, I think, I think, this is what people miss the point of.

They know. Chris Jenner knows that you know. It doesn't matter. You're buying it anyway. And that's what the genius of it is. And that's why it works so well is because, you know, the, let's say, 15% of people

who buy that it actually works. A part of the equation, like the vast majority of people who buy it also know. so you've got both sides of the coin and that's why they're so successful. And sadly, the people most likely to believe that this would work when it's definitely not going to are teenagers and children. Because teens all over the world tried Kylie's new wonder product with mixed results, shall we say.

Eventually, the 18-year-old Kylie finally admitted that she had indeed had lip fillers. As for the claim that the kits were sold out everywhere, well, it's kind of just part of the campaign. And this is before we even get to the lip kit. branding. The artwork features liquid makeup rolling off a set of very plump lips. And it very, very closely resembled the artwork by a makeup

artist called Vladda Haggerty. Like, I have seen these pictures, and very, very, very closely resembles this. In fact, in a post which has since been deleted, the official Lipkit Instagram account credited her

as hashtag inspo for the image, which featured on all of the original lip kits. Once again, all a bit of a dodgy move, but it didn't really matter. The 2014 lip kit release was a huge success and Kylie Jenner had perfectly monetized her online influence, turning likes and followers into hundreds of millions of dollars. And yeah, I think the like faux part there was then that creator was like, you've stolen my work and put it everywhere. And they've been like, hashtag inspo and then they delete it because they're like, yeah, fuck, we didn't like pay this person for any of this artwork.

And you would just think that, like, there would be people there who know what they were doing. But what are you going to do? Sue the Kardashians into the ground. You can't touch them. Like, it's the same. Miley Cyrus did the same thing with the Kuzmessage range. Or it was an album cover art or something. Yeah. Just like so blatantly stolen.

It's like how, even though the legislation exists to not be treated incredibly poorly in the workplace, in order for any of that to matter, you have to be willing to take. your former employee to a tribunal, which is expensive and tiring, and will take over your whole life. That's what you have to be willing to do for any of that to matter. So for it to matter or for them to be penalised for stealing artwork, that person has to have unlimited funds to go after them and just nobody in the world does. In 2019, Kylie Jenner sold a 51% stake in Kylie Cosmetics to Beauty Giant Coatee for $600 million. Which implies that the whole company,

company was worth about $1.2 billion-dollar dues. Forbes magazine then took a bit of a leap and declared Kylie Jenner to be the world's youngest self-made billionaire. First of all, self-made. Oh, supremely generous. Stop it, stop it. I like, couldn't believe when that got, that title got given. I remember it so clearly. And actually, a few months later, following an investigation, Forbes redacted their claim. Forbes. Forbes. It's not like, I don't know, teen Miss USA called her self-made billionaire. Yeah, I mean, there was once a version of me that thought there was a difference between those two things and now I just don't...

Quite right. I agree. Kylie's company had been way overvalued and Jenna herself had actually taken home a comparatively wee $340 million for the deal. but much like the lip fillers that came before and Kim's crypto-controversy that came after, truth doesn't really matter. Because Kylie Jenner, being a billionaire, already headline news. It's the only bit anybody remembers.

And that's what the Kardashians are the best at, pushing the narratives they want and creating such an endless tidal wave of headlines that the negative ones don't make a splash unless they want them to. And when they do, it still only adds to their net worth. They're the best of there has ever been at this. Now, just to be clear, we don't actually care that Kylie Jenner isn't really a billionaire. We also don't particularly care about her having lip fillers.

I think my only issue with that is because you're right, everybody has work done and then they all deny it. I think it's her pretending she shouldn't have work done and then selling a product that made it seem like that was going to give you the effect that she had. I agree with you. However, she was a child. so I'm not convinced that all of the blame lies with her. No, definitely not all of the blame lies with her. But that's what, yes, I agree. And it's also like Kim Kardashian selling waste trainers

and pretending that that's going to give you like the waste that she has, which presumably is coming from, aggressive cosmetic surgery rather than just squishing all your organs around, which is probably just going to not help you at all and probably be, again, quite dangerous for your health. The issue we're talking about with all this stuff is that as an influencer, Kylie was selling a dream. In 2014, that dream was bigger, fuller lips, which she promised to her hundreds of millions of teenage followers, profiting her hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

In 2019, the dream was the American dream. She was positioning herself as a self-made billionaire, a success story, to be envied, emulated, and influenced by. But just like those lips, it had all been exaggerated and inflated to benefit her brand. Wendy's new Biggie Deals lets you choose whatever you're in the mood for. It's like a music mixing board of deals and you're the producer. Go with some chill folk music with a JBC in the $4 Biggie bite snack. Try the drum and base of deals with a double stacked in a $6 biggie back. Or go full-on sandwich symphony with an $8 biggie bundle, the grand finale of snacking.

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Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life? That is not the look of an innocent man. Is everyone lying to me about who they are? I felt such desperation. I felt it was what I had to do. Listen to Deep Cover the Family Man, wherever you get your podcasts. And over the years, the Kardashians have promoted, as through said,

waste trainers, diet teas, etc. claiming they were essential parts of how they achieved their famous hourglass figures, but they just didn't. That diet tea is just, it's just, don't, don't do it, don't do it. It just like gives you aggressive diarrhea and makes you lose a load of water weight. or everyone thinks they've lost weight. And I'm like, ugh, that's not how they're losing weight.

They're getting it lipos sucked out of them. Oh, yeah. There's a lot more expensive solutions that they are employing. And that's before we even mention the infamous 2010 Kardashian card. I forgot about this. Oh, my God.

The card with a K. Yep. The card is a prepaid debit card designed and marketed by the Kardashians for teenagers, live the celebrity lifestyle, to go out spending money with their friends. Prepaid cards themselves aren't actually a big issue. Plenty of parents put money onto them for their kids to spend as an allowance,

but the issue was the card with a case fees. The card reportedly charged an upfront activation fee of almost $100, and then a monthly fee of $10, and a $3 charge every time the card was used at an ATM. This was pretty steep compared to the literal pocket money that children would normally get put onto those kind of prepaid cards. If you were a child in 2010 getting an allowance of, let's say, $20 a month, 50% of that money would have gone to service the fees for your card with a K. And the rest would quite quickly be swallowed up by ATM charges. On top of this, the adverts actively encouraged kids to go out and spend as if they were Kardashians. so not exactly teaching fiscal responsibility to Churchill.

Unsurprisingly, the card was cancelled within a month. But not before everyone involved had made a tasty bit of money. And all of this dirty money leads us to, perhaps the grubbiest Kardashian cash grab of all, Chris Jenner's California Community Church, also known as the Church of Kardashian. Chris Jenner herself launched it in 2009, originally calling it the Life Change Church. and she hand-picked its pastor, Dr Brad Johnson. Johnson had actually been kicked out of his previous position as a pastor thanks to an adultery scandal.

By the time that Chris offered to pay for him to start a new ministry, he was working in Starbucks. 20 years on, Dr. Brad Johnson is still preaching at the non-denominational church doing sermons in his trademark genes and converse. But among the sort of cool vicar modern faith branding, is a much less holy endeavour, which serves one purpose and one purpose only, making the Kardashians even richer.

So first and foremost, donations to religious organisations in the US are, of course, tax deductible. Ding, ding, ding! Kim has spoken openly about how she tithes 10% of her income to the church, which effectively reduces her taxable income. And obviously the benefit of the Kardashians

investing in this specific church is that their mum is its founder. Combine this with the US's opaque standards on financial reporting when it comes to religious organisations and, well, you're onto a winner. So what do we think is going on here? Well, even if we're being nice, tithing to a church run by your own family means lowering your taxable income while making sure that money goes towards things that serve your own interests, like setting up celebrity networking events or investing in projects that you yourself run. Or if you're Scientology, buying out the LAPD.

All that. It's a very easy solution to all of those problems. Tax the church. Tax them all. And world hunger. Oh wait, you don't want to. The Kardashians have never been formally accused of anything, so I'm being careful. but if one had come into a large amount of money through shady means,

running a tax-exempt institution with opaque financial records could come in very handy indeed. And now we've got that potentially libelous implication out of the way. The truth is, whether by design or not, there is actually very little hard evidence to point to the Kardashians knowingly scamming their audience. nor is there any good evidence of them using their church to cannily inflate their wealth they could just be good Christian shepherds supporting their church run by them

and I know this is a particular specialist subject of mine that everyone is really tired of me talking about being a capitalist is the least Christian thing you can be like this entire and I know like the superchurch is everywhere blah blah blah but it just isn't Christian it just isn't a Christian thing to do So by uniting this very pure capitalism, this very like rapid and aggressive and exploitative, all of those things and being like, but I'm a good Christian, is a contradiction in terms.

Anyway, Kim Kardashian has a very large team checking every post she makes. For everything from cultural and insensitivities to legal issues, it says here she herself is studying law, she's given up, she failed too many times. But that hasn't stopped her getting into the Oval Office every five minutes. Are we really supposed to believe that she didn't know the rules around the highly lucrative and highly contentious crypto post she was making? I could buy that she didn't know. I don't think she's that smart.

I think Chris Jenner is incredibly smart. Would she risk her reputation and fortune for a paid post? Yes, because they've done it so many times and they know it doesn't matter. No. Like, it does the... Nothing happens. Nothing happens. Exactly.

all of them are very aware of the dream that they're selling and who they are selling it to and they did set the blueprint for gaining Instagram audiences and making money out of them and they milked it for everything it was worth but it's not like they're the first people ever to exploit anyone I do think that kind of straw manning of them is a bit unfair every makeup brand does what they do they've just done it better and people are mad about it I think. And if you're going to hide money, hiding it in a church is the smartest way to do it.

That is indeed. I think the sad thing about them is it comes back to the Annadelby episode that we did, right? And it was like the fact that she idolized Mary Antoinette. I think it all comes back to, it's very telling who people idolized. And I think it's a sad state of affairs that we live in a world where so many people idolize the likes of the Kardashians.

And that's it. That's all I got. Anything else? Thoughts, feelings, concerns? No. Goodbye. Goodbye.