Paging Graham Berry: Another Scientology horror story of credit fraud targeting retirees

After Thursday’s story about the financial crimes that we’ve been covering here at the Bunker, we received a stunning message from a reader in the Midwest. She told us that she’d been reading the Bunker and thinking of reaching out to us for some time, but that Thursday’s story put it over the top for her.

She and her husband (they turn 65 and 80 this year) had a similar experience to what she’s been reading here, with new credit cards taken out by Scientology staffers in their name and huge charges run up. In this case, however, they managed to get most of their money back without contacting Graham Berry, who has been so effective in these cases. (But still, as you’ll see, they are not whole and they might want to give Graham a call.) At our request, our letter writer sent us scans of dozens of church and bank records confirming this story in great detail. The story is highly consistent with the others we’ve been covering. Scientology is getting increasingly desperate, and preying on older folks in these outrageous ways seems to be getting more frequent. Here’s the tale…

 
In September 2017, two female Sea Org members came to our Senior Living apartment as arranged with my husband. I was told they wanted to discuss setting up a Scientology Org in our city.

I was informed by my husband that the girls said I would not be needed at the meeting, which they held at the apartment clubhouse. Later that night, around 11pm, he came back to our apartment and informed me that the girls were regging him to do courses and do his Bridge. He told me how much it would cost — around $100,000 — and that it would involve applying for credit.

At this time we just had one credit card with a low balance for emergencies only. I resisted as best I could, but they love-bombed him and I couldn’t get through to him. He went back to the clubhouse where the girls proceeded to apply for credit cards in our names using a tablet computer. At this stage I wasn’t too worried as we weren’t well off financially. I assumed we might get approved for around $5,000 only.

Three days later a different Sea Org member [we’ll call her Cheryl — ed.] arrived in the morning and had me call Chase Bank checking on how much credit I was approved for. The girls had completed four applications in my name for Chase credit. I called regarding three of the cards and was very surprised to find out that I was approved for a total of $84,000 — our annual income at that time was around $36,000, (no savings, no property). I then called regarding the fourth Chase application, and the woman at the bank asked me some security questions. One of the questions was how much annual income I had put on the application form. I told her $36,000. She said she was looking at a figure of $136,000 on the form and for me to explain the difference.

I told her I couldn’t. On informing me a second time that I would have to explain the difference, Cheryl reached across and disconnected the call. (I am deaf and use a captioned phone, so Cheryl was able to read what the lady at the bank was asking me.) I wasn’t approved for that card. I was afraid to tell the woman that it wasn’t me who completed the application.

Cheryl convinced me that the woman at the bank had made a mistake and that the two girls would not have put $136,000 on the application. My husband informed me later that night that one of the girls, using a tablet computer, completed lots of applications, then turned the tablet around for him to hit “submit” for each application. He did not see what figure was entered on any of the forms for annual income. It never entered his head that they would enter false info on the forms after him telling them that our annual income was around $36,000. Anyway, Cheryl had us convinced that it was the bank’s mistake.

Fast forward some days, I was in the website of American Express and I found that a total annual income of $200,000 was entered on that application. I called Cheryl in LA and she denied knowing anything about this claim that our income was $200,000.

At this point my husband was in Los Angeles, and after informing him what I found he asked me to email an ethics officer to inform him of the situation, sending him proof of the inflated income on the Amex application.

Later that night he called me with the ethics officer on the phone. The ethics officer proceeded to tell me that putting “potential income” on an application for credit is not illegal and that it is standard procedure when applying for credit to do Scientology courses and auditing! He even told me that if my husband didn’t find a good paying job in LA that the church would take over the payments.

I informed him I had a hard time believing it is legal and I asked him to explain to me how it could be OK to do that. He said the applicant might in the future be eligible for additional income from, for example, Social Security, or might get an inheritance or a better paying job. He said in my husband’s case there were a couple of interviews set up for jobs. Of course none of the interviews worked out — every place was closed for the day once he was finished at the org for the day.

Because of this inflation of annual income, both of us were approved for a total of $187,700 credit, a total of 10 credit cards and 2 lines of credit. The church charged $140,000 right away. It made my head spin how fast they made it all work for them.

Eventually I was able to get through to my husband about what they did to us, and he was upset and angry at what the Sea Org girls did and he decided to leave LA and come home. Once he managed to get away from LA Org and come home we started the long process of getting the money on account returned to the banks.

We did manage, after many emails, phone calls, and threats, to get them to return $112,000 of the $140,000 without having to seek legal advice, which we couldn’t afford anyway. The rest, $28,000, went for auditing, and that’s what we’re paying off now. My husband was in LA for only a month.

He was 77 when all this took place in Sept 2017 and he had a part time maintenance job at the apartment complex where we lived to keep himself active and to supplement his Social Security. He has since been lucky to find a full time maintenance job that’s helped us get that $28,000 down to $10,000 so far. But as he will be 80 later this year, the full time job is getting too much for him. He’s recently been in hospital for blood clots, so he will likely have to stop working.

We blame ourselves for being naive and trusting. He was a long time Scientologist, but he’s done with them after what they did to us. He still believes in the tech though. I was never really involved with them that much other than taking a couple of courses and a little auditing.

Reading the experiences of other folks makes me realize that we were lucky in getting them to return so much of the money to the banks. We were able to send back unopened boxes of books and meters and eventually got that money returned to the banks. For a long time they denied having received all the boxes back, even though we had Fedex proof that everything was delivered and signed for! Still though, the stress we went through to get that money put back was unbelievable, as you can imagine I’m sure.

Plus,I don’t know how we will pay off the remaining $10,000 if my husband has to stop working, which seems likely.

Anyway that’s our story. We could probably go after them for at least elder abuse and I’m considering doing that, but at the same time I’m afraid of what they might do. Have you come across others who have had their income inflated to get approved for credit? In reading what’s happened to others on your site, I haven’t seen anything about income inflation. Maybe folks don’t know as you have to hunt around a bank’s website to find that info and not all banks have that info on their website. I’m sure we weren’t the only people they did this to. We never contacted any of the banks as we were and still are afraid that we’d be in big trouble for loan application fraud.

Thank you very much for all you do to expose Scientology. We have to hope that one day soon they will be made to pay for what they’ve done and are still doing to honest folk.

 
We’re grateful that this reader sent us this narrative of their troubles, and then readily supplied financial documents to back it up. She tells us that she thinks she will be contacting Graham Berry very soon.

 
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Bonus items from our tipsters

Meanwhile, in Canada…

 
And how to talk about Scientology with the wogs…

 
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Scientology’s celebrities, ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and more!

We’ve been building landing pages about David Miscavige’s favorite playthings, including celebrities and ‘Ideal Orgs,’ and we’re hoping you’ll join in and help us gather as much information as we can about them. Head on over and help us with links and photos and comments.

Scientology’s celebrities, from A to Z! Find your favorite Hubbardite celeb at this index page — or suggest someone to add to the list!

Scientology’s ‘Ideal Orgs,’ from one end of the planet to the other! Help us build up pages about each these worldwide locations!

Scientology’s sneaky front groups, spreading the good news about L. Ron Hubbard while pretending to benefit society!

Scientology Lit: Books reviewed or excerpted in our weekly series. How many have you read?

 
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THE WHOLE TRACK

[ONE year ago] The Scientology pamphlet that has finally convinced us this planet is theirs
[TWO years ago] What’s at stake in Tuesday’s San Antonio court hearing with Scientology’s former enforcer
[THREE years ago] Ken Dandar’s courtroom nightmare is finally over (unless Scientology starts it over from scratch)
[FOUR years ago] Tonight, it’s Boston! And that has us thinking about Beantown’s connections to ‘Miss Lovely’
[FIVE years ago] Scientology claims credit for solving the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri
[SIX years ago] LA Sheriff to Grace Scientology Gala, Days after “Celebrity Center” Employee Arrested for Planning to Kill a Cop
[SEVEN years ago] Marty Rathbun: Scientology’s Attorney “Supervised” Destruction of Records in Lisa McPherson Death
[EIGHT years ago] The Top 25 People Crippling Scientology, No. 17: Jefferson Hawkins

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on August 24, 2019 at 07:00

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