LaffyHypnotizedMe
Active member
You got me, it's Building Investment Committee Program not corp originated by LRH himself (Per Debbie Cooks' email ). It's really difficult to make sense of Scientology's convoluted corporate setup.
Who is the legal owner of Scientology org's property, specifically Class Vs and Missions?
- Thread starter LaffyHypnotizedMe
- Start date
Enthetan
Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Looking at their wiki pageOK, I believe I have a partial answer to the OP: Social Betterment Properties, Inc. owns several properties related to ABLE, Narconon, CCHR and Do please note that this corporation is not CST, RTC, or CSI.More digging is required. I'm working on it.
Social Betterment Properties International - Wikipedia
I've said in the past, real-estate transactions can be used to launder money, or to convert assets from a "non profit" over to private individuals, where a shell corporation buys the property, then sells it to the non-profit at an inflated price, with the profit going into the pocket of the undisclosed owner of the shell corporation.
It would be interesting to look up the sales history of the property.
LaffyHypnotizedMe
Active member
Our fragile existence on earth is a freaking game to Sea Org. Do you really think they hesitate to launder money? It would't surprise me if he's in cahoots with drug cartel. 501-C is a damn good cover.Looking at their wiki page
Social Betterment Properties International - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I've said in the past, real-estate transactions can be used to launder money, or to convert assets from a "non profit" over to private individuals, where a shell corporation buys the property, then sells it to the non-profit at an inflated price, with the profit going into the pocket of the undisclosed owner of the shell corporation.
It would be interesting to look up the sales history of the property.
Enthetan
Veteran of the Psychic Wars
BIC has been around since at least the 1980's, and probably the 1970's. I don't know if it is a separate corporate entity, or what the corporate name it may actually operate under is.
LaffyHypnotizedMe
Active member
Thank you for pointing that out. I don't know where I picked up BIC was a corp! My bad. Debbie Cook in her infamous email also calls it a program that LRH wrote.
Enthetan
Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Yeah, the "legal" corporate structures of Scientology, versus the effective command structure, are entirely separate, with the "legal, corporate" entities effectively being fiction.
The "Sea Org" and its command structure appears nowhere in the official corporate structure.
TheSneakster
Well-known member
That's a false report. The full unedited text of Debbie Cook's email was published on Mike Rinders blog in December 2011, shortly after she sent it out. (link)
She does not, in fact, mention any Building
Debbie Cook said:
Edit: corrected typo. corrected article link. added supporting quote from Debbie Cook
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LaffyHypnotizedMe
Active member
It's building Investment Committee not Improvement. Aren't Hubbard's robots required to pass the study course anymore?
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TheSneakster
Well-known member
Your correction of a simple typographical error is appreciated. Your egregious personal insult is not.
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LaffyHypnotizedMe
Active member
You came up empty, didn't you?
Now you have to say pretty please before you can see my source.
Reyne Mayer
Pansexual Revolutionary
at least not for the rank and file, though of course he got his maharajah's manor (Saint Hill, at least partly donated by 'whales' of the day) and the celebrities their Chateau in Hollywood.
oh the horror that the poor and huddled masses locally, experience some of the same luxury reserved only for Dear Leader in the good old days!
speaking of the heyday, i recently discovered this showing that 'source' was ramping up ways to squeeze more money out of wealthy members as he began to run out of bridge to sell, the problem that he of course left to his protegee:
that account is from Mike Goldstein, who among other things helped handle the financial crash that came in the aftermath of the peak of the youth counterculture movement, as the flood of young 'seekers' started to ebb and the easy money began to dried up.
HelluvaHoax!
Well-known member
.
When Sneakster posted his rebuttal ("numerous Hubbard policies forbidding any opulent buildings or any other donation fundraising for such a thing...") I immediately thought of Hubbard's purchase of the St. Hill estate by means of donations. But then I saw you had it nailed in your post. Plus you threw in a free bonus rebuttal for no extra charge regarding the sale of Scientology "franchises" to wealthy donors. What is interesting about that is that it was not promoted as a "donation" but it was every bit as lucrative to LRH personally as if he had marketed it another way.
When someone bought a "mission package" from SMI the bulk of it was to buy an obligatory quantity of BOOKS, COURSE PACKS, E-METERS, AUDIOTAPES, et al. The massive royalty payments went directly to ASI who then filtered the cash to Hubbard personally. The marks paying those lavish sums (plus the percentage of gross sales of all goods and auditing and courses thereafter, in perpetuity) were never informed what the use of proceeds was for their purchase. In fact, no Scientologists (with a tiny few exceptions) actually knew how much Hubbard raked off the top and "skimmed" in a myriad of other schemes.
While all of that was hidden to public (and obviously to Sea Org staff as well, based on Sneakster's blind faith that Hubbard followed his own policies) we do know many incriminating things about Hubbard's donations scams. We know for example that he used private Sea Org couriers to launder $1M CASH at a time in suitcases, which they flew over to deposit in numbered Swiss Bank Accounts that Hubbard and Hubbard alone controlled, owned and had sole and full discretional use of. This exactly mirrors the donation rackets that "Darth" whatshisbucket runs to this very day with "Ideal Orgs", "IAS", "Way To Happiness Foundation", "Planetary Dissemination Org" and many other cash grabs.
The trick is to not tell the donor what the use of proceeds is and have all those hundreds of millions flowing into slush funds, managed by off-shore entities, lawyers and layers of trustees---all of which are under the full and complete control of one person. David Miscavige. Same exact result that Hubbard taught him how to manage. To avoid complexity in explaining all this (which would take a massive team of forensic accountants to decipher) it's rather easy to understand if one simply realizes that all those billions of dollars of real estate assets and cash reserves and other "funds under management" are all being managed by Miscavige. Even if he left the COS tomorrow, the labyrinth of money management entities would remain in his hands alone. People wonder about his exit strategy---well that's it, it's already in place and all he needs to do is walk out the door with a laptop that has internet access.
There are other Hubbard extravagances as well, as much as his loyalists insist that he lived frugally. LOL. That is ridiculous. He owned multiple homes, estates, a fleet of ships and he also enjoyed using many tens of millions any time he pleased to buy himself the best law firms money could buy to keep him out of prison for his tax evasion and countless other rackets. He used church "donations" to pay over $100M in legal fees to keep his hoax alive, so he could keep raping funds off the top every single day until his death.
Miscavige simply pushed Hubbard out of the driver's seat and sat down in his place shifted into drive and gunned it. The engine was never even turned off for a second during the change of drivers.
Some loyal Hubbardists will complain that spending a fortune on a fleet of luxury yachts and ships is "not a personal expense". Ahhh, but it is. An actual church doesn't need a flotilla--because their parishioners are all on land. Owning ships just happened to be one of Hubbard's hobbies, going all the way back to when he stole a yacht from Jack Parsons in the earliest days of Dianetics. The boats also served the double purpose of keeping him away from process servers, civil litigation and criminal indictments. Hey, if you misappropriated hundreds of millions thru a tax evasion racket, you'd also be plenty scared of federal agencies catching up with you.
I'll end off on listing many more examples of Hubbard's personal enrichment rackets there were every bit as corrupt as anything Miscavige ever dreamed up. And, just for the record, the entirety of Scientology's AUDITING and TRAINING sides of the bridge are nothing more than a fraudulent "donation" racket as well. You donate a half million bucks or more and Hubbard gives you a piece of paper with a fancy "state" written on it in Old English Letters. Hey, Ron's exchange is in, those are pretty damn fancy fonts and he paid for the certificate paper and ink out of his own pocket!
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TheSneakster
Well-known member
Excuse me ? Hubbard bought St. Hill Manor in 1959 at a fire sale price from a Maharaja with serious gambling debts. This property became his private family residence.
Price at he time was 58,000 Pounds or about 72,000 USD (1959) prices. There was no donation drive (like Ideal Orgs) to buy Hubbard his house and he could easily have purchased it with income from his perfectly legal book royalties and Scientology congress lecture fees (also perfectly legal). No records of his personal and household finances during that time period exist for forensic examination to determine whether there was any unlawful income, so you're just making this up or passing on a rumor from someone else who just made it up.
Reyne Mayer
Pansexual Revolutionary
Bill Franks said that the Founder had over $100 million routed to him personally through just one shell corporation by the early '80s -- the equivalent of a third of a billion dollars today. that fits with several others sources, including the agreement with the IRS that required similarly large amounts of money to be moved from vehicles like the Author's Family Trusts as the fruits of inurement, to full control of church corporations.
oh, and let's not forget one of the subtlest scams for collecting money without delivering services, advance payments people were encouraged to make, who then no longer wanted to be involved. yes it's theoretically possible to get a refund, but we know from the many stories that it doesn't always work out that way, which is shown by the unused/unclaimed payments totalling something over $100 million at the time of the IRS settlement, half or more of the CofS' assets prior to the recovering of Hubbard's inurement (above); i've also seen figures that it's grown to a billion dollars or more in recent times.
HelluvaHoax!
Well-known member
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Well, okay, I will concede the point that you have proven that Hubbard embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars and filtered them to his personal accounts. However, I have to agree with Sneakster on this one---you have utterly failed to prove that Mr. Hubbard was involved in any out-ethics activity that was off policy, like David Miscavige. (LOL)
Sometimes I have to pause in order to sadly sigh and reflect that had Miscavige only followed Ron's policies, Scientology coulda had class! It coulda been a contender! It coulda been something, instead of a bum (steer), which is what it is.
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TheSneakster
Well-known member
In all the years since I became involved in the Great Scientology Internet PR war, I have never *ONCE* written or implied that Ron Hubbard never committed or ordered unethical actions, you goddamned liar.
HelluvaHoax!
Well-known member
In all the years since I became involved in the Great Scientology Internet PR war, I have never *ONCE* written or implied that Ron Hubbard never committed or ordered unethical actions, you goddamned liar.
Relax there dude, you missed what I said. Don't take yourself so seriously, especially when your holy posts are being spoofed and satirized.
Actually you not only missed what I said, you intentionally misquoted what I said--by editing out the end of the sentence. Sneakster does some sneaky editing, I must say!
HERE IS YOUR MISQUOTE: "However, I have to agree with Sneakster on this one---you have utterly failed to prove that Mr. Hubbard was involved in any out-ethics activity ..."
HERE IS WHAT I WROTE: "However, I have to agree with Sneakster on this one---you have utterly failed to prove that Mr. Hubbard was involved in any out-ethics activity, like David Miscavige. (LOL)"
Yes, there was a "LOL" at the end too. That signifies humor. Humans on earth call it "a joke".
The qualifier "like David Miscavige" refers to the fact that you are going apeshit over Miscaviges "Ideal Org" donation scam, while it is well documented that Hubbard ran many earlier similar and even more egregiously fraudulent money donation rackets! And yes, including real estate purchasing fraud. Go study how Hubbard had money enough to buy St. Hill Manor and a multiple number of other personal residences, ranches, vacation homes, hideaways and safe houses.
Readers of this message board will easily recall that many dozens of times in the past (including an example on this thread) you have asserted that the unethical Miscavige was refusing to follow Hubbard's policies about "out exchange" and other "squirrel" donation schemes (e.g. Ideal Orgs, et al).
In your furious rage rush to blame Miscavige for financial rackets you missed the entire point of various posts that I and/or others made--which clearly evidence that Hubbard's rackets were even worse than Miscaviges! And you missed that Miscavige was in fact following Hubbard's unwritten policies about defrauding Scientologists out of hundreds of millions of dollars. And all those schemes and scams were taught to Miscavige by none other than Hubbard himself.
I don't know why you default to rage and swearing and blaming others besides the source of Scientology and its many con games. The source is L. Ron Hubbard. He even calls himself source. LOL
Sneakster, I have been away from Scientology for decades so i am not current on what services they offer. I am wondering if they are offering an extension course in anger management that you can enroll in.
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onceuponatime
Well-known member
Good old Scientology ethics and justice, since there is no policy against what LRH did (and DM is doing today) it is on policy and ethical.
Back on the topic of this thread, no org has been the legal owner or legally in control of their own building. I'm sure they're owned by some sort of shell corporation. Ultimately though it doesn't matter what the papers and legal docs say, it is all controlled by DM.
For missions, etc. often the mission holder is the one who owns whatever building they're in. Maybe in the case of an "ideal mission" control gets passed over to some entity at SMI.
Management doesn't care about missions as much as orgs. As posted earlier in this thread, missions are mainly a cash grab to get more money out of wealthy donors who have done everything else already. I'm sure there's some logic or excuse along the lines of missions are supposed to be handled by the local Class V org. Of course missions are often directly in competition with the local org so obviously that doesn't work. Whatever the reasoning, the fact is missions don't really get run by the SO (outside of maybe a few exceptions) and orgs do.
LaffyHypnotizedMe
Active member
In 1948 Ron Hubbard was convicted of petty theft in California but 11 yrs later he had such huge book royalty that he bought a castle in England? At a penny a word salary??
Reyne Mayer
Pansexual Revolutionary
i've looked up property records to see what orgs that own buildings (which some did even before the 'ideal' days) pay in taxes, and i'm pretty sure i've consistently seen that at least the old school buildings are in the name of the local org (as are properties bought that are sitting derelict waiting to be made 'ideal', see Montreal below which is the only example i have on hand saved) but i wouldn't be surprised if int management doesn't have something like secret mortgages or undated powers of attorney that would let them take over the property if they chose to. (also see note about values that follows)
note that this tax bill for the building they bought 15 years ago and never have done anything with, is over $100k per year! Philadelphia is around as much, and several are more in the range of $50k. some of the buildings skated without taxes for the first few years under the presumption that they would imminently be put to 'religious' use but lost their exemption when it became painfully obvious that wasn't happening, while a few of them continue to get the break. so Montreal hasn't necessarily been paying that rate for 15 years, but even if it's around a decade that's still $1m down the tubes for nothing (commercial property values may or may not have risen enough to compensate for that and other losses, such as building deterioration).
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