"A fake psychic has shared how she manages to convince her clients she actually is clairvoyant - despite being just a normal woman.The anonymous "psychic" (referred to as Sandra) offered to give journalist Katy Ward a free session, to try and show her how easy it is to fool people.Writing for The Overtake, Ward describes how Sandra alludes to the death of her father when she was a teenager.She asks if I'd lost a parent at a young age and whether this coincided with a 'major event' in my life. This cuts. My dad did indeed die when I was 18, with this funeral three days before my Oxbridge interview.Sandra explains that she googled Ward before their appointment, and came across an article she'd written about it.Looks like journalists would be a fake psychic's dream."
"As crystals, horoscopes, and other associated wellness frauds to make people feel better about their lives keep popping up, so do scammers who want to weaponize them. Last year a New York City fortune teller was arrested after conning a man out of $800,000, while another in Maryland swindled more than $300,000 from clients. But nothing compares to Sherry Tina Uwanawich, a fake psychic from Florida who now must repay $1.6 million to a woman who she convinced was cursed.The New York Times reports that Uwanawich met the woman, an anonymous 27-year-old medical student, in a Houston mall in 2007. After giving her a psychic reading, she convinced the student her entire family was cursed. Over a seven-year period the psychic charged the student money for meditation materials, crystals, and candles, all needed to lift this apparent curse."
"An attorney for the Jehovah's Witnesses asked the Montana Supreme Court on Friday to reverse a $35 million verdict against the church for not reporting a girl's sexual abuse to authorities.Last year, a jury awarded $4 million in compensatory damages and $31 million in punitive damages to a woman who said she was abused as a child in the mid-2000s by a member of the Thompson Falls Jehovah's Witness congregation.The abuse came after the congregation's elders disciplined the man over allegations of abusing two other family members in the 1990s and early 2000s, the woman's lawsuit said."
"A Brisbane multi-millionaire who donated $300,000 to a charity associated with a group later found in court to be a "exploitative cult" has said he gave the money freely as a reward for treating his chronic pain.But software business owner Stephen Ninnes got his cash back, after an Australian Tax Office (ATO) crackdown forced the College of Universal Medicine (COUM) to relinquish almost $600,000 in donations.The COUM promotes the teachings of Universal Medicine's (UM) multi-millionaire founder Serge Benhayon — a former bankrupt tennis coach who claims to be Leonardo Da Vinci reincarnated.Mr Ninnes said in hindsight, after damning findings by a New South Wales Supreme Court jury last year in a defamation case brought by Mr Benhayon, "without any shadow of a doubt, I would have nothing to do with it".
The COUM remains a registered charity, despite being stripped of tax-deductable gift registration by the ATO, which found it was not operating a "college" for tax purposes.
Other major donors to COUM include Neil Gamble, a prominent executive and former Sydney casino boss, who was once at the centre of the "cash-for-comment" scandal with radio broadcaster John Laws."
"A husband and wife team of pastors from Eden Prairie, Minnesota, are now facing tough questions after selling their longtime church to developers then splurging on a million dollar luxury lakefront home while telling their members that God now wants them to worship in "micro churches" held in their homes.Bill and Sharon Predovich, senior pastors of the Resurrection Life Church and World Ministry Center they founded 30 years ago, were not immediately available to discuss their new vision with The Christian Post on Monday, but insisted in an ABC 5 report that the real estate transactions were appropriate."" ... Real estate records cited by ABC 5 show that the pastors, who are both in their 70s, bought their luxury home located on Reitz Lake in Waconia with cash on Sept. 28, 2018. That same day, the Resurrection Life Church and World Ministry Center received $1 million from a developer who was buying the church's land."" ... Speaking to their former congregation in a message posted on the church's website in July, Sharon Predovich assured them that they weren't "quitting.""We're not quitting, we're repositioning. We'll no longer be your pastors, we'll be your apostles over smaller works," she said after explaining how they ended up without a church building."
DEMONS OUT!
One official said the rescued members believed they had ‘demons,’ which had to be removed by beatings, resulting in bruises covering their bodies
By Hsu Kuo-chen and William Hetherington
Taipei Times
September 26, 2019
Police last month raided the premises of a religious cult in Taichung, where members were allegedly severely beaten and held against their will, officials said yesterday.
The Chunghwa Daily Good Deed Association (中華日行一善學會) allegedly lured people into leaving their homes to live in a commune in the mountains, where it promised to “purify their spirits,” police told a news conference.
Members were closely monitored and encouraged to report each others’ “offenses,” such as saying that they wanted to leave, police said, adding that those who complained were beaten, with victims ranging from two to 80 years old.
A 61-year-old woman surnamed Lin (林), allegedly the founder of the cult, was detained along with five other suspects in the raid, they said.
A 20-year-old Taichung woman was found dead in China’s Guangxi Province after telling her family that she wanted to go there for religious reasons, police said, adding that investigators found that she had been a member of the cult and was allegedly beaten to death by other members.
After learning of the cult’s possible involvement in the woman’s death, Prosecutor Lin Yi-cheng (林依成) led a team from the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s central Taiwan division on the raid, they said.
Lin had registered the cult as a legal association in 2009, and established chapters in Nantou County and Taichung, police said, adding that she reportedly planned to expand into China, which was the purpose of the trip she took to Guangxi with the woman who died.
Investigators found that Lin — who referred to herself as the “living Buddha,” the “Holy Mother” or “the Mother” — had recruited about 100 people into the cult since 2009, many of whom were family members of existing members, they said.
Once someone joined the cult, their actions were restricted and it was difficult for them to leave, police said, adding that members were told to maintain a group mentality and not express individual opinions.
Members were encouraged to report to Lin any fellow members found not walking or eating “properly,” complaining of wanting to return home, or any other act considered an “offense” by Lin’s rules, they said.
When authorities arrived at the premises, they found it surrounded by a tall barbed-wired fence and a locked gate, police said.
After breaking through the gate they rescued 19 members who had been detained by Lin and confiscated several items, including computers, cult doctrine materials, cash, uniforms and steel rods that were allegedly used to beat members, they said.
Among the evidence were member rules prohibiting them from insulting Buddha, pretending to be the cult master and taking an extra bowl of rice during meals, among other acts, said Lai Ying-men (賴英門), captain of the 5th Investigation Corps at the bureau’s Central Taiwan Office.
The 19 rescued members believed that Lin had been trying to help them, he said.
They also believed that they had “demons inside of them,” which had to be removed by being beaten, Lai said, adding that several members, including a two-year-old boy, had bruises covering their entire bodies.
Lin is to be charged with breaching the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防治條例), as well as offenses for bodily harm and bodily injury leading to death, he said.
Lin has been detained without visitation rights, Lai said, adding that other victims of the cult have been asked to come forward and testify
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2019/09/26/2003722936
"Controversial Filipino megachurch Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, who was arrested by federal agents in Honolulu, Hawaii, last year after weapons and $350,000 were found on his private jet, has been accused of previously smuggling hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the country.Quiboloy, who founded the Kingdom of Jesus Christ Church, which he claims has 4 million tithing followers in the Philippines and 2 million more in other countries including the United States, allegedly smuggled money out of the country on two separate occasions in 2013 and 2014, Hawaii News Now reported.Former church member Kristina Angeles said she witnessed Quiboloy and Felina Salinas, a manager for the Hawaii branch of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ Church, order "church members [to conceal] U.S. currency in black socks," during the noted time frame, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Albanese wrote in court documents. 'The socks were packed in a suitcase which was transported to the Philippines.'"
"A California appellate court upheld a $900,000 damages award that granddaughter of televangelist Jan Crouch was awarded for intentional infliction of emotional distress after Crouch blamed her for being drugged and raped by an employee of the church she ran.The Fourth District Court of Appeal on Thursday decided that Crouch's behavior went beyond "grandmotherly scolding or irascible behavior," as lawyers for Trinity Christian Center of Santa Ana Inc.—the church and televangelist network she co-founded with her husband Paul Crouch Sr.—had argued."
"A South Florida pastor was arrested Thursday [September 12th] on accusations that he raped two girls at his home in Miami-Dade County, authorities said.Yunior Beltres, 54, who lives in South Florida but is a citizen of the Dominican Republic, faces two counts of sexual battery on a minor.According to an arrest report, both victims, ages 9 and 10, told authorities on July 1 that Beltres had raped them at his home in the 300 block of Northeast 118th Terrace.Beltres is a pastor at the Columnas de Fuego Evangelical Church, where a few parishioners said on Friday night that they were standing by him."We want our pastor to know that we support him, that we are praying for him and that the church will not stop because of what is happening," Rigoberto Pinelas, a church parishioner, said in Spanish."
" ... SOME SCANDALS under ECFA's nose go back to the organization's early days. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's PTL Club maintained its ECFA membership from 1981 through the end of 1986, even while Jim Bakker was committing the fraud that sent him to prison. Gary Tidwell's 1993 book Anatomy of a Fraud reported that ECFA sent a letter to Jim Bakker flagging concerns and telling Bakker not to use the ECFA seal on PTL materials—but the organization did anyway. ECFA terminated PTL's membership only after news outlets reported the scandal.Some examples are more recent. In March 2014, ECFA revoked the membership of Teen Mania Ministries, a now defunct youth ministry. But as WORLD reported that year, by 2011 Teen Mania had net assets of −$4.1 million. The report detailed extravagant spending and questionable leadership. In December 2015, Teen Mania closed and filed for bankruptcy.'Each dollar must be regarded as a sacred trust. ECFA will seek to insure that it does.' —Olan Hendrix, ECFA's first executive directorThe recent and historical scandals raise the questions: How well does ECFA police its members? Did ECFA membership make wayward ministries more accountable? At least one church—Village Church of Barrington, near Chicago—dropped its ECFA membership because of the agency's failure to police Harvest Bible Chapel. Senior Pastor David Jones told Religion News Service this year his church sees ECFA membership as a "liability rather than an asset."ECFA leaders from the beginning made the agency out as a Better Business Bureau (BBB) for Christian ministries. Both offer seals of approval. Both term their approvals as accreditation. Both have products meant to serve their accredited members. Both have sliding schedules of membership fees. But BBB examines members annually. It gives grades to its members, based on performance. It maintains a forum on its website for consumers to review businesses—positively or negatively. ECFA offers no such forum and wouldn't reveal specifics of its review of Harvest Bible Chapel."