Associated Press San Luis Obispo L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientology founder and author who died last year, left more than $26 million in assets excluding trust funds, according to documents filed by his executor. Total assets listed in the inventory amount to $26,305,706. They include "$25 million even" in copyright and trademark materials and $1,305,706 in oil, gas and business investments, said attorney Charles Ogle of Morro Bay. The estate documents were prepared in Los Angeles by Norman F. Starkey, the ...

SAN LUIS OBISPO — L. Ron Hubbard, the Scientology founder and author who died last year, left more than $26 million in assets, excluding trust funds, according to documents filed by the executor of his estate. Total assets listed in the inventory amount to $26,305,706. They include "$25 million even" in copyright and trademark materials and $1,305,706 in oil, gas and business investments, said attorney Charles Ogle of Morro Bay. The estate documents were prepared in Los Angeles by Norman F. ...

Why a Portland jury awarded $39 million in damages against one of the world's most profitable cults. ONE SUNNY AFTERNOON last week, an elderly man, who looked as though he had probably spent the past few nights sleeping under the stars, stood in the southeast corner of Lownsdale Square in downtown Portland gazing in bewilderment at the scene before him. Several hundred people, many wearing T-shirts proclaiming something about a crusade for religious freedom, gathered around a large stage in the ...

CLEARWATER—Possibly the highest-ranking, most influential Scientologist to defect from the Clearwater-based, international sect has sued Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard for more than $225 million. Citing physical abuse, the intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and the violation of his civil rights, Howard D. "Homer" Schomer, the 49-year-old former treasury secretary of the sect's Author Services Inc. branch, is demanding a jury trial and damages of $226,528,200. Schomer's claims, if proved true, offer a dark view of the ...

"Corrupt, sinister and dangerous" were the words used to describe the Church of Scientology in a judgment given by Mr Justice Latey this summer. He also referred to it as "immoral and socially obnoxious". But who controls the Church now? A major Sunday Times Magazine investigation into the activities of the cult in America and Britain has uncovered a disturbing and extraordinary story — the takeover of the organisation by a small band of youthful fanatics following the disappearance of the ...

Charges by church defectors that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard diverted more than $100 million in church funds to foreign bank accounts was described Wednesday as "garbage" by the sect's president. "I call it hyperspace junk writing," said Heber Jentzsch, president of the Church of Scientology International. The former senior church officials, who have testified about the church's inner workings in Los Angeles court, told the New York Times that Hubbard directed them to establish shell corporations to channel much of ...

The basic premise of the Church of Scientology is that humans can realize their full potential only if they clear away negative memories. The means of doing so were presented by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the best-selling book "Dianencs," which he wrote in 1950. Hubbard argued that by a process of counseling ("auditing"), negative memories ("engrams") could be erased. Auditing involves the use of an E-meter, a sort of lie detector on which, the subject holds two tin ...

With $175 and a small box of books under his arm, Martin Samuels brought Scientology to the Sacramento area in the 1960s. He soon built a $10 million empire. The church rated his missions in Davis and Sacramento the best in the world. Then, in 1982, it all collapsed. Samuels left the church with nothing more than a suitcase half full of clothes. Samuels charges in a lawsuit that the Church illegally took it all away from him. The suit, being ...

The Church of Scientology, despite shrinking membership, still wields power in Sacramento — openly through its church and missions, and not-so-openly through other organizations. Some buildings — a church on 15th Street near Memorial Auditorium and branch missions in Carmichael and Davis — are obviously part of Scientology. Other holdings, including a shopping center called Fulton Square that the church bought through another business entity, are less conspicuous. The Flag Service Organization Inc., a Florida branch of Scientology, bought the $1.5 ...

[Picture / Caption: Scientology's headquarters in L.A. was formerly the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. The church purchased It for $5 million In 1977.] Last October in San Francisco, some 70 local leaders of the Church of Scientology gathered to hear nine church executives harangue them about their shortcomings. Styling themselves with titles that ranged from the quasi-military ("Commander," "Warrant Officer") to the quasi-lunatic ("International Finance Dictator"), the men announced that they represented the new hierarchy of the organization, and that they ...

Defections by older members and publicity given a legal battle over control of hundreds of millions of dollars are believed to be cutting into the membership of the Church of Scientology. The church, which has a headquarters in Clearwater, is described by its leaders as a religion and by its critics as a highly profitable business with cult-like overtones. The church claims a worldwide membership of 6-million, although former officials say the number of adherents is probably fewer than 700,000. According ...

RIVERSIDE (UPI) — The oldest son of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, has filed a court petition contending his father is either dead or mentally incompetent and asking to be appointed trustee of his affairs. The Riverside Press-Enterprise reported Ronald DeWolf also claimed in papers filed in Riverside County Superior Court that officials of the Florida-based church have stolen millions of dollars, gems and securities from Hubbard's estate. DeWolf, 48, of Carson City, Nev., asked the ...

WASHINGTON — United Churches of Florida, the Scientology front group established in Clearwater in November 1975, was designed to be a tax shelter that could launder sect revenue nationwide, top-secret Scientology documents show. Sect founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in September 1975 that United Churches was being created "to preserve the assets of Scientology . . . in case of a total wipeout of the Church of Scientology by IRS." The secret correspondence between Hubbard and highest-level Scientology "Guardians" show that ...

[Reproduced here with express permission of Paul Krassner — Publisher of The Realist. Thank you! Transcribed from scanned pages at The Realist Project Archive.] Although many people have had some brief acquaintance with Scientology, very few have gotten into the subject far enough to find out what it is really all about. It is a subject which doesn't easily lend itself to study. The courses are many and tend to become quite expensive, not only in terms of money, ...

MR. LAFAYETTE RON HUBBARD, the American founder of Scientology, has cabled the cult's headquarters at East Grinstead, Sussex, that although he was owed $13 million by the organisation this debt has been "forgiven." This was said in a statement issued yesterday from Saint Hill Manor and was one of two received late on Monday from Tunisia, where Mr. Hubbard is believed to be in his yacht. The statement added: "Even my own income has been invoiced into Scientology organisations. "I paid ...