An interesting article in the Tampa Bay Times with one of the most misleading headlines of all time!
Some excerpts below:
She donated nearly $300,000 to Church of Scientology, which doesn’t want it
On her Cozy Cottages website, Olga Favrow called herself one of the “leading authorities on real estate” in Tampa Bay.
“You’ve come to the right place!’’ the site said. “Learn how to earn 12 to 15 percent on your investment!”
The pitch proved enticing: Investors from New York, California and Florida gave Favrow’s Clearwater-based firm hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy, rehab and resell homes at a profit. But they say they never go their money back.
In the meantime, Favrow donated $278,158 to the Church of Scientology.
Did Favrow use her investors’ funds to make those donations? The investors don’t allege that directly but in an unusual case, the church says it doesn’t want the money because of concerns it might have been “ill-gotten” and “misappropriated.”
The church, which has its spiritual headquarters in Clearwater, has put the $278,158 in escrow and filed a lawsuit in Pinellas County Circuit Court asking to be relieved from “any further responsibility’’ for the funds while Favrow and the investors battle it out among themselves over who is legally entitled to it.
In separate lawsuits filed against Favrow and Cozy Cottages, three investors are demanding their money back.
…
In response to question from a reporter, the church also issued this statement:
“Once the Church became aware of Ms. Favrow’s actions and the fact that funds she had donated to the Church may have been misappropriated by her, the Church took the responsible action and asked the Court to determine the appropriate distribution of those funds. Because there is no way to determine which, if any, of her donations may have been ill-gotten, the Church has turned over all donations it received from Ms. Favrow…and decided to take this step so that anyone harmed by Ms. Favrow’s actions could be recompensed fairly through the Court.’’
First, they ABSOLUTELY want it, and if they COULD keep it, they would.
Giving the money back certainly appears to be the right thing to do, but that is not what motivates scientology to do anything. Their motivation is exclusively what is the right thing to do for THEM.
They had no problem taking nearly $300,000 dollars from a 70 year old woman though it was more than she could afford. Par for the course with scientology — take anything and everything they can get from anyone unfortunate enough to sit in front of a reg.
The interesting thing about this is that scientology is giving money back at all. They fight like cornered rats in court to proclaim they have NO obligation to return ANY money given by anyone. No matter if the person was tricked into giving them money or gave money that was NOT in their best interest (put them into debt, forced them to sell their home, spend their kids college fund, IRA etc).
So, why the sudden shift?
The answer is simple. The law does not protect them from receiving ill-gotten monies. Scientology HAS returned money in the past in these circumstances or where bankruptcy courts have been involved. In these circumstances, they cannot hide behind the First Amendment so they “voluntarily” return it and make self-serving statements to try and make themselves look good. They DID challenge being forced to disgorge funds by bankruptcy courts but that didn’t last long before they realized they were going to lose every time.
The hypocrisy is clear. If scientology itself takes money from people using fraud — in other words if THEY are the ones who engage in “misappropriating” or generating “ill-gotten” gains, they claim they’re not responsible and refuse to return the money because it’s a “donation” and nobody has a right to get their money back. And they have gotten away with this for years. But if someone gives them money that may have been misappropriated or ill-gotten, they return it with shocked indignation — IF it becomes subject to legal proceedings (they do NOT give it back if there is no “flap” even if they find out it was drug money…)
What is so remarkable about this is that they try to make themselves appear ethical, even noble by returning the money, when the truth is that ONLY when they know they cannot possibly win in court do they EVER give money back. Everyone else can go pound sand. no matter how many lies they told or false promises they offered to persuade the person to hand over their money, including promising them (*and the IRS as a condition of their exemption) if they were dissatisfied their money would be returned.
As of this morning Olga Favrow has been charged and bail set for her crimes . I urge anybody that has been taken advantage by this woman contact the states attorneys office in Clearwater Florida!!! Let’s put this woman in jail where she belongs
She has taken from me I will not disclose the amount
Mr. Rinder, do you know whether any monies had to be returned in the Rex Fowler murder/failed suicide case ? Has any effort to recover embezzled funds been made by the victim’s estate or their company ?
Michael A. Hobson
Independent Scientologist
No idea, sorry.
Reminds me of my 1st day on the comm course. My twin told me he had robbed a bank to buy auditing!
If that is their line of thinking, I would guess that all of Reed Slatkin’s money will be promptly returned as well. (Yeah, I thought not).
Just a random thought here – Might it just be possible the CoS is being proactive in getting the money out of their treasury to avoid a deeper investigation that directly involved the cherch? Say if houses were being flipped and sold as a result of unpaid labor by members of the SO?
No Ohio. That didn’t happen. This is just a straight con by the woman involved. S.O. slave labor is reserved for celebrities.
I met Olga Favrow at The Sandcastle ( Scientology restaurant ) 20 years ago. She told me she was a real estate investor. I walked away thinking , any body that would give that woman money to invest would have to be a complete idiot.
Four years ago a friend that worked for Olga was at my house when he told me that Olga had just given Flag $ 400,000. I laughed and said , “who did she steal it from ?” My friend got pissed at my ” entheta” ( negative ) comment and left. I never saw him again.
Four months ago another a friend stopped by my house, he was Olgas ex boyfriend and ex business partner.
He told me that Olga has been running a Ponzi scheme for the past four years.
She has stolen about one million dollars from Scientologist and non-Scn including himself.
One of the “investors” a non Scn , has taken her to court. The judge after looking at the data said to Olga ,
” So basically Ms Favrow you have been running a Ponzi scheme and giving the money to the Church Of Scientology. ” He then forwarded the data over to the States Attorney.
My friend, who is still a devoted Scn, then ran back and gave all of this data to Flag and has been reporting back to OSA since on the cycle.
That is why Flag returned the money not because of their high ethical standards like the TBT made it appear.
Thanks for the additional info Chris.
No big surprise. The last thing they want is to give the States Attorney or a court good reason to dig around in their finances.
Exactly.
Hey, my $255,000 donation was “misappropriated” too 😉
I am not getting email notices. Above make a comment it says star loading… can someone check this out? I don’t want to miss anything ?
this is happening to me also. I re-signed up for email notices yesterday but no luck yet.
Statpush, I ran into some financial problems, so , I took your money. Look, I’m good for it! Really, I am. And I can promise that someday you’ll get it back. In the meantime, I’m going shopping for a new Benz. I’ll even let you ride in it. Now that’s fair, isn’t it? Ummmm, isn’t it?
It’s just Scientology’s way of auditing money. Their zero exchange and greedy ways will always remain the same. Smoke and mirrors pererception boys and girls. Now… the next lesson for today is about taxing the source of the tooth fairy’s income. Has anyone ever considered just how and where that fairy gets the money from… mmmm? Is there an untaxed black market for used teeth? They only operate under the cover of darkness you know, not all is at it seems, is it?
Man, have I got some teeth for you! And, you’re gonna love ’em! Just let me know how many.
Many of the $cieno whales generate their money from businesses. One whale in the Buffalo NY area was Joe Sgroi. He was a driving force behind the Idle mOrg and operated a foundation that actually gave money to area hospitals other real charities.
He got his money by operating Sgroi Financial Services. A firm that invested money for school teachers and other municipal workers. They are a large family and many of them work for the firm. The fact that Joe had so much money to spread around shows how lucrative the business was. Now, would you like to invest your funds in a company that has so much profit to ‘donate’?
Other examples abound in the $cienoverse.
The Florida clams just got in front of this current kerfuffle and are trying to look like responsible citizens. Was anyone really fooled?
And Olga Farvow, is not only going to be involved in legal battles, but she very likely will be Security Checked for several intensives and, eventually, declared.
Oh, but she made a mistake and per 10 August scriptures every mistake is related to being connected to an SP?
Who Miscavige? the IAS Reg? Eventually she will figure it out.
Olga is Dead Filed and kicked out of Flag.
Olga is most likely going to prison.
She won’t be sec checked. They only sec check people who they can drag more money from.
Once again an article worth reading, and unfortunately true.
Dave,
Quid Pro Quo Update:
‘Auditing and Service DONATIONS’? Not permitted. This is how new legislation squeezes your cult out of your tax-free racket; IRS revocation. This is your path to prosecution, conviction and incarceration by the Feds. Tell Monique that she and her muffins are FIRED! Even your reserves cannot cover undelivered ‘SERVICES’ and fraudulent practice Claims.
The details of Olga Favrow’s case are exactly the same as that of Ekaterina Zaborskikh’s in Russia. Zaborskikh and Favrow both “sold” land and property improvement promises to their victims and gave a lot of the proceeds to Scientology. The Russian government was ruthless and diligent and Zaborskikh was sent to prison. I suspect this event occurring a couple years ago gave Flag sufficient a sufficient “wake up call” and so it decided to have their attorneys file the current court case in Pinellas Co asking it to decide who to return the funds to. Your are right Mike. It is all about what is good for the cherch and no one else ever.
They certainly don’t seem bothered by taking “evil psych drug” money from that company of the Duggans.
I think the tagline should be, “Scientology… people who literally don’t know the meaning of ethics.” That would attract in all the future Danny Mastersons. And future Marty Rathbuns for that matter. Rathbun is the worst, actually, because he got out and thoroughly saw through what the church was doing. Then decided that selling out the truth (and all his friends and allies) to pay for his house was what the Buddha meant by the Middle Way. Yeah. The sociopath next door indeed.
Mike … You nailed it!
Yes, criminal court is much different than civil court…
That’s right. Criminals go to Criminal court. And civil people go to Civil courts. I mean, that’s how it works….right?
So who goes to a tennis court?
I use to… for 35 years.
…Or the ‘Court of Public Opinion’? ?
Umm…if we are following OSD’s line of thinking, then of course Tennis people or is that Ten people. Oh my, now I’m confused. Help OSD!?!
Valerie, no. It’s tennis people. Although I’m not playing anymore, I’m still a big tennis fan!
No one at Gold Base! Phantom 4 proved that:)
.Family Court, Juvenile Court. Food Court!
What about Judge Judy – is/was she Civil or Criminal or what? Never paid much attention to her cases because she would continually crack me up. Hilarious woman. Right for the jugular in that Bronx accent, in her judicial robe with the little white lace collar… “I’M TALKING TO YOU, SIR!”
She was a family court judge before the small claims court on tv. I think that explains why she’s so cranky. I love her. She says out loud the things I keep in my head… mostly. 😉
I’ll be in the food court.
Great news to hear Scientology is passing out money. I am getting in line for my $150,000. Dave, I need it more than you. I figure I could use it for brain surgery after listening to Hubbard.
After listening to Hubbard your brains turn to mush.
Mike, dead on article. Scientology does not want to be in court, yet again.
And any member who might get in legal trouble is usually expelled.
Anything that resembles the Reed Slatkin fiasco freaks out Scientology.
I was told of a case in Australia where the CoS received 600k of ill gotten money from George Hawa . He scammed millions.
really..i was a victim and are gonna do something about it..any more detail’s
Mike, there were several public where one had to wonder “where the $ came from”. I’m thinking of a certain Columbian who pretty much lived for months at Flag… kept forking over thousands for intensives for sec checks etc.. lots of rumors about his drug lord involvement…. but I guess turning drug money into $ for the cause “washed” away the sins staining the filthy lucre. If it was true.