Path: senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news.moneng.mei.com!news.ecn.bgu.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!nntp.crl.com!crl10.crl.com!not-for-mail From: milne@crl.com (Andrew Milne) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: U.S. MARSHALS SHUT DOWN MORE COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS Date: 22 Aug 1995 09:38:22 -0700 Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access (415) 705-6060 [Login: guest] Lines: 251 Message-ID: <41d15u$hap@crl10.crl.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: crl10.crl.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] PRESS RELEASE August 22, 1995 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karin Pouw at (303) 863-9700 or: Gail Armstrong at (213) 960-3500 U.S. MARSHALS SHUT DOWN COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS Federal Judge Orders Raid to Safeguard Scientology Copyrights Armed with a federal court order, United States Marshals today raided residences in Boulder and Longmont seizing computer software, hardware and other equipment and documents to halt copyright infringements of Scientology religious scriptures. The raid targeted Larry Wollersheim and Robert Penny, both excommunicated former Church members, who run a little-known local electronic bulletin board service from Penny's home. According to one of the lawyers acting for plaintiff Religious Technology Center -- the owner of the copyrighted materials -- the raid was ordered by a Federal Judge to halt Wollersheim's and Penny's unlawful conduct after they had refused to cease posting copyrighted materials on the Internet in the face of warnings not to do so. "The courts take these matters very seriously," said plaintiff's lawyer Todd Blakely of the Denver law firm Sheridan, Ross & McIntosh. "The law is clear -- if you are going to violate copyrights, you will have to answer for it in court. Here the evidence was just as clear -- they violated the copyrights, they had infringing copies on computer and they threatened future violations. The judge enforced the law." Today's search and seizure action follows a similar raid ten days ago on a colleague of Wollersheim and Penny in Virginia. Following that seizure, Wollersheim and Penny issued a taunt to the federal courts that they intended to ignore the law. This is not the first encounter between Scientology and Wollersheim. Church spokeswoman Karin Pouw stated, "Wollersheim has been trying to con the Church and the general public for 20 years. We recognized him for what he is, and expelled him from the Church. Now the law has finally caught up with him." Wollersheim has been involved with scams ranging from selling bad meat to tacky laser prints, and trying to rip off health guru Richard Simmons to filing a contrived suit against the Church that played on religious intolerance and relied on dirty tricks to inflame the judge and jury. Wollersheim's bulletin board venture involves Steve Fishman, a convicted felon who went to jail after trying to frame the Church in a securities fraud. Ms. Pouw stated that in addition to his involvement with Wollersheim and Penny, Fishman is currently under investigation for defrauding the Defense Department. This is the third raid ordered by Federal Judges in recent months to seize copyrighted Scientology materials from infringers. Ms. Pouw said, "The courts have not bought the criminals' smoke-screen that their infringements are `freedom of speech.' They see it for what it is -- breaking the law. Writs of seizure are not issued lightly. We have been warning people about Wollersheim for years, and this action vindicates the Church. The courts are now unraveling this small cadre of con-men. Their days are numbered." Wollersheim managed to gain tax exemption for his bulletin board service, though IRS regulations require that exempt organizations have a charitable purpose and do not break the law. The Scientologists got a copy of his exemption application and Wollersheim may be facing more trouble than what he currently confronts in the Federal Court for his copyright infringements. Their activities do not conform with the information they supplied to the IRS in their application. Wollersheim's bulletin board service was formed as a flank for civil litigation and, according to the Scientologists, as a vehicle to extort payments from the Church. Yet the lengthy application omitted any mention of Scientology and according to Ms. Pouw is "fraudulent on its face." She went on to say that, "it is only a matter of time until the IRS prosecutes the organization's officials and lawyers responsible for this scam. They tried to claim they were formed to forward charitable and educational purposes, but this is not supported by their activities. This is hardly surprising given Wollersheim's history." She added that she has "good reason to believe that a federal investigation is already underway." Helena Kobrin, an intellectual property law expert who has coordinated search and seizure actions of this nature across the country, discounted the notion that there are any free speech issues involved in the copyright case against Wollersheim and Penny. "Violators of copyright and trade secret laws traditionally try to hide behind free speech claims. The Church is a strong advocate of free speech. However, free speech does not mean free theft and no one has the right to cloak themselves in the First Amendment to break the law." BACKGROUND INFORMATION Larry Wollersheim is a former Scientologist who was expelled from the Church in 1980 after abusing his membership to lure Scientologists into investing in a series of failed business ventures. Court records show that Wollersheim has a history of deceit and manipulation both before and after being involved in Scientology. He has left many victims behind him, and used multiple social security numbers to obscure his trail. This history of dishonesty began early. To avoid the draft, he pretended to be insane by, among other things, putting peanut butter in his underwear and eating it. He has a record of setting up corporations that then fold -- often leaving empty-pocketed investors in their wake. One was to sell meat door to door -- until the Los Angeles District Attorney caught up with it, levying $10,000 in fines for health violations for selling old meat. He then established a business to sell pictures -- but didn't deliver them. When the bank accounts were dry, he opened two other companies, and after taking more money from investors, they too folded. After being expelled from the Church, Wollersheim created "Fit Stix," an Aspen, Colorado-based venture which also folded after the investor's money was spent and after Wollersheim falsely led them to believe the product was endorsed by television personality Richard Simmons. Wollersheim then misappropriated the work of a Colorado physician to create the short-lived "Aspen Diet" under an alias, Robert Lawrence. Wollersheim turned to a different avenue to try to make some easy money. He filed a lawsuit against the Church. This time it was a Los Angeles Court that was taken in by his stories. Though Wollersheim initially succeeded in deceiving the judge and jury when the case went to trial in 1986, the Appeals Court later called the outcome "preposterous." Indeed, the Wollersheim case was the pioneer of the insanity we have now come to expect of Los Angeles courts, in which the Menendez brothers, Rodney King and the OJ Simpson circus are now par for the course. Where else in the country could Wollersheim and his lawyer walk into court with a white powdery substance still stuck to their noses and smelling of marijuana, and nobody would notice or care? The Wollersheim verdict was a serious miscarriage of justice that played upon the type of ignorance that engenders religious intolerance. The verdict has been completely discredited -- it was grounded on the testimony of key so-called experts whose tortured theories have since been soundly rejected by their colleagues and courts alike. But there was an even darker side to this chapter of the Wollersheim story. Later investigation revealed evidence that the judge and jury were the subject of a covert dirty tricks campaign to influence them against the Church. Wollersheim and his attorney hired a team of thug "security guards" to create an intimidating presence in the Court. The trial judge was the target of particularly scandalous harassment which, as the judge himself later revealed to a national legal reporter, included drowning his dog and slashing his car tires. The judge himself later admitted that he was concerned about the harrassment during the trial, but never disclosed what was going on or his prejudice to the Church's lawyers. He also confided that the jury verdict was wrong but refused to take any action because he wanted to get even. Part of Wollersheim's courtroom act was to claim that he was scared of the Church. Yet, he has since devoted his life to taunting the Church and Scientologists. Having conned one court, Wollersheim apparently believes himself above the law. The copyright violation charges that Wollersheim now faces bring the story to the present. This time he teamed up with a convicted felon and con-man named Steven Fishman. Fishman was arrested by the FBI and spent several years in jail after trying to frame the Church of Scientology for a stock fraud he committed. His other collaborator, Robert Penny, was exposed in 1994 by his bookkeeper for insurance fraud for improperly receiving full disability compensation -- yet he is able to work full time running both the bulletin board service and a small computer business on the side. This money-making scam is even more audacious. Their computer bulletin board was established to provide a source of "expert" testimony for a lawyer in a civil case. To gain further credibility, they filed for tax exempt status, without revealing the true purpose of their organization. The lawyer paid tens of thousands of dollars from insurance company funds for "litigation services" and in exchange had a ready source of materials to use for his case from this "tax exempt" charitable organization. Most of the material was provided by the lawyer himself. And while collecting insurance company funds, they also solicited donations for their "charity" and offered copies of the materials out of their computer for a fee. But the ultimate payoff was planned to come by attempting to extort the Church into paying to stop the dissemination of false information and copyright infringements. Every extortion demand was rejected, and the Church filed complaints with the District Attorney and US Attorneys offices for these terroristic tactics. Now the plot has been exposed and justice is being done -- swiftly and according to the law. -30- -------------------