... whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Scientology roaches just crawl in everywhere.
posted by humbug at 1:44 PM on September 18 [8 favorites]

Starting a new, American stock exchange in the year 2025 CE is... a choice. Investing in this new, American stock exchange in the year 2025 CE is... an even more baffling choice. But I guess grifters gotta grift and marks gotta get grifted. Even if there weren't a Scientology angle to this story, I would expect no less grift from someone trying to start a new, up-and-coming stock exchange.
posted by mhum at 3:30 PM on September 18 [4 favorites]

Starting a new, American stock exchange in the year 2025 CE is... a choice.

Funding a stock exchange through dubious investment pitches is kind of brilliant. I imagine if they do launch they¡¯ll send a lot of messages to their investors about the importance of buying the stocks they list to make sure the exchange does well.
posted by smelendez at 3:56 PM on September 18 [3 favorites]

Speaking as a long-time critic and watchdog of Scientology, may I propose that we not call anyone roaches? Scientologists are human beings, with consciences, and agency, even those who undertake especially harmful actions.


Having hastily read the article, a couple of quick notes:

Pouw, the spokeswoman, denied that the church was shrinking or that its image had deteriorated. She said Scientology was growing faster today than at any time in history because of its dedication to its religious and humanitarian missions.

My best-known Scientology-related site, Truth About Scientology (self-link, obviously), was started as a project to investigate the dubious claims of Scientology's ever-greater expansion, using Scientology's own publications.

A look at the number of reported completions of Scientology services at their Celebrity Center in Los Angeles shows that they were doing significantly better in, say, 2014, 2015, and 2016 than they are these days, and really 2005-2010 were among the best years; recent completions are way down from then.

The reported service completions on their cruise ship, the Freewinds, are up and down, but the two most recent issues show two of the smallest counts of individuals since 2016 (the average number of people listed in issues from 2015-2025 is 427; the minimum is 175, max is 732; the two most recent issues list 291 and 311 individuals).

Similarly, reported completions at their Clearwater Flag Land Base are up and down, but mostly down; the two most recent issues show 1113 completions by 873 individuals and 1495 completions by 1113 individuals, while peaks in the 2015-2025 period occurred in 2016, with two publications each showing more than 3000 completions by more than 1700 individuals.

According to their own publications, they're definitely not growing faster than ever before.



As for Dev-T, mentioned in the article, if you'd like to see how the concept of Dev-T is used within Scientology, you can peruse several Dev-T reports at The Lisa Files (also self-link); these entered the public record as part of the investigation into the death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson in 1995.

References to "Dev-T" appear in multiple issues of Prosperity magazine, published by the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises; for example, in a photo caption that reads, "The organizing board focuses staff on their duties and helps eradicate Dev-t (unnecessary developed traffic)."


To my knowledge, the concept of "Dev-T" is not used outside of Scientology organizations, or organizations that have trained in the Hubbard Admin Tech that is used in Scientology organizations. The handful of references to Dev-T found in Google Books (sorry, I can't figure out how to link to that result) all relate to Scientology.



Thanks for posting this, chavenet. I spend a lot less time on Scientology news these days, and I hadn't seen this until I saw your link.
posted by kristi at 4:05 PM on September 18 [15 favorites]

Even without the Scientology angle, this whole scheme looks as dodgy as fuck. It seems like yet another con artist spruiking the next big thing over and over to investors, constantly syphoning off capital into related entities and then spending it to enrich their own lifestyle.

I'm constantly amazed at how many people manage to amass enough wealth to be attractive to people like this, without developing the street smarts to figure out when they're being scammed.
posted by dg at 10:25 PM on September 18 [2 favorites]

Scientology owns a building on a prime piece of Toronto real-estate on Yonge street. It's been sitting empty for quite a number of years. Apparently this is the result of some dysfunctional policy from Scientology head office rather than Toronto just not having Scientologists who could use the space, but I haven't seen any sign of Scientology presence recently, never mind growth, in Toronto.
posted by mscibing at 2:24 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

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