Warrior's posting of the 1983 SP list reminded me of this little story:

One of the people SP declared around this time, though not on that list, was Susanna Stahl (Carlsson). She was a registrar in Stockholm org in 1982. Very pretty, charming, confident. She and ED Christel Nordstrom (who is on the 1983 SP list) often worked as a team. They had many "clever" ideas on how people could trick the banks into giving them loans, co-sign each other's loans etc. - quite a mess. I must confess I also fell for their sales tactics and got a bank loan claiming it was for buying a car (after I had used up my inherited money).

In case anyone thinks that these two were the sole reason for the tangle of financial irregularities involving scientologists in Sweden in the 1980s, think again. Susanna and Christel got kicked out in 1982, but the practice continued just the same, until the general drop of the financial market in late 1980s made it extremely difficult to get bank loans.

Anyway, Susanna was back in good standing a few years later as a public scientologist getting services at Flag. She had divorced Kurt Stahl (OT8) and got together with Roger Lind (OT 7 or 8), who had divorced Ewa Wersocki (Flag staff) (scientology 2D tech *works* - you get many more marriages out of one life time!) This is briefly what I have heard through newspaper articles and people who were around at the time:

In 1989, Susanna was sentenced to four years prison for fraud. She and Roger had convinced over 100 people, some but far from all of them scientologists, to "invest" altogether about $280,000 in their company "Masterfind" (address at the time: 1186 Northeast Cleveland St., Clearwater, FL) At least some scientologists were told the company would help people find missing objects through the OT abilities of the owners... Others were told it would be selling party accessories (decorations, stuff like that).

The simple deal was that the fraud victims took bank loans in their own name, got to keep ten percent of the money and handed the rest over to Susanna, who promised to pay back the loan. Then Susanna got new people to lend her money to be able to meet payments. There was very little actual business done in the Masterfind company, and so naturally the whole thing eventually crashed. Susanna got prison.

Roger had escaped abroad, but was later caught perpetrating a mail order scam, where people sent him money to get microwave ovens that were never delivered. The victims were stuck with large, sometimes life-long debts - most of them were young people with low income jobs.

At least one victim committed suicide.

The victims interviewed in newspapers all say the same thing:

"I can't believe I fell for this, but she was such an extraordinarily nice woman." One put it like this: "She was the type of person you felt you could safely confide in, even the very first time you met her."

Yes, Susanna was a good reg.

Catarina http://xenu.just.nu - Scientologi till vardags

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