I'm going to point you guys to a post by my friend, Jeff Watts. He talks about the financial workings of the prototype model for the Spiritual Rights Foundation, The Berkeley Psychic Institute.
Jeff ran the accounting for BPI for some number of years. He saw the money come in and go out. In fact he saw every penny that came in and went out. Jeff has a Bachelor's in BizAd (all right, that means Business Administration - sheesh, try to save a few keystrokes...) and based on his direct experience with the BPI books and his BA in BizAd says:
"The Church of Divine Man has not to the best of my knowledge, ever mismanaged or done any illegal activity with its money."
Compare that statement to the things the members of the Spiritual Rights Foundation saw every day.
All I know about is that I and others gave money, labor and goods for the purchase and upkeep of the "SRF" farm in Bethel Island. We thought it was an SRF farm anyway. We all gave money to SRF, not Robin and Angela. We thought we were supporting SRF, not Robin and Angela. Our checks were written to "Spiritual Rights Foundation". Our cash was deposited into an SRF donation envelope and collected by an SRF staff member. We believed that farm was "the people's place" for retreats and peaceful meditation. We thought that farm belonged to the congregation.
It turns out, Robin Dumolin and Angela Silva own the "SRF" farm. This is a fact. My attorney and I both pulled up the official records from Contra Costa County in California. The deed from the seller was written out to Robin and Angela.
The "SRF Farm" turned into Iraq. Endless amounts of labor and money, much of it straight from the members of SRF being dumped into a black hole on the Sacramento River Delta. I'll elaborate in another post (well, maybe - there are other things rolling around too).
Apparently, other former members of SRF are quietly speaking about other less-than-reputable activity going on there. If those activities are indeed true, SRF will have some explaining to do.
I'm not surprised. Bill related a story to me about the tax situation of a for-profit company operated by his wife. Bill said his wife was running in circles in a conniption over her company (Health and Wealth) having to pay income tax on its pitiful net profit. Bill's solution? Increase the company's donation to the Spiritual Rights Foundation so as to lower the company's income and avoid paying tax. Genius, isn't it? Give, Take and Cheat all at once!
He told me this story with great pride, saying it was a right to avoid paying taxes. I agree, the government does encourage all taxpayers to pay no more than their fair share (which is the smallest amount possible) - as long as you act within the law.
Maybe it's technically legal to make a donation to a non-profit to reduce your tax.
But donate from YOUR for-profit company to YOUR non-profit church? HUH?
How about it? Are there any other tales of SRF "ledger"-demain? Any other stories of the financial genius of Bill Duby?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
2 comments:
Comments are not moderated and will post immediately.
Despite assertions to the contrary, members and staff of the Spiritual Rights Foundation are NOT and have NEVER been "blocked".
Please, no promotion of products or services unless you have obtained permission from the blog author. Please ask first. You may find the answer is "yes".
If you are a member of the Spiritual Rights Foundation (SRF) staff, are affiliated with its associated organizations (i.e.: ISHI, Health & Wealth, The Academy for Psychic Studies, Freedom Estates, Blue Sky Ranch, Sterling Rose Press, or others), a student of an SRF-related organization, a representative or agent of SRF, its directors, staff or students please identify yourself as such when you leave a comment. You may remain anonymous, if you prefer.
Ex-members of the Spiritual Rights Foundation are encouraged to comment. You may remain anonymous and do not need to identify yourself as an ex-member (it will probably be obvious anyway).
This is an open and public forum. Please understand that persons with an opposing point of view may respond with a comment critical of yours. You may provide a rebuttal if you choose but keep your comment on-message. If you leave a comment that only insults or embarrasses a reader, your comment will be posted prominently so everyone can see you are a tool.
PLEASE BE ADVISED: IP addresses of all readers of this blog are recorded. IP addresses of any overly aggressive, threatening or otherwise stupid comment will be displayed in a posting to safeguard against terroristic or other threatening action by the commenter.
The blog author has cooperated with law enforcement investigations in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Bill bought a book store in Berkeley on Euclid. He bought it after barrating everyone else for being too stupid to start a business. He wanted to show everyone how to do it. We were all supposed to prosper because we took a lot of prosperity classes, but everyone was constantly told we were too stupid to do it. Mind control bind. Bill had everyone work there for free. He paid no wages, even then the place lost money every month. The only thing that kept it going was there was a hole wall of hard core porn. He debated getting rid of the porn, probably because Robin asked him to, but he never did. The place lasted about two years and they sold it for a loss.
ReplyDeleteRegistrar your conclusions below.
Well, it looks to me that it's not always true sex sells.
ReplyDeleteIf you are running a business, you have to put your customers first and give them exactly what they want. Just opening up a bookshop isn't a guarantee of anything - even a bookshop that features porn. If Bill ran the bookstore the same way he ran everything else, it's no wonder it ran straight into the ground.
Besides, most people knew (even then) that a bookstore needs to have the name "Barnes and Noble" or "Border's" to have any chance of survival. A wall 'o porn may get you no more than a very sticky situation - which I'm sure was discovered the hard way.
For all of Bill's pronouncements of being a businessman, I can see no evidence he ever made a sound business decision or created a thriving business. Well, I will say that beating money out of his followers (so much money that many were forced into bankruptcy) thrived for some number of years. But as far as a legitimate business goes, I can't see it.
Others created the remaining businesses at the Spiritual Rights Foundation. By and large, those "businesses" remain afloat on the backs of the faithful few at SRF.
Health and Wealth products have always been foisted only on the SRF followers. A sale made outside the SRF circle is a rarity. A few years ago, Bill asked if I could create a marketing system for H&W products. Basically, my colleagues and I came up with an honest version of a multi-level marketing system, with no upstream system but with incentives for each marketing executive to add a sales team of his or her own.
The problem was that they would have to kick over three bucks out of each $18 item sold to the guy who sold it. Sharing the take in a fair and reasonable fashion kind of made my plan not-so-attractive to them.
Freedom Estates is an entity that relies on rent payments (and whatever other shakedown money) comes from the followers who live on those properties. That is their easiest enterprise to run: Pay up or move out. Never mind the rodents and insects in your apartment and if you go outside, make sure you move quickly because the gangs in the area shoot a lot of bullets.
ISHI Hypnosis does make money by providing hypnosis training and hypnosis services. But let's face it, SRF blames a decline in revenues on this blog (even though they tell prospective ISHI students that the "business" is thriving). ISHI can't be making much. The classes tend to be one or two paying students per session. Whether that is due to the weak economy, a general lack of interest in hypnosis or because of anything said in this blog is anyone's guess.
I guess his secret was to keep costs down to nearly nothing buy making his followers do all the hard work for free. That makes sense if you have a lot of followers who have a lot of time on their hands. But it still can't make up for bad management, a bad product, a bad idea or a bad reason to be in business in the first place.