gnaruki wrote:And they'll all *probably* get away with it given statute of limitations. Granted, I've only been in one civil case in my life and the defendant committed suicide before anything proceeded.
Most conmen get away with it because the victims don't wanna admit they were conned. Or the victims feel sorry for the conmen.
If you guys remember Zendik Farm (American stuff from a while back). I worked pro-bono on a child custody case that was luckily very easy (The woman denying child custody was an illegal Canadian immigrant so unless she wanted to lose custody and be deported she had to not contest the case and voluntarily leave the country) But what I found was that that the Zendik Arts Foundation was engaged in pretty much every type of illegal behavior. Unpaid labor, forcing recruits to sell magazines and t-shirts with a quota to bring in hard cash, weird ideas about Child Custody (Children were raised by the collective and not the parent unless the child was one of the controlling Wulfing family) and the Wulfing Family Trust owned the buildings and assets and "leased" them to the Zendik Arts Foundation so the cash, labor and everything went to one family's pockets.
Basically they had about $2 million in assets. Not much for a 40 year operation but a decent amount to get when your family lived off the labor of others for 40 years, never paid income taxes and then you get a big cash bonus after it falls apart,
The past and present members could have sued. They should have sued, but they didn't. They didn;t because they "felt bad" for the parasites because the parasites had spent 40 years filling multitudes with bullshit. The average time a cult member would spend on Zendik farm was 2 years but there were some who had never lived anywhere else and there were some who would put in 15 years and get tossed to the outside world with nothing.
They believed even after they got screwed. They felt sorry for their "Family" who never gave them anything in return and also people don't want to admit they fell for a total lie.
Ballard physically hurt people, sexually assaulted them and likely caused more vulnerable people in the world to be hurt and trafficked because of him, but if he was just self serving without the physical training and abuse there would probably be his supporters claiming he "meant well" even if they were the ones who gave him the most money and fell for his bullshit.
James talked like a creep but he wasn't one. That goes a long way in forgiveness but if anyone donated and took a tax deduction for it and the IRS goes "hey, that not deductable" you may have some money with penalties and interest that you owe and James is not gonna step up and do anything to help.
