What's new

Rampant Theft in Sea Org.

Demented LRH

Patron Meritorious
When a person joins Sea Org, he/she is told that he is a part of the most ethical group of people. But this is a blatant lie -- theft is so widespread in Sea Org that at times it seems that you have entered the Thieves’ Paradise.

It was my first day in Sea Org after I graduated from EPF. I left my wallet with $15 in it on the desk. When I returned the wallet was still there, but it was empty. $15 is not a large sum of money, so I decided not to make a big deal out of it. I did not complain to my superiors; instead I developed a habit of not bringing money to the workplace. I could keep my money at home because I had a home, which is not the case of a vast majority of the Sea Org members.

My friend Edmund did not have a home, instead he was “camping” in Big Blue. The goddamn place looks like a prison camp with its bunk beds. Someone took all Edmund’s money, $450, from his briefcase which he kept in the dormitory. When Edmund complained to the Ethics Officer about the theft, he was ordered to keep the mouth shut. Apparently, the Officer did not want the other Sea Org members to know that things get stolen here. But we all already knew that (ha-ha!)

In some cases a Sea Org member knows who robbed him but there is nothing he can do about it -- the perpetuator had stolen the victim’s property right before the start of his overseas assignment. Even if the victim does not have money and jewelry in his possession, he will discover that his expensive clothing items are gone.

The Sea Org theft is so rampant that some staff members keep fancy locks with number combinations on their baggage. Guess what? -- those bags get stolen, too!

The Church itself is not immune to the theft -- many of its e-meters were stolen and sold to the new Scientologists.

I tried to steal an e-meter form a Hubbard office but failed because I did not have a plan. I just wanted to get into the office and swipe the electric beauty. But the Big Blue receptionists were watching my every move because they got suspicious when they saw me hanging in the lobby at 3: 00 AM.

My friend Patrick had a plan: He took a bucket and a mop and walked into a Hubbard office. While mopping the floor, he grabbed the e-meter and put it in the bucket (he was using a dry mop and his bucket was empty, of course, but no one was paying attention) Later he sold it for a half-price to a brand new Scientologist. His customer knew that this was a stolen device, but bought it anyway.

The Sales Org store got robbed when I was in Sea Org; I was told that this was not the first robbery. This was the insider job because the thieves knew exactly what they were looking for -- they ignored the e-meters , the Dianetics books and the Red Volumes because they knew that CoS investigators will be paying attention to the sales of these items. Instead, they took the golden OT pins because it is easy to sell this stuff to unscrupulous owners of jewelry stores.

Ricardo was working for Sales Org. He described to his friends, including myself, the scam that his superiors were running. They made an agreement with the e-meter factory personnel to underreport the number of e-meters produced each month. They were selling unreported devices to the Scientologists at 2/3 of the regular price.

Leslie was working for Supply Org. The Supply Org staff were delivering food to Big Blue; they also were stealing packaged goods (chocolate, soft drinks, etc) from the supply trucks and selling them to the local stores and even supermarkets.

I wonder what could be stolen for Gold Base. Hmmmm…
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
A couple years ago, someone posted about buying a locking cabinet from Ikea. As I recall, he had to save up a while to get it. Then during one of their stupid inspections, some SO staffer broke in and wrecked it. Not a word of apology.
 

Freeminds

Bitter defrocked apostate
Any lurker who's getting pressured to join the Sea Org - or worse, getting pressured to give up a child to the Sea Org - would do well to think about just how brutal and dog-eat-dog life at Scientology's 'Mecca' is. Elite, my arse: the Sea Org is just a different kind of gulag.
 

exsomessenger

Patron Meritorious
wow, this is very different then I remember things. When I was in we were making about 16 a week. some sea org members had a few things, that they brought with them in the sea org. Even in the EPF ( i did mine at FLAG) there were no stories about things going missing.

And Shirly no one was stealing from the org. This is sorta so unbelievable that it must be true. funny how things change. I wonder if it has to do with the lowering of standards for sea org members. I guess the more desperate they get the more things like this are going to happen.

I have herd stories about people blowing staff at orgs and then next thing you know they are in the sea org. I guess that is not an out qual anymore.

Seems like it would be better to have a few honest people then just having a bunch of bodies in the shop.
 

Auditor's Toad

Clear as Mud
wow, this is very different then I remember things. When I was in we were making about 16 a week. some sea org members had a few things, that they brought with them in the sea org. Even in the EPF ( i did mine at FLAG) there were no stories about things going missing.

And Shirly no one was stealing from the org. This is sorta so unbelievable that it must be true. funny how things change. I wonder if it has to do with the lowering of standards for sea org members. I guess the more desperate they get the more things like this are going to happen.

I have herd stories about people blowing staff at orgs and then next thing you know they are in the sea org. I guess that is not an out qual anymore.

Seems like it would be better to have a few honest people then just having a bunch of bodies in the shop.

Not really. In the 70s & 80s there was a theft problem among So members stealing from each other & from the orgs.
The "sceurity watches" aren't so much to keep outsiders from coming in and taking things as it is to keep SO members from stripping the place back to bare walls.

They steal from public, they steal from the org, & they steal from one another.

There is no honor among thieves. Welcome to the Sea Org !
 

Sindy

Crusader
I don't recall the policy but was told (verbal data that I accepted) from an org exec that as a staff member, should you bring in anything of your own (a scanner, shredder, staple remover, etc) that it instantly became org property. Personal property is not allowed and therefore, there isn't really any theft, technically.

We were also told that we could not decorate our spaces with anything personal -- no family photos, no individual artwork, etc. -- pure, unadulterated collectivism. Individualism doesn't gel with cults despite their assertions that the individual is senior. That's all smoke and mirrors.
 

guanoloco

As-Wased
I don't recall the policy but was told (verbal data that I accepted) from an org exec that as a staff member, should you bring in anything of your own (a scanner, shredder, staple remover, etc) that it instantly became org property. Personal property is not allowed and therefore, there isn't really any theft, technically.

We were also told that we could not decorate our spaces with anything personal -- no family photos, no individual artwork, etc. -- pure, unadulterated collectivism. Individualism doesn't gel with cults despite their assertions that the individual is senior. That's all smoke and mirrors.


12. The antisocial personality has a bad sense of property and conceives that the idea that anyone owns anything is a pretense, made up to fool people. Nothing is ever really owned.




I once read an old timer story about being on the Apollo and Hubbard confiscating anything of value sent to them in the mail. It is true in Class V orgs that all mail is opened in HCO before getting routed, whether biz or personal so it's not that far fetched, IMHO.
 

Rmack

Van Allen Belt Sunbather
I've already told the story of how I brought a bookcase full of books with me to Big Blue when I jointed the SO. I kept it in a storage area. When I was planning to leave, I went to get them, and every single book, with the exception of all the Scientology books had been stolen.

Zinjifar (what ever happened to him?) commented at the time 'even crazed ufo cultist know value.'
 

guanoloco

As-Wased
This thread is the first I've heard of this...and this is the group putting ethics in on the planet?

I mean this is even below pseudo ethical squid ink. No wonder the abortions are so rampant the place EXPECTS this stuff.

Just when I think it cannot get any stupider and it does, well the same goes for Enantiodromia.

Louis Farrakhan for God's sakes.
 

Lulu Belle

Moonbat
This is a really stupid story, but...

I had just joined the SO. I was a naive newbie EPFer. I believed the whose spiel about the SO being the "most ethical beings on the planet".

The EPF in PAC at the time were berthed on the 6th floor of the Main Building. There was one womens public bathroom with showers on the floor. The bathroom had a closet.

I put my roll on deodorant in the closet, because we had so little time for showers, etc. I thought it would just be more convenient to leave it there so I could use it right after I got out of the shower before I got dressed.

The day after I put it there. I am just getting out of the shower.

Some chick in front of me (not an EPFer, by the way) reaches into the closet, takes my deodorant, and uses it.

Stupid and petty. But it really upset me.

And was the first of many incidents to jar my world about all these "ethical" people.
 

Lulu Belle

Moonbat
One other thing...

When I was in the SO, there would be staff, especially at ASHO, who would go months without getting paid.

Often at the same time the org would not pay PBC, so the staff either wouldn't get fed or would get fed rice and beans.

My girlfriend was the FBO AOLA. Her husband was at ASHO. She would often say that when you don't feed or pay the staff, you force them to "go criminal".

She had a point.
 

still here

Patron with Honors
I do not remember any incidents of theft as such, and I felt that in the Stables, where I lived we were all pretty much a good, honourable group, even without pay, (which could go on for some time).

However, before I left I had been on a garrison mission to a small org, and all of my worldly goods were still at SO berthing. When I finally managed to get back to pick them up I had (stupidly) put all my valuable possesions into one box, when I say valuable I mean only to me. My O and A levels certs, my birth, marriage, certs, passport etc. and two photo albums of my son, (who's custody had been given to his father ( my ex a non scn), when he was 4, on instruction from my seniors).

These photo's had been taken by my brother-in law who was a photography lecturer and excellent photographer, the photo's were amazing, 10 by 8 black and whites, and my most precious possesion.

The whole box had been put into storage, and "lost" or binned. I never recovered them. The certs I had to obtain new copies of in later life, the photo's were gone forever and they are one of my truly felt losses.

I doubt this was theft, just total carelessness and a lack of caring.
 

exsomessenger

Patron Meritorious
When I was the estates sec we ran a canteen on the honor system. all of the goodies were put out with a small change drawer. each week I would collect the money and buy more goods. We priced everything at cost. I never had a problem with people taking all the food and not paying.

I also did most of the missions in the late 80's to man up INT and went through EVERY Pers, Ethics, and PC folder at the FLB. and then Later PAC. There were a few people that made you jump back and go WTF but for the most part it seemed that the people were good and honest people making it work on 16.00 a week.

I believe that this stuff was happening as you guys said it happend to you. It really did not come across my lines and it seemed like a lot of the Sea Org members (rank and file) were really trying to make it work honestly.
 

Demented LRH

Patron Meritorious
I do not know how high is the percentage of Sea Org thieves is, but I know something else -- Sea Org members whose Scientology ethics is very low tend to flock together (I was one of those people). We knew a lot of stuff that ordinary Sea Org members would not know because they were told not to make friendships with the pariahs like us.

Leslie, whom I mentioned in the article, was stealing Sea Org packaged foods, he knew that I attempted to steal an e-meter, so he was not afraid of bragging about his crimes to me.

Ricardo was knew to Sales Org, but one of his friends who recruited him (Ricardo was not a Scientologist, he just wanted to earn some money at CoS) was one of the people who was running the scam.

========================
Apparently, the OSA staff know how unreliable the e-meter is, so they have developed other means of identifying the thieves. But the other shitty methods do not work, either.

When I was in Sea Org, I used to buy ice cream at the Big Blue canteen. There was a small corridor leading to the canteen, it had a turn. The salesman could not see what is going on behind the corner.

One day I saw a table with a box of cookies on it standing in the corridor; the canteen salesperson could not see the people who were passing by the cookie box. That looked strange to me. I bought an ice cream, returned to the corridor and begun watching the box. Before I finished eating the ice cream, five Sea Org members passed by the box, two of them stole cookies from it.

“There must be a recording device somewhere”, I though. I looked up. There was a camera on the wall right underneath the selling, it looked like a light bulb. Normally I would not be paying attention to the “light bulb”, which also applies to everyone else -- people do not expect to find a camera in a low-priority area.

No one was busted for stealing cookies that day, or any other day (the cookie box remained there for 10 days). The CoS needed to identify the thieves amongst its members in order to solve the Sea Org grand larceny misteries. Father Hubbard wrote that a person with a large amount of overts and withholds would steal ANYTHING from the Church.

But this is where Hubbard’s stupidity shines through -- a person who steals expensive items is highly unlikely to steal cheap cookies. I, for example, was willing to steal an e-meter. But stealing cookies was so below me that I did not contemplate it.
 

Rmack

Van Allen Belt Sunbather
Of course not everyone at Big Blue when I was there was a thief, but there were quite a few.

If I had to guess, I would blame much of the thievery on some of the dependents; children of Sea Org members. These kids apparently grew up hanging around the complex with little or no supervision much of the time. There were little cliques of teen-agers running around engaging in all sorts of sordid things, from the stories I heard, and the things I saw.

One time someone close to me told me of this 'flap' that occurred. Some higher ranking S.O. member was in a parking structure elevator (I think) where some teen-age girl blatantly stared at his crotch and licked her lips!

This guy raised hell, and drug her to ethics. They apparently interrogate this girl and find out this was not the first time she'd done this around PAC, just the first time she had been turned down! And she wasn't the only one doing similar things.

My only reaction to this at the time was where the hell was she when I was taking the elevator?
 

renegade

Silver Meritorious Patron
Back in 87 or 88, I went to help with the LA crusade. People were going thru the luggage of the volunteers who flew in, stealing underwear!!! Sheesh! I kid you not. I was even asked to bring extra from someone who was already there from my org!

In the early 90's when the SO couples with kids were shipped to outter orgs, this SO guy who came to our org would steal the org's toilet paper and take it home!!!!
 

guanoloco

As-Wased
I do not know how high is the percentage of Sea Org thieves is, but I know something else -- Sea Org members whose Scientology ethics is very low tend to flock together (I was one of those people). We knew a lot of stuff that ordinary Sea Org members would not know because they were told not to make friendships with the pariahs like us.

Leslie, whom I mentioned in the article, was stealing Sea Org packaged foods, he knew that I attempted to steal an e-meter, so he was not afraid of bragging about his crimes to me.

Ricardo was knew to Sales Org, but one of his friends who recruited him (Ricardo was not a Scientologist, he just wanted to earn some money at CoS) was one of the people who was running the scam.

========================
Apparently, the OSA staff know how unreliable the e-meter is, so they have developed other means of identifying the thieves. But the other shitty methods do not work, either.

When I was in Sea Org, I used to buy ice cream at the Big Blue canteen. There was a small corridor leading to the canteen, it had a turn. The salesman could not see what is going on behind the corner.

One day I saw a table with a box of cookies on it standing in the corridor; the canteen salesperson could not see the people who were passing by the cookie box. That looked strange to me. I bought an ice cream, returned to the corridor and begun watching the box. Before I finished eating the ice cream, five Sea Org members passed by the box, two of them stole cookies from it.

“There must be a recording device somewhere”, I though. I looked up. There was a camera on the wall right underneath the selling, it looked like a light bulb. Normally I would not be paying attention to the “light bulb”, which also applies to everyone else -- people do not expect to find a camera in a low-priority area.

No one was busted for stealing cookies that day, or any other day (the cookie box remained there for 10 days). The CoS needed to identify the thieves amongst its members in order to solve the Sea Org grand larceny misteries. Father Hubbard wrote that a person with a large amount of overts and withholds would steal ANYTHING from the Church.

But this is where Hubbard’s stupidity shines through -- a person who steals expensive items is highly unlikely to steal cheap cookies. I, for example, was willing to steal an e-meter. But stealing cookies was so below me that I did not contemplate it.


Hubbard would've stolen them cookies.
 
Top