Source “PR Newswire”
Author Heber Jentzsch
Date July 24th, 19841
LOS ANGELES, July 24/PRN – Federal investigators are in possession of documentation allegedly detailing a criminal conspiracy to loot the personal estate of best-selling author and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard with a counterfeit and forged $2 million check.
The declaration was filed in a Los Angeles federal court and released at a news
conference today by noted civil rights attorney Donald C. Randolph, the Church of Scientology reported.
The check was then used in the sensational Riverside, Calif., probate case in an aborted
attempt to seize control of the legendary writer’s estate, the church said.
According to these documented eyewitness accounts, Randolph told the U.S. District Court that Boston personal injury attorney Michael Flynn, long-time critic of the church, secretly hired a forger to pass a counterfeit $2 million check against Hubbard’s account, the church reported.
Randolph charged that Flynn then used his own felony to initiate the sensationalized 1982 probate case brought by Hubbard’s estranged son, Ronald E. DeWolf, to argue that the best-selling author’s estate was in jeopardy and should be seized.
The attempt, failed, however, when the court threw Flynn’s case out and ordered
DeWolf, a 50-year-old Nevada apartment house manager, to pay all costs. Flynn was found in contempt of court during the proceeding for violating court instructions, the church reported.
To finance his attack, according to Randolph, Flynn created Flynn Associates and Management Co. (FAMCO) and tried to sell shares on the promise that profit would be made by capturing Hubbard’s estate through a series of “frivolous suits” designed to generate so much “adverse publicity” against Scientoloy and Hubbard that the church would be forced to settle for millions of dollars, the church claimed.
The forgery and probate scheme, Randolph said, was but one part of the Flynn conspiracy now in the hands of several federal agencies.
Randolph disclosed details of the check forgery scheme in papers filed in a suit brought
against Flynn’s brother, Kevin, and FAMCO in Central District Court for violating the civil rights of Scientologist Steve Miller of Los Angeles. Flynn is an officer and director
of FAMCO.
Randolph said that after gaining access to the Bank of New England, where Hubbard had an account, Flynn illegally obtained sample checks and then hired Ala Tamimi – who Randolph claimed was a known forger, living in Boston – to counterfeit and forge a $2 million check on Hubbard’s account at the Bank of New England in Boston.
Church attorneys also cited newspaper accounts describing the involvement of the same
Bank of New England in another $2 million forgery case where a contact inside the bank made confidential information available to a disbarred Boston-area attorney in a gem fraud.
In a signed, fingerprinted and notarized declaration given in Italy and witnessed by his
attorney – now in the possession of federal prosecutors – Tamimi related how Flynn had
promised him $400,000 to pass the check and transfer the $2 million from the account of the legendary writer to an overseas account that Flynn would later designate.
Tamimi then used his brother Akil to try and cash the forged check in New York. Randolph said that according to his own sworn statement, also in federal hands, Akil was very nervous during his visit to the bank, failed to produce proper identification papers, and left the $2 million check at the bank, saying he would return with proper identification the following day.
Flynn’s plot was thwarted, according to the Randolph affidavit, when Akil panicked and failed to return. Meanwhile, Hubbard’s business managers learned about the check and quickly alerted the bank to stop payment. Tamimi fled the country while his brother Akil disappeared into Maine with the help of one of Flynn’s men, according to the filed affidavit.
Randolph told the court that Flynn later used his own aborted plan to file the California probate petition with DeWolf in 1982, when he tried to shift the blame for the crime to Scientologists, claiming it proved that Hubbard’s estate should be seized by the court in order to allegedly protect it from Scientologists.
Church of Scientology attorney John Peterson stated that a portion of the results of the
international inquiry were made available to Randolph and his client when Kevin Flynn attacked the church in the Miller case.
According to Peterson, the affidavits “are but one small part of the evidence collected and turned over to federal officials. We have eyewitnesses, documents and photographs that leave not one shred of doubt.”
Peterson noted that the investigation of the criminal conspiracy to loot Hubbard’s estate was initiated earlier this year with a series of full-page ads in a number of national newspapers, including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal, offering a $100,000 reward for information about the forged check. “Private investigators operating in four countries from subsequent leads finally uncovered Flynn’s conspiracy,” the church attorney said.
Peterson added that Flynn was an unknown personal-injury attorney until he tapped Hubbard’s popularity, and that he “had earlier demanded that the church pay him $1.6 million to stop suing the organization. When the church refused to pay, Flynn devised and carried out the forgery plot and the probate petition to plunder Hubbard’s estate.
Contact – Heber Jentzsch of the Church of Scientology at 213-666-5570, or John Peterson or Donald C. Randolph at 213-659-9965 and 213-474-6020, respectively, for the Church of Scientology.
Notes
- Retrieved on September 22, 2014 from www.xenufrance.net/osa-so-called-press-releases-year-1984.pdf ↩︎