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NESARA FRAUD SCAM EXPOSED
Thu Jul 29, 2004 15:44
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Tribnet.com - News
http://www.tribnet.com/news/story/5314164p-5252027c.html 


BRUCE KELLMAN | THE NEWS TRIBUNE


Shaini Goodwin, aka Dove of Oneness, works on her Web site for NESARA, a secret law she claims exists. The Shelton resident won't allow photos of her face because she doesn't want to be recognized.



Snared by a cybercult queen SEAN ROBINSON; The News Tribune Shaini Goodwin lies like a lover, and people pay to listen. Her whispers promise the irresistible: peace, wealth and forgiven credit card debt.

She is a star only the Internet could create - queen of a cybercult, architect of a conspiracy theory built on the ruins of deceit. Every day, typing at a computer or speaking on the phone, she lures disciples to a bewitching creed, and pumps new life into a dead scam that suckered thousands.

Her words are soft and sharp, insistent and insolent, understanding and unyielding. From her South Sound double-wide, she peddles a myth that blends old grift, New Age sermon and political activism into a mixture one historian of confidence games calls "magnificent."

Most of her readers don't know who she is. On the Internet, she writes under an increasingly famous pseudonym: Dove of Oneness.

Editor's Note:
This is part 1 of a two-part series. See part 2.
Hello, Dear Friends and White Knights.

The greeting heads every report she writes. Each ends with the same pleasant farewell:

Blessings and love, Dove of Oneness.

She says she does not lie, that she does not lead a cult, that she is simply a political activist on a spiritual mission, trying to make the world a better place.

"A lot of people who are on spiritual missions ask for help," she says. "People pledge their lives to make a difference in the world. You cannot live a normal life and do what I do."

At Dove's decree, thousands of her followers send letters, postcards and e-mails to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Pentagon, Congress and the halls of international justice. They wave banners, pass out fliers and hold demonstrations on three continents, demanding announcement of a secret law that doesn't exist, anticipating the delivery of easy fortunes that never come.

Some have been conned before. They are being conned again, but telling them is useless. They ignore weary government officials who repeatedly say there is no secret law to announce. They scorn experts in fraud and high finance who tell them they're chasing shadows.

Instead, they put their trust in Goodwin, 57, who has declared bankruptcy at least once, owes the IRS $12,000 and lives in her ailing mother's mobile home in Shelton.

Her latest venture might be more profitable. She sells false hope.

It's not a crime. It's a corporation. Goodwin never mentions it to her followers, but she has a Washington state business license, granted in 2002 for a $20 fee. Her corporate category - computer services. Her corporate name - Dove. Her corporate address - a hole-in-the-wall mail drop in Olympia.

This is where her followers send money, addressed to her Internet persona. Now and then, she asks for "gifts" to cover the costs of her daily "Dove Reports." For those who send such indulgences, she provides explicit instructions:

"Please address your envelope EXACTLY as above or your envelope may not be delivered," she writes. "Also, please REPLY to this message telling me you are sending me a financial gift. You may make checks or money orders payable to 'Dove.'"

It's legal. No law prevents her from waving a cardboard sign on the shoulder of the information highway. The money comes - how much, only Goodwin knows, and she isn't telling. She says she asks for money only when she really needs it. If she lives high, she hides it well. The mobile home is no mansion.

But money isn't the only gift she receives. She also harvests something equally precious: believers.

The secret law

Four weeks ago, as filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" opened across the nation, Goodwin's acolytes stood by theater doors, handing out sheets of paper headed with a mysterious acronym - NESARA.

The word appears on purple fliers stacked on a shelf outside an Olympia cafe; on banners unfurled weekly at the World Court in The Netherlands; on signs carried by demonstrators in Texas, Chicago and South America; scrawled in the sand on beaches in Australia; and on the sides of rolling billboards in Washington, D.C.

It stands for the secret law, the one Dove claims Congress passed four years ago. The one that abolishes income taxes, forgives mortgages, zeroes out credit cards and declares peace.

The media can't talk about it, she says. Only Dove knows the truth about NESARA, and as she solemnly explains, it's dangerous information. That's why she has a secret identity.

"Hardly anyone knows my name," she says. "I'm the Deep Throat of the Northwest."

She shows up on radio occasionally, giving interviews to late-night talk show hosts across America who chat about crop circles, UFOs and conspiracy theories. In those broadcasts, she claims connections with highly placed sources among leaders of government and high finance, and knowledge of a war between the forces of good and evil over the secret NESARA law.

She has embroidered the saga for the last four years, writing more than 1,000 Internet reports, recording hundreds of "voice reports" on a Seattle telephone line, giving interviews on radio stations from Alaska to Vermont.

She claims more than 15,000 subscribers to her reports, and 300,000 readers worldwide. Between 5,000 and 10,000 of them are in Western Washington. The numbers cannot be verified, but her online presence suggests an international following. Her reports are translated into Dutch, Korean, German, French and Spanish, and published on Web sites based in America, Canada and Europe.

Her long-running tale is a curtain - a veil that covers a con. She waves the so-called secret law like a winning lottery ticket, telling her followers its provisions will grant them the wealth they were once promised by an Illinois grifter.

The scam that started it all

The grifter is Clyde Hood, a retired electrician from Mattoon, Ill. He's serving a 14-year sentence in federal prison for mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

A decade ago, Hood created an investment fraud scam called Omega. Dove almost never mentions Omega these days, but without it, her celebrity and her cybercult might not exist.

Omega robbed thousands of people, including South Sound residents, of at least $12.5 million. That was the traceable part. Federal attorneys and investigators who prosecuted Hood and 18 co-conspirators think the real number was greater - at least $20 million, perhaps $50 million.

In 1994, Hood started telling a story to Midwestern churchgoers. He said he'd worked for Fortune 500 companies, been in the investment business for 15 or 16 years, owned a foreign bank. He had become an expert in offshore trading, European high-yield investment programs and prime bank notes. He could do a $250 million deal in the morning and again in the afternoon, four times a week.

"I'm the only one with control," he said. "I'm the only one with the collateral account, I'm the one with the fiduciary bank. There are only seven or eight people in the world that can do all this."

With a nod to his Christian audience, he said a vision from God came to him during a business trip in Hong Kong: It told him to help the little people, and do a big trade for humanitarian causes. For that, he had formed a company called Omega Trust and Trading Ltd. He was offering hardworking people a chance to reap their share of "the Lord's storehouse."

They could buy Omega "units" for $100 apiece. Under Hood's supervision, each unit would "roll" for 275 days, with a 50-to-1 return. Investors could let it "roll" again, for another 275 days, again at 50 to 1. After that, they could do one more roll, but that was all.

For onlookers, the math wasn't too hard to figure. In less than three years, $100 could become $12.5 million.

Hood sealed the deal by sending investors an official-looking document called a "private party loan agreement." They even got receipts.

Thousands of people fell for his pitch. Later, he admitted it was bull.

"Did you get a vision, an actual vision from the Lord?" a federal prosecutor asked Hood in 2001.

"No," he said. "I did not."

"Have you ever worked for a Fortune 500 company as a trader?" the prosecutor asked later.

"No," Hood said.

"What is Omega?"

"It's a scam."

The loan agreements were worthless. "Prime bank notes" didn't exist. Hood didn't own a bank and had no experience in finance - just a few financial terms picked up from wealthy friends, and the knowledge that others had engineered the same swindle.

"There's other programs similar, and I just picked up on it and thought I had something I could work," he said in court testimony.

Omega lured suckers from all 50 states and a few foreign countries. Dove was one of them. She says she bought two units in 1998 after learning about the program through a friend in the town of Rainier.

She says she began publishing Internet reports in November 1999. In those early writings, she called herself an Omega investor, still waiting for her "prosperity deliveries" like everyone else. She named Hood and his allies and described her contacts with them.

The Omega pitch spread by word of mouth, through relatives and friends. Hood and four confederates created a network of phone lines in 17 area codes. Omega investors could hear phony, prerecorded "updates" from Hood, explaining Omega's status, and why promised fortunes weren't being delivered.

It worked for six years. From 1994 to 2000, Hood got by with excuses.

"Omega has been interrupted due to some unforeseen financial conflicts," he said in a June 3, 1996, phone message, typical of his style. "These situations or those situations should be completed on June 17, 1996. And the banks then will continue to process your checks and credit cards."

Scores of similar messages explained more delays. The deliveries, always a few weeks or months away, never came.

Meanwhile, the money for new Omega units poured in. Hood's four "coordinators," a handful of allies who collected money for Omega shares, piled cash, cashier's checks and money orders into cardboard boxes. The biggest producers collected between $60,000 and $100,000 per week.

They laundered the money through banks in Texas, California, Illinois and the United Arab Emirates, then spent it on themselves. Hood bought a fleet of classic cars, and handed out interest-free loans to friends and family members who bought houses and businesses.

The messenger

Washington was an Omega stronghold. Only California and Texas ranked higher in the list of documented victims. Within the state, the majority of victims lived in and around Yelm.

"It proliferated throughout this entire town," said resident Emily French, whose mother gave $1,100 to Omega.

"It was just by word of mouth," said Rainier resident Frances Motyer, who lost $4,500. "Some friends of ours told us, and when we turned around to talk to other people about it, they already knew."

The victims didn't always fit the stereotype of elderly shut-ins wooed by smooth-talking grifters. Joseph Dispenza, a chiropractor from Rainier, gave $11,700 to Omega. He thought it sounded legitimate.

A Seattle-based tax attorney with a Yelm address gave Omega $280,000, the largest documented restitution claim filed in the Omega case.

Her name is Ruth Sparrow, and she works for Garvey Schubert Barer, a Seattle law firm. Her biography on the firm's Web site states she spent 14 years in the tax department of a Philadelphia law firm and describes her as having "significant experience in federal income tax matters concerning corporations, partnerships and individuals in business and real estate transactions."

Sparrow refused to discuss Omega when reached by The News Tribune.

Ramtha

As he gathered Omega's threads, Esteban "Steve" Sanchez, the assistant U.S. attorney in Urbana, Ill., who prosecuted the case, noticed the Yelm connection. He realized several victims were linked to JZ Knight, the ethereal New Age guru who claims to "channel" the spirit of a 40,000-year-old warrior called Ramtha.

"I cannot tell you what, if any, direct relationship there was between this person in Yelm, Washington, and Clyde Hood," Sanchez said of Knight. "We knew that there were people associated with her that apparently had invested in Omega, but that was not an angle that we wanted to pursue, because apparently it's very difficult to pursue that angle."

Omega was an open secret at Knight's Ramtha School of Enlightenment, four former students say. They asked not to be named, citing the fear of legal retaliation from Knight, who requires students to sign nondisclosure agreements.

"That's how I became involved in it, was through the school," one student said. "I was involved in it and practically everybody else I knew at the school was involved in it. There were tons of people involved in this on just a cash basis. People were sending in cash - cash with no paperwork, no receipt, no nothing. People were promised their money was going to come in before the next snowfall."

The students say Knight never endorsed or promoted Omega. Some recall her telling students to cultivate an "abundance mentality" if the promised fortunes ever came.



SIDEBAR: ANATOMY OF A CONSPIRACY THEORY
Shaini Goodwin, who calls herself Dove of Oneness, is the architect of a conspiracy theory that grew out of a financial scam. Here it is, in a nutshell:•In 1998, she puts money into Omega, an investment fraud scheme that runs from 1994 to 2000 and robs victims of $20 million.•Omega's ringleader, Clyde Hood, confesses his crimes in 2001, and admits Omega is a scam.•Goodwin writes Internet reports as "Dove," says Hood's confession is a lie and that Omega is real. She claims a secret law called NESARA - the National Economic Security and Reformation Act - will unlock the wealth held in Omega and other "prosperity programs."•Dove's reports claim Congress secretly passed NESARA in 2000 but that leaders cannot reveal its existence because violating a U.S. Supreme Court gag order on NESARA is punishable by death.•Dove claims the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the East Coast sniper shootings and the Iraq war are diversions planned and plotted by the Bush administration to prevent NESARA's announcement.• According to Dove, once NESARA is announced, banking rules will change and "mass deliveries" from more than 60 "prosperity programs," including Omega, will arrive.

SIDEBAR: THE SECRET LAW ACCORDING TO DOVE
Despite facts to the contrary, Dove of Oneness insists Congress passed a secret law in 2000.

Here's what her Web site, www.nesara.us, says the secret NESARA law does:

•Forgives credit card, mortgage and other bank debt.

•Abolishes the IRS, creates a flat-rate sales tax.

•Initiates the U.S. Treasury Bank System, which absorbs the Federal Reserve, and new precious metals-backed U.S. Treasury currency.

•Restores constitutional law.

•Requires resignations of current administration to be replaced by NESARA president and vice president designates until new elections within 120 days.

•Requires the president designate to declare "peace," enabling international banking improvements to proceed; ends "U.S. aggressive military actions immediately, and many more improvements."

Coming Monday: Dove battles "the dark agenda"Up against 'the dark agenda':

Shaini Goodwin says those who question her word risk the loss of their prosperity.

She swears that those who deny the existence of the secret law NESARA are lying. She claims those who debunk her claims are tools of the CIA and other powerful forces.

Still, her following is growing.On the Net• Dove of Oneness can be read at www.nesara.us.

* SEE THIS EXCELLANT SIGHT:
NESARA AND THE OMEGAN DECEPTIAN
SAINT GERMAINE.SAINT SO

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