Steven Fishman
American fraudster and former Scientologist
Steven Fishman (born 1949) is an American former Scientologist whose inclusion of Scientology's secret Operating Thetan levels in a court filing led to the first public confirmation by the Church of Scientology of its doctrines regarding Xenu and the Wall of Fire.
Fishman was serving a 21-year sentence on charges of wire fraud and money laundering, and was scheduled to be released on October 28, 2028. He was released on January 8, 2021.
Fraud scheme
The origins of Fishman's dispute with the Church of Scientology lay in a fraud scheme he conducted from 1983 to 1988. Fishman joined dozens of class action lawsuits by presenting stock purchase confirmations he had stolen from his employer and forged. In this manner, he made approximately one million dollars, as much as 30 percent of which he spent on Scientology materials and services. Fishman was arrested in July 1988 and charged with several counts of fraud. The FBI also investigated the possibility of church involvement in the scheme.
Fishman's attorney, Marc Nurik, had planned to use an insanity defense, offering false memory syndrome theorist Richard Ofshe and psychologist Margaret Singer as expert witnesses. Fishman sat for a seven-part videotaped interview with Ofshe and Nurik.
“Steven Fishman” enters the record as american fraudster and former Scientologist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steven, Fishman and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Steven Fishman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.