Steven Fishman

Who is Steven Fishman?

Is he, as he claimed in a resume published in Who’s Who in 1989:

• The co-producer of a film entitled “Alchemuenster: Turning Cheese into Gold”?
• The author of six books, co-author of eleven and editor of two?
• A member of the “Trilateral Commission”?
• A “participant in a 1984 joint project for Interoceanic Biodegradable Foodstuffs Symposium at Dnepropetrovsk as Lead expert witness”?

Is he, as he has variously stated, a Scientologist?

No. He was none of these things. If you think these claims sound far fetched, realize they are far milder and more harmless than some of the other fantasies he has indulged in and claimed as fact.

Since Steven Fishman was none of the things he claimed to be, just WHO is he?

Steven Fishman is a convicted felon and an anti-religious extremist. He has a lengthy association with such people as Arnaldo Lerma, Jeff Jacobsen, Ida Camburn, Gerald Armstrong, Dave Touretzky and Larry Wollersheim. Fishman’s anti-religious activities date back to before his 1995 release from prison. Since that time, he has participated in anti-religious activities with other extremists, both in the United States and in Europe.

On September 23, 1988, Steven Fishman was indicted in the Northern District of California on 11 counts of mail fraud, arising from phony claims made in securities class action lawsuits. The claims were made via the United States mail and Fishman netted at least four million dollars.

In January 1989, Fishman was indicted in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Case No. 89-6018) on two counts of obstruction of Justice. The charges were based on death threat calls he claimed were being made that were found by the FBI to be phony. The Florida charges were consolidated with the Northern District of California proceedings in United States v. Fishman (Case No. CR-880616-DLJ) for disposition in that court.

Church of Scientology staff only learned of these criminal cases when it was brought to their attention by the US attorney’s office that Fishman was attempting to use as a defense the outlandish claim that he was ordered by the Church to commit these crimes. Needless to say, when the FBI investigated Fishman it found his allegations totally false and charged him with obstruction of justice for manufacturing them.

Fishman created an elaborate and completely falsified history for himself, using the names of real people affiliated with the Church that he obtained from reading Church literature and magazines. In short, he claimed that he went to work for the Church and as part of his duties was sent on secret projects to destabilize world currency, place cyanide in pharmaceutical company products and other similar bogus allegations. These stories are wholly the product of Fishman’s criminal imagination. These false stories included, of course, that members of the Church of Scientology had ordered him to commit the securities fraud for which he was arrested.

Fishman even went as far as to pay a street person to make death threat calls to Fishman, based on a script that Fishman had written and provided to the indigent. Per Fishman’s script, these threats were coming from the Church. Fishman complained to the FBI, who put a tap on his phone, but soon discovered that Fishman himself had paid someone to make threat calls.

United States District Court Judge D. Lowell Jensen sentenced Fishman to five years in prison on two counts of mail fraud and to six months in prison on the obstruction of justice count, to run concurrently. At the sentencing Judge Jenson was very clear about the seriousness of Fishman’s offenses:

“These are very serious offenses. I’ve said that before and I think it’s obvious to anyone these are offenses carried over a period of time. There’s multiple victims. There is choice after choice to commit crimes, and they do threaten the justice system itself.”

In August 1990, Fishman began serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee, Florida.

Despite the fact that he had served time for obstruction of justice based on his elaborate attempts to falsely target the Church, Fishman continued to spread these lies while he was in prison and after his release.

In January of 1993, Fishman was released to a halfway house. He was paroled from there five months later. Yet he was arrested again in March of 1995 for violating his parole by consorting with other convicted felons. He served the remainder of his original sentence in a halfway house.

Fishman’s dishonesty has been commented on repeatedly by virtually anyone who has had to deal with him. Dr. Albert Rossi, head prison psychiatrist at Elgin Air Force base, where Fishman served part of his sentence, went so far as to state:

“This man would manipulate anybody including his parents, his family . . . . he will manipulate all his life until he dies.”