““Once they figured out I had Navy Federal and good credit, they pressured me in a very unfair way to max out my credit card and take a personal loan that I am now defaulted on, as I went way over my debt-to-income ratio,” Adam says.”
Must wonder he knew about debt-to-income ratio before maxing out his credit card and taking a personal loan.
I would think the average American would know what a debt-to-income ratio is?
Sounds like this person would have done the same thing without Scientology.
In the end it is a person choice to go into debt. Next people will want to pass laws to protect dumb people and while they are at it forgive Student loans.
It takes guts to admit that you’ve been pressured and scammed, however. That’s how it works - once you realize you got scammed, you don’t want to admit it so they get away with it. Others on the verge of being scammed see that no one is complaining and that everyone seems happy and satisfied, so they jump in, too. And the fact that a large organization like Navy Federal is involved adds legitimacy.
You’re right that going into debt involves personal choice. But does that make the scam okay? A lot of folks will never speak of being scammed because they’re ashamed that they let it happen. Many commit suicide, which is also a personal choice - and thus a family is destroyed because of shame and silence.
Another scam that Scientology runs is Narconon - in this scam, families dealing with members who are substance abusers are bilked out of many thousands of dollars to put their addict sons/daughters into residential treatment. When they check on “narconon” to see if it works, there are nothing but success stories - you have to really search to find the truth, and in desperation people say to themselves “this seems legit” and fork over huge sums of non-refundable cash. If they figure it out and try to sue to get their money back, they run into a brick wall: “You asked for it.” “Is this your name on this contract?” and so on.
What happens a lot of the time - most of the time - is that whoever is put into a Narconon facility usually ends up leaving after a very short time and the family never gets its $40,000 back.
Yeah, these families make poor decisions motivated by the desire to do something about a drug-addicted family member, which as I’m sure you know is more than an academic problem. The fact that you’ll have a school counselor or some person of authority saying “Narconon will fix your son/daughter - here’s a pamphlet about all the people they’ve helped” is going to be a factor in your decision.
That Scientology is designated as a religion in the USA exempts them from a large portion of the usual penalty for scamming people out of large sums of money.
People are finally starting to get wise about Narconon. Their number of facilities has dwindled quite a bit just in a few short years.
“Sounds like this person would have done the same thing without Scientology.”
Haha, you’re probably right, but at least he would have some cool toys to show for it, instead of a huge hole in his finances; $7000 will buy you a pretty nice jet ski or used motorcycle!
Your point is of course undeniable: We shouldn’t expect for society to bail us out of problems we create for ourselves. Being stupid is not an excuse (believe me on that!)
But still, scammers deserve to be exposed and punished. Somebody who is brave enough to admit he was scammed is helping to save others from falling into the same trap.