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. 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. In the interview, he discussed in detail various aspects of Scientology doctrine, his own Scientology involvement, and the church's response to his arrest. Fishman claimed that church staff had ordered him to murder his psychologist, Uwe Geertz, who had knowledge of his Scientology involvement, and then to commit suicide. For these acts he was further charged with obstruction of justice. The court ultimately blocked Nurik's defense strategy by rejecting both expert witnesses, based on the testimony of opposing expert Dick Anthony.
According to Anthony, who had opposed Ofshe and Singer, Fishman's criminal case was one of several in which they had attempted to introduce their ideas of coercive persuasion by religious groups. The court's admissibility ruling came as a setback to American critics of cults. Ofshe and Singer sued Anthony unsuccessfully, claiming that he mischaracterized the basis of their theories in this and other cases. The court record in the Fishman case remained open to the public.
Wollersheim litigation
Fishman submitted a declaration on behalf of Lawrence Wollersheim in 1993, claiming firsthand knowledge of tactics the Church had used to interfere with Wollersheim's lawsuit against the church. In the declaration (affidavit), Fishman alleged the Church had drowned the trial judge's dog and made harassing phone calls to Wollersheim at night.
Authenticity of Fishman's Church History
A substantial amount of controversy regarding Fishman's involvement with the Church of Scientology has emerged in the decades since the affair. The allegations calling Fishman's involvement into question initially came solely from the Church (CoS) itself and their legal representation, who pursued the libel suit after discovering that he was not in their member data or records. In August 2015, prolific Scientology critic and investigator Tony Ortega published an exposé on the Fishman Case; in which he characterizes Steven Fishman as a "squirrel" (or Independent Scientologist). He describes Fishman as follows:
In addition to there being no historical Scientology completions for Steven Fishman listed, produced, or published, many since-apostatized Scientologists named in Fishman's self-published memoir, Lonesome Squirrel, have categorically refuted the events of the book mentioning them, and denied having known him altogether. Fishman himself has long asserted that he received OT levels I to VII and VIII respectively from two Sea Org members on separate instances. Ortega, though professing skepticism regarding this, states that he believes the OT-VIII document to be authentic nonetheless.