The Moonies and the Sharks (for real 6000+)

[donsu]

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-07-12/news/feature_print.html

Fishing was fundamental to Reverend Kevin Thompson's ministry, but he kept catching the wrong kind. The easy part was luring young people to the shimmering waters of San Francisco Bay. Thompson and a few of his followers would load the teens onto the church's boat, pull out the angling gear, and start talking about God and committing oneself to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. "In the context of our church, we try to use boats as a training place for young people," Thompson later explained to authorities. But the reverend said he and the hundreds of teens he took fishing over the years kept snagging fish they didn't want. "We'd catch these sharks," he said.

Leopard sharks, also known as tiger or cat sharks, are plentiful in the bay, and at some point in the early 1990s, Thompson and one of his followers realized they could make a lot of money if they stopped throwing them back in the water. Thompson learned that baby leopard sharks were a prized commodity on the black market. Pet dealers would pay handsomely for the exotic and beautiful fish, then sell them to people for their home aquariums.

Over the next decade, Thompson and a few of his fellow Unification Church members hauled at least six thousand of the sharks from the bay, according to an account one of his followers gave to federal investigators. Thompson admitted he sold the animals to wholesale pet dealers, who shipped them around the world. Earlier this year, authorities estimated the street value of the church's operation at more than $1.2 million, making it the biggest baby-leopard-shark poaching ring environmentalists and federal investigators had ever encountered.

In January, a federal grand jury in Oakland indicted Thompson, two of his followers, and three shark dealers on felony charges. According to court documents, Thompson and several cohorts have confessed to at least some of their crimes, one of the dealers pled guilty last month, and the pastor, who is out on bail and has returned to preaching at his San Leandro church, faces up to eight years in prison.
-snip-
-----------------------------------------


more religious people exploiting the earth for profit and children's minds to stock their churches

[blm]

1. And GOP faithful have no clue that BushInc has enabled RevMoon to control

half this nation's fishing industry. For over 4 decade the Bushes and Moon have aligned to push the religious dialogue of this country into a fundamentalism that would be used to further their POLITICAL CONTROL.

Moon funded Tim LaHaye for many years, and helped him develop the mind control techniques he uses in the Left Behind book series.

Scratch the surface of any fundie and you'll find a Moonie underneath. Most just don't know it.