Can An Educo Follower Still Trust Tony Quinn? By an Educo Fan

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
– Albert Einstein

I’d ask any existing Tony Quinn follower or supporter to read this carefully and ask themselves honestly if they can agree with even a small part of it. As a follower of Tony Quinn, many of the newspaper or other articles I’ve read in the Sunday papers or on Dialogue Ireland appear to be too angry or one sided and instantly put me into defence mode. This article began as me privately putting my thoughts on paper to try and clarify them with regard to what me opinion on Tony Quinn was. I’ve always been one to jump to his defence, and I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing.

Although there are many people with grievances about him, there’s no question to me that Mr. Quinn has benefited many people. I would say that for me personally, my life is better because I’ve done a seminar. I have a respect for people who have gone and done a seminar. They’re they type of people who raised their hand and said to themselves I want more from life and I want to live my best. I admire that in people.

I’ve read articles that dismiss his teachings as something you could pick up for €0.50 in a 2nd hand book. I think this type of attitude belittles what he does. He is a highly skilled teacher who can take basic teachings (borrowed from Zen Buddhism and Christianity, New Age, NLP, Pop Psychology) and put them across in a very simple way that will help anybody in the room understand these things in a new way. I’ve seen several people who were very sceptical going on seminars and coming away very impressed by him afterwards. There’s a reason for this; he has a talent in convincing and persuading (some might say hypnotising) his audience of what he wants them to believe. He is fantastic at simplifying things and putting them across in a way that seems new and interesting, even to people not particularly interested in personal growth.

However, it’s important to separate it out and see that this is not a defence against other misbehaviour. I think that’s why many people don’t question it too much when they see things about Mr. Quinn they are uncomfortable with. We associate Quinn with a high point in our lives and this association may cause us to not see his faults and defend him against attack (I’ve felt that to be the case with me anyway). When defending him you almost feel like you’re defending your own way of life.

I remember two years ago meeting one of the biggest American millionaire yoga gurus, John Friend, over dinner at my wife’s friends house. I sat beside him at dinner, shared some wine, and thought he came across as a decent and genuine guy. About 8 months later a big story broke in the U.S. after it emerged he had been cheating on his
cheating on his partner with lots of other girls and had misappropriated pension funds of his staff.
http://jezebel.com/5886795/yoga-mogul-turns-out-to-be-a-total-scumbag
I then read an article by one of his followers where she was disassociating herself from him.
http://bernadettebirney.com/2012/03/moments-i-might-have-spoken-up-but-didnt.html

She pointed out that she had noticed things over several years that she had become uncomfortable with but as she saw him being part of a greater good, she turned a blind eye to them. She later realised that by continuing to endorse and support a person that was causing harm, that she and her silence and complicity were also part of the problem. John Friend has helped transform a lot of people and was facilitated thousands of people in huge personal growth. It doesn’t mean that it’s ok for him to be dishonest and misappropriate their money. “Spiritual” or Seminar leaders getting too powerful and abusing their position it turns out is a very common thing.

It reminded me about all many things I’m uncomfortable with about Tony Quinn that I hadn’t really given too much attention to, or had just passed off or ignored, denied or didn’t want to believe or connect the dots. I’ve found it all to be a some what confusing experience. On one hand I did what I believed at the time was a fantastic seminar from what appeared to be an all round fantastic guy. On the other hand I began seeing too much incongruence between what he said and what he did. There are too many things I noticed about him and his organisation that caused me to have question marks about both him and the success level he claims. It was even hard to start writing this down as I noticed my mind spontaneously jumping to his defence all the time until I had to keep mentally taking a step back and imagining that the person I’m discussing is not Tony Quinn, but someone else, and asking myself how would I view it then? Here are the things that caused me to start having questions about him:

Role Model Guy
For years at Sunday seminars Quinn put a certain guy on a pedestal and continually talked about how great he was and implied we could be more like him. The reason he was allegedly so great is because he was so good at selling seminars. I’d be listening to this almost feeling inferior for not being a great guy like this role model. However, my own direct experience of this role model is that he was not a genuine, honest or decent person. I felt serious incongruence between my own direct experience and Tony’s proclaiming from the pulpit about how great he was. I always thought it was wrong of Tony to put him on this pedestal. It’s pretty apparent that Tony put him on this pedestal as he was so good at selling seminars and he wanted to get everyone else focused on this goal even if it meant holding someone dishonest like this up as a role model. This was one of the first eye openers to me about how Quinn may not be as genuine as I hoped he would be. I wasn’t in any way surprised when a few years later it emerged that this great role model had been secretly stealing money from his business and was fired by Quinn (before reappearing later in the UK and getting a lot of UK people on seminars.) To take the example away from Tony Quinn, imagine you go to a church every Sunday where the preacher praises a certain member of the group every week with comments like “maybe you can be more like a Peter”. However, if you really didn’t trust this guy “Peter” (not HIS real name), then you’d be wondering why the preacher praised him so much. When you realised that “Peter” was one of the preachers top sources of income, they you might start to understand why the preacher wanted everyone to be like him, and you might start to distrust the integrity of the preacher. With hindsight, I should have paid more attention to this red flag when I noticed it. However, I wasn’t in a place where I would even consider questioning Tony.

Exclusiveness of His Teachings.

With the way he talks, you’re made to feel like nobody else has the answer only him. You’re practically discouraged from reading other books or attending other seminars. Dali Lama etc just don’t know what they’re doing, but he does. I remember a guy from my 1st seminar told me quietly a year later he did a retreat with Eckhart Tolle and not to tell anybody. He was nervous other Educoists would be disapproving of him for doing another course. I remember a friend of mine was really put off the seminar when she picked up on the language of one of the people telling her about it and saw the exclusive nature of it. She told me it bothered her and now that I think about it, I agree with her.

This is a biggie for me when it comes to Quinn.

In one breath he’s telling you you’re “life”(God) and you have the answer but in the next breath he criticises almost every spiritual teacher on the planet except Buddha & Jesus. Once I remember him saying [paraphrase]: “I don’t think Buddha would have put this across as well as I did there”

He’s subtlety trying to get the group to mentally put him on the same page as Buddha.

Hypnotising People to sell seminars
On my seminar, we were effectively hypnotised to sell seminars. i.e. we were put into a state of deep relaxation and given an NLP program which included that we get excited about getting more people on seminars. Yes, it was presented in a way that made it seem like it was our goal and we were helping people, but we may as well call it what it was: hypnotising us to get more people to spend €19,000 on one of his seminars. Along with my love of this type of material (from Quinn and others) this would have contributed to me pressuring others into getting them on a seminar. I now regret the way I pushed Tony Quinn seminars on so e friends and family and perhaps I need to apologise to one or two people for being too pushy about it. I don’t foresee Quinn apologising to me for unwittingly hypnotising me to become his salesperson.

Multiple Seminars
I know lots of people who have done lots of seminars and have repeated several times. Did all those additional seminars really make a lasting and significant positive difference? In my opinion, the main net effect of many of the repeat seminars is that the attendees are poorer (possibly burdened with years of paying the money back) and Quinn is richer. Given that these people have probably been hypnotised to get more people on seminars and several may be financially burdened for years afterwards I don’t think it’s fair orresponsible of Quinn. It almost reminds me a little of one of those Indian spiritual gurus who’s very rich and has a lavish lifestyle supported by a groupof poor devout followers. Somebody else said to me that Quinn is like an irresponsible bar man continuing to serve a drunk who isn’t aware that they’ve already had too much. Considering the hypnosis we’ve been through, I don’t think it’s a million miles from the truth. People have pointed out to me that the organisation doesn’t aggressively pursue seminar attendees who haven’t paid. It certainly wouldn’t be good PR.

“Mind Masters”Attendees:
This doesn’t apply to everyone as I know several people who have actually found benefit from this €50,000 seminar. I’ve noticed too many people on very low incomes attending these seminars. Fair enough, people have freewill and are entitled to make their own mistakes, but with the nature of what he claims he is doing in terms of helping people, Quinn should have some sort of responsibility to make sure that by and large, people are benefiting. What concerned me was seeing two people on really low incomes (out of work teacher and gym instructor) who were already on a regular beginners seminar (both multiple repeat attendees by the way). The numbers for the next mind masters were very low and these two were convinced to stay on for the “mind masters”. I was annoyed when I become aware of this as the two people had already been on several seminars and barely had two red cents to rub together. I know that doing another seminar wasn’t going to do them any good. Tony had another 100kor so credit and they’ve got about a 100k burden between them holding them back. This bothered me. There are lots of others who work for low incomes in the shops and seem to have gone on these 50k seminars and don’t seem to be financially better off but are likely worse off because of it. How many of the people now working in the shops who have done mind masters seminars have genuinely made an additional 50k in after tax profit because of what they learned on this seminar? Seriously? I’d think next to none. However, I’m guessing they felt a huge amount of peer pressure to do it and were made to feel like it’s something that was going to be very important to advance their lives.

Other Attendees
Although the seminar has some useful information and I admire people who are not afraid to take two weeks out to do it, some of the people who have done the course don’t come across very well when you meet them later. They could scare you with their over enthusiasm for the material. (I myself was guilty of this when I returned from my seminar and I regret the way I behaved with some people I know.) Have they achieved as much success as they like to talk about or that Quinn would like to make out? Although I still think much of the material has genuine value, I think only a tiny percentage has achieved the success Quinn would like to make you believe.

His Right Hand Man /Cameraman
He “closely befriended” certain women during the seminars, one of which I know was married at the time. I’ve seen a case where 3 women appeared to be in love with him around the same time and this must have been very distracting from the seminar. Quinn must/should have been aware of this behaviour but it appeared to continue. Not exactly an inspirational guy is his cameraman, who has worked for him for decades and doesn’t appear to have much to his name. I know people who think he is very rude and is a very poor ambassador for Educo. It leaves people wondering if Quinn is allegedly so great, why he has such a rude person as his right hand man.

Hard Sell
Several people got other on seminars via a very hard sell with a lot of pressure being applied to go out on a seminar. It shouldn’t have to be such a hard sell if the positive results from the course are so apparent. A softer hard sell I got one day was from a nice lady (who I like, and who genuinely believed what she was saying), was trying to get me to go for the sake of helping out Quinn and she felt pity for him trying to continue his important work and only having a few people in front of him to hear his message.

Qualifications:

Do you really believe“Dr. Quinn” has a real genuine Ph.D, and not an order off the Internet version?Look at the Wikipedia article specifically on “Dr. of Clinincal Hypnotherapy” According to this piece;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Clinical_Hypnotherapy

“In most USA states, itis a criminal offence to use the title “Doctor” if the doctorate is received from an unaccredited institution” There is even a reference to the psychologist Dr. Steve Eichel, who managed to obtain a hypnotherapy degree for his cat, “Zoe.”

I think it’s disingenuous to misrepresent yourself as a “Dr.”, especially if you’re promoting yourself as a spiritual teacher while trying to put yourself on the same level as Buddha and put down the Dali Lama. He’s clever enough to mostly avoid outright lies but I’m seeing a consistent trend of serious exaggeration and misrepresentation, bordering on lies.

Supplement Business
I was at the Sunday meeting maybe around 2002 or so where he was introducing the new supplement business for people to get involved in a monthly payment (or something along those lines). He presented it as a no brainer for making money and was inferring we’d be stupid for not taking it up. I thought his approach and attitude was demeaning to his followers. It later turned out people weren’t making money from this and it didn’t take too long for this apparent money maker to fizzle out. Why did he pressure his loyal followers into a scheme that wasn’t worthwhile and almost make them feel stupid if they didn’t think it was great idea? I lost a lot of respect for him that day.

Results from those close to him
It’s disheartening to see so many people in his inner circle who have devoted their lives to him and his Educo message of wealth and abundance but they’re still practically broke or any money they’ve earned has gone straight back to him on seminars. The Educo message clearly isn’t working for them but their adoration of him is possibly ensuring they stay out of pocket. If you look at the majority of people very close to him you’ll notice the one thing most of them have in common is, no money. Look at the situation honestly and this is clear as night and day.

Educo Gym:
I think the training system itself is great and I think this has benefited people. What I don’t like is the business model. Yes, some of them are probably successful (perhaps run by already successful people) but I don’t know if the success rate of them is even 60%, which would be a very low success rate for a franchise. I don’t know all the facts, so this part of my article is speculation rather than direct observation. I’ve noticed many of them going out of business. Who lost money and who made money? With the way it was set up at the beginning,someone who had a friend involved later on said to me “it was never going to work financially”. My response was; “for whom?” Although some investors have lost a lot of money, Quinn would have made a lot of money from them. It also served to send a lot more people on seminars and keep his business model of seminars going. Again, the training itself is great,but Quinn knew he’d be able to convince a group of his most devout followers to sign up for a scheme in which many of them lost money, but he got a big payout and a lot more seminar attendees.

His Business Success (or lack thereof):
We were led to believe that several business have been highly successful because they are using the Educo business system. Quinn has brought people up on stage showcasing their business as an example of his/Educo success. If that’s all the information I went on,I’d be going away thinking that these businesses were highly successful largely due to Quinn’s system. However I found months later that some of these businesses had later gone bust. I didn’t hear Quinn update us at the next Sunday meeting that these highly “successful” business had gone bust,along with teaching us what part of his system needs to be adjusted to help ensure other businesses following his success system didn’t fail. It also brings up the question of why businesses he a significant shareholder in, and apparently should be highly successful, would fail at all. In the recent court case involving the oil company, Judge Bannister who was not under any hypnosis to Quinn, could only summarise the amazing business system as “no more than advice to promote better employees in preference to inferior ones.”

Scientifically proven business success

The results of this Scientifically Proven Business Success came from questionnaires we were asked to fill out on one of the Sunday seminars in the early 2000’s when the country was in an extended boom. We would have been listening to him talk for hoursabout being successful etc and then with everybody in a high and hyped mood we filled these out. I forget the figures I used but I remember in the moment I filled out the results in the most positive, possible terms, using gains I hadn’t yet realised. I’ve spoken to other people who admitted to me that they exaggerated the results they put down. It’s an understandable thing to do in this hyped environment where you’ll feel like a loser if you’re not oozing success. If accountants and auditors evaluated the bank accounts and investment returns of each person who filled out these questionnaires, I’d be surprised if they differed much from the national average. From my own observations of the people involved and the circumstances in which the results were written down, I don’t in any way believe this business success is “scientifically proven”,although I don’t see Tony looking for any scientific independent testing to revalidate the results people wrote down that day (or the results Quinn claimed they wrote down).

Scientific Gym Training results.

I don’t think they stand up to scientific scrutiny. If you take a bunch of people training in the basement gym of Eccles St. Dublin, do you think they are going to push as hard in the gym (or be as diligent with their diet) as a group of people who have just invested €19,000 on a seminar? In my mind this was a clearly flawed study due to the control group having such a significant difference from those on an intense seminar in the sun. I’m surprised he got this approved by the university but they would have never thought of the valid point above. When I was in university I remember lots of people “creating” the results of their studies and getting honours degrees.

Distancing himself from failure and letting others take the fall.

I’m not privy to all the facts so I’m not sure how much truth is in this, but my understanding is that when a business he’s involved in goes under, he distances himself from the failure and allows the blame to rest solely with his business partner. Ensuring Tony is not tarnished and can continue his work without negativity attached is of upmost importance. (His barrister seemed to be taking a hit for him in court by embarrassing herself by saying she made a mistake on a key point.)

Making Money Outside of Seminars.
He remarked on a 2009Bahamas seminar that he wouldn’t attend the seminar of someone who only made their money from selling/giving seminars. He’d only be interested in learning from someone that that also made a lot of money in business. I’ve got big question marks over how much money he can make in business and not due to seminars or people he’s got huge influence practically giving it to him.

THE Answer

Every 6 months or so there seems to be a super-fantastic new scheme that is THE answer with a groundbreaking must-attend seminar and reason to attend the Sunday meeting.You’re left thinking…“hold on, I thought we got THE answer loads of times already?!” If you’re putting yourself across as a spiritual teacher I think it highlights that your promise of a previous answer actually being the answer was false, because if it worked, you wouldn’t have to keep repackaging it as something new. It’s just a bit sensationalist for something that also alludes to be so spiritual.

Cash for prayers / postal requests.

If I saw this payment for requests/prayers scheme with a Californian Evangelical preacher I wouldn’t be too surprised

Egomaniac.
I’ve come across lots of critics refer to him as an egomaniac. I’ve always brushed this off as just critics trying to tarnish him and make baseless allegations. Given all the things I’m uncomfortable with I can start to see why people describe him in this way.

According to theWikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder

Symptoms of this disorder include:
Exaggerating their own importance, achievements, and talents
Taking advantage of others to reach their own goals
Imagining unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance
Requiring constant attention and positive reinforcement from others
Lacking empathy and disregarding the feelings of others
Being obsessed with oneself
Pursuing mainly selfish goals
Trouble keeping healthy relationships
Setting goals that are unrealistic
Appearing unemotional

Possible causes of Narcissistic Personality Disorder include:
An oversensitive temperament at birth
Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback
Excessive praise for good behaviors or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood
Overindulgence and over valuation by parents, other family members, or peers
Valued by parents as a means to regulate their own self-esteem

I do think he has excessive admiration from his followers with a lack of honest feedback fromthem. From the way he talks about his parents, it appears they doted on their only child excessively.

Critics.

Just because certain critics in the media are out to get him (which they are) and they distort the picture (which some do) isn’t a defence for him and doesn’t mean he’s immediately innocent of what they might be accusing him of.

Keeping The Numbers Up
I know someone who was on a seminar around 2008-9 that was about to have a very low number of attendees. However the night before the seminar started, a group of people was flown in from the oil company in Belize. These people sat at the back of the class and didn’t appear particularly interested in the seminar. Along with the Belize group there were some other repeat attendees, with only a tiny handful of new attendees. It appeared to me that the Belize group had been flown in to keep the numbers up and help show that the seminars were still getting enough attendees to look successful, along with lining Quinn’s pocket, at the shareholders expense. The recent court case shows that BNE spent USD $718,000on Tony Quinn seminars in just 3 years. I thought this wrong on several counts:

1. If I was a shareholder of the oil company I’d be very annoyed that a lot of money was being squandered sendingdisinterested people on an expensive course they appeared to have littleinterest in. I’d be annoyed if I heard they were wasting money on excessive photocopy paper, let alone wasting hundreds ofthousands of dollars on a seminar they didn’t seem to care about.I’ve since learned that some of the people from the oil company have been senton the seminar several times. In court, the company defended this by sayingthat the employees were sent on seminars to increase productivity. A friend ofmine on one of the seminars with the Belize employees commented that the peopleon the seminar were low threshold employees who didn’t appear to be in highlevel positions. I speculate that low level employees in Belize would earnsimilar or less to the GDP per capita $8,500 (vs $40,000 for Ireland). Let saysthey paid full price for the seminar (as there were huge figures paid toQuinn): €19,000($23,400) + air fare to Europe $1,000 + expensive hotel @$190per day $2,470 = $26,870 per low level employee that went to Europe and sat atthe back of the class, taking away from the seminar of those who paid thousandsthemselves.

Even if they doubled their productivity, (extremely unlikely), or even increased it by 1/3, it would take years for this investment to pay off, even in a best case scenario. I’d say for most employees who attended and learned his “business system” there was little or increase in productivity. Be honest, if it was your company, would you spend $718,000 of your own money to send employees on Tony Quinn seminars?

2. By flying in the Belize employees it appeared Quinn may be trying to hide the fact that his seminars just aren’t really in demand anymore. Rather than face up to this and change the format of the way he does things, he appears to be using an arguably deceptive method to make them look more popular than they are.

3. Having disinterested people at the back of the class took away from the experience the others in the class who weregenuinely interested in the material and wanted to get as much from it as they could and had spenta lot of their families money to be there.

Oil Company Mismanagement
I know both Sheila McCaffrey and Susan Morrice. I can remember many years ago when Sheila was telling me how she made so many phone calls to Susan to convince her to go on Tony’s seminar, so I find the court case all the more interesting. I’m not a shareholder but my interest in the case was mostly to learn more about Mr.Quinn to help decide my opinion on him, and for this purpose I’ve found the court case useful. I don’t know all the in’s and outs, but you don’t need to bea genius to spot serious mismanagement, and irresponsible, selfish directorship of a company when it’s this blatant.

Security.

We already saw that thiscompany Quinn was a director of spent USD $718,000 on his seminars in 3 years.We also learned that largely due to Quinn’s security concerns, the company spent $1,800,000 on security an surveillance, an amount the judge called“clearly excessive.” The excuses used to try and justify it were embarrassing. The judge said “the expenditure was made in very large part for the purposes of Mr.Quinn, who appears to have hired what amounted to a private army at the sole expense of INE.”

Information.

It’s really strange that in a company he controls, hundreds of people who made a high risk investment in an exploration company have yet to get a proper return aside from a small loan from the company. He appeared to be trying to block investors organising and sharing information. When I heard this it rang serious alarm bells for me. I was disturbed when I learned that Patricia F. was sent to the doors of a “rogue”investors meeting advising potential attendees not to attend or they’d be reported back to the company (and clearly get on the wrong side of Tony) What was he so afraid of them learning? It’s strange that ordinary shareholders are cautious to say anything that could be seen as critical of the company lest they get on the wrong side of Tony. He seems to be scared of people finding out the truth, and given his behaviour, he’s scared for good reason.

Loan Release Program.

I don’t know all the details but the judge called it a “bizarre arrangement” to punish and deny payment to any shareholders who didn’t support him. Mr. Quinn, who had the idea for the loan release program and never made any capital investment in the company took out $1,600,000 from the company through this arrangement.

Reputation.

They seemed to be making such a big deal about the oil company reputation and the company value. I always thought the value of an oil company was based 95% on the proven reserves. I think it’s Quinn’s reputation they were more interested in protecting. The court case also shows that there is no evidence that the large investment that was apparently close to coming from the Middle East, even existed. I’m not a shareholder but was offered to be in the very early days, well before oil was struck. I remember at the time thinking to myself that if this is a bunch of Tony Quinn people getting involved in a business it’s going to be a right mess and be handled badly.

Quinn Honesty.

I understand in the court case he said “I don’t remember” a lot of times on key issues.If he can’t remember so many key issues when asked to tell the truth, he’s either a liar or not 1/10 as smart as he claims to be. Either way, it doesn’t look good for a mind guru. He clearly needs to “learn to use more of [his]mind”.

Forgery.

In paragraph 27 of his judgement, Judge Bannister referred to a key document produced by the Quinn/Morrice board: “I’ve no doubt that this letter, which sits uncomfortably with the other part of Ms Morrice’s case, that Mr. Quinn was universally treated as a Class A member of INE from the outset, is a clumsy forgery”……“an after the event concoction written in an unsuccessful attempt to legitimize the allotment”.

Rejection of Quinn’s evidence.

In paragraph 38, the judge clearly doesn’t believe Tony’s version of events on a matter and wrote “I reject Mr. Quinn’s evidence on this point”

$201,000 Seminar.

Paragraph 71: “the latter of the two figures [$201,000] represented the fees to permit Ms Morrice, Mr Steward and an associate of Ms Morrice’s called Mary Ann Malone to attend a13 day seminar in the Bahamas. The invoice was signed off by Ms. Morrice. The figures are inherently preposterous and no reason has been given why the business of INE required, or justified, expenditure of this sort”

Maybe the conversation between Tony went something like this; “Hey, Susan! why don’t you and some friends come on my €50,000/$60,000 “mind masters” seminar and let the shareholders pick up the bill? You get a seminar in the sun, I get lots of money for talking for 13 days, and we’re all happy”

Class B Shareholders.

In paragraph 49, the judge writes refers refers to depriving Class B shareholders of rights; “It appears to be nothing more than another example of a retreat to Belmopan in order to deprive the Class B membership of rights.”

In Paragraph 91 the judge wrote: “the company’s true Operating Agreement has been flouted since August 2006 and has been completely disregarded since December 2007” This is after Quinn got involved. He continued “The present board shows no appetite for doing anything other than continuing to ignore the rights of the Class B membership under the 2002 Operating Agreement and its track record offers no grounds for believing that its behaviour will change.”

Referring to the period after Quinn joined he also wrote: “Company funds have been distributed in unlawful disregard to the principles of peri passu [pro rata] distribution”

“Mr Quinn, who has played a part in the affairs of the company since August 2007 (the LRP, for example, was his idea), turns out never to have been properly appointed to the board.”

He continues “a section of the membership has felt free in the past to treat company funds much as if they were personal property.

In paragraph 32, Sheila McCaffrey described a meeting where Quinn advocated “a number of sharp business practices which he suggested should be put in place in BNE”. Apparently Quinn“suggested that the parties set up their own offshore bank, which they would indirectly own and for which they would raise funds to be lent on to BNE at inflated rates of interested, thus creaming off profit for themselves at the expense of B shareholders”. Apparently “Quinn recommended the setting up of so-called profit centres, which would operate similar scams, presumably in the provision of plant, personnel and equipment. Although Paul Marriott supported Sheila McCaffrey on this issue, the judge rejected the evidence on the basis that BNS’s financial statements were professionally audited and were required to stand scrutiny by Standard Bank, the Government of Belize and the other large shareholder CHx. The judge said “Mr Quinn cannot have supposed that there could be any possibility of such arrangements going undetected” and that in any case “none of the supposed suggestions was put into place.” None of us,including the judge has a recording of that meeting and cannot be certain of what Quinn said.

However the reasons given by the judge aren’t necessarily strong enough to be certain.

– Just because they didn’t happen, doesn’t mean these bizarre ideas weren’t proposed.

– Lots of companies caught in scams had previously had their accounts professionally audited. E.g. Bernie Madoff

– Since Quinn made an enemy of McCaffrey over this issue and knew she could expose him over it, he clearly wouldn’t have been able to get away with it.

– Quinn does makes extensive use of offshore companies in his health shop and seminar business dealings.

– The judge already noted that the loan release program, which Quinn admitted was his idea, was a “bizarre arrangement to punish and deny payment”to some shareholders. It’s not inconceivable that this unusual arrangement which put shareholders needs after his, was also his idea.

– The people who claim Quinn made these proposals (Marriott, McCaffrey) don’t appear to have shown dishonesty in other parts of the case.The people denying the suggestions (Quinn, Morrice) however, have been shown to be less than honest and “continuing to ignore the rights of the Class B membership.”

Time and time again we see a lack of care and recklessness with other peoples money, or “OPM” as Tony call’s it. The way he is mishandling this company and practically raping it for money starts to confirm many of the suspicions I’ve been having. If fact, the more I discover about what has been happening, I find his behaviour quite disgusting.

Newspaper Sexual Allegations.

I’ve no way of knowing the truth so I can’t pay too much attention to them, or lend them too much weight. I work on the principle of innocent until proven guilty so it’ll be interesting to see what comes out in court. I can’tsay I dismiss the allegations in the way I used to.

Healing.

He likes to tell stories of how he used to be a healer. Conveniently, I think this apparently happened when he was in London so it’s not possible to speak with any of the people who have been healed. I’m aware of several people close to him who got sick in the last number of years (one so seriously he died). I could be under informed,but I’m not aware of a single one of them who was healed in any wayby him (apart from them all being encouraged to “get in front of Tony” and do more seminars). Considering he appears to have a track record of exaggeration and misrepresentation, I don’t believe his claims on his healing ability. They just don’t stack up with my own observations. He now has some convenient excuse as to why he doesn’t do healing any more.

Many Elements of Cultist Behaviour

I’m very reluctant to use the word “cult”, but below are some relevant and applicable extracts I copied and pasted directly from: www.howcultswork.com

Anbody familiar with Quinn’s set up might find these extracts interesting.

================================================================

What is a cult?
The modern definition of a mind control cult isany group which employs mind control and deceptive recruiting techniques. In other words cults trick people into joining and coerce them into staying.

Misconception about cults: Cults are full of the weak, weird and emotionally unstable.
Not true. Many cult members are very intelligent, attractive and skilled. The reality is that all sorts of peopleare involved in cults. One of the few common denominators is that they were often recruited at a low point in their life

Types of Cults

Commercial:
Cults that use commercial gain as their base are called “cults of greed”. They will promise you that if you join them and follow their special programme for success then you will become very rich. Often they will hold up their leader as an example and explain that if you do what he or she says then you will be successful too. Commercial cults use mind control to get you working for them for free, and to make you pay for an endless stream of motivational tapes, videos, books and seminars all of which are supposedly designed to help you succeed, but in reality are designed to enhance the cult’s mind control environment and keep you believing in their almost impossible dream of success. Of course they never mention that the primary way the leaders make money are by selling these motivation materials to-their group! For more information see below under the section, “Pressure Selling”.

Self Help & Counselling:
By doing their courses and seminars they claim you and your staff will become more successful. Once you have completed one course you are told you need to do the more advanced course, which naturally costs more than the last. These cults will sometimes request that you do volunteer work and that you help recruit your friends, family and work mates.These groups specialize in creating powerful emotional experiences which are then used to validate your involvement in the cult. The religious overtones are couched in terms which don’t sound religious. Many people have been bankrupted by involvement with these cults.

Exclusivism:
However cult leaders will tell you can only be “saved” (or can only be successful) in their organization alone. No other organization has the truth, all others miss the mark.So it is not the belief system that decides your future, but it the belief system AND your membership with that particular group.

KeyPoint:  Any Group which says you must belong to their organization to be saved is almost certainly a cult.

The cult leaders need to make you believe that there is no where else you can go and still be saved, and if you ever leave the “one true church” then you are going to hell. This is a fear based control mechanism designed to keep you in the cult. It also gives the cult leaders tremendous power over you. If you really believe that leaving the group equals leaving God (or means you are leaving your only chance to succeed in life), then you will obey the cult leaders even when you disagree with them instead of risking being kicked out of the group. Exclusivism is used as a threat, it controls your behaviour through fear.

Be very suspicious of any group that claims to be better than all the others. A religious group may say that other groups following the same religion are OK, but they are the ones who have a better grasp of the truth and they are superior to the rest. This is often just a subtle version of exclusivism.

This is one of the practices that cults are often very deceptive about. For example, first off they may give you the impression that they think you are a true Christian, Buddhist or Muslim and it’s not until later that their true position is revealed.

Fear & Intimidation:

Questioning the leaders or program will still be seen as a sign of rebellion and stupidity.

Guilt,Character Assassination and Breaking Sessions. Guilt will be used to control you. Maybe the reason you’re not making money is because you’re not “with the programme”.

It could never be that the programme isn’t working, or those new recruits have valid reasons for not joining. It’s always your fault, you are always wrong,and so you must try harder!

Information Control:
In a mind control cult any information from outside the cult is considered evil, especially if it is opposing the cult.Members are told not to read it or believe it. Only information supplied by the cult is true.

Pressure Selling:
One of the most common forms of commercial cults is the pressure selling organization. These groups ostensibly make money by selling goods via their sales organization, but in reality they make their money by selling goods and motivational materials to their sales organization. Using mind control they seek to enlarge and maintain their sales force, and hence their profits.

Some names along with the bad reputations of these groups are well known to the general public, so their recruiters need to be very deceptive. They will call and ask to come and meet you to discuss a “business opportunity” or new “eCommerce venture”, not once mentioning the organization behind it. In fact if asked they might mention a completely different name. Meeting with them will involve a long intense presentation carefully designed to convince you that you could make a lot of money by following their plan. Only near the end will they briefly mention the real organization behind it.
Here are some key warning signs that may indicate a cult is trying to recruit you.

Hyped Meetings
Rather than explain to you what the group believes or what their programme is up front, they will instead insist that you can only understand it if you come to a group meeting. There everyone around you will seem so enthusiastic that you will start to think there is something wrong with you. They create an environment where you will feel uncomfortable and the only way to become comfortable is to join them. This is an application of controlled peer pressure.

Intense Unrelenting Pressure
They call repeatedly. Meet you on campus or outside your work. Trick you into coming for only an hour and then lead you into a long study, meeting or talk. They have to keep the pressure on, otherwise you might snap out of the mind control environment they are trying to immerse you in.

They tell you that they are not a cult.
This is a pre-emptive strike against the warnings from friends and family members which they know will come. Basically if any group tells you that they are not a cult, or that some people call them a cult, then for goodness sake find out why!
Key Warning Signs:
• Single charismatic leader.
• People always seeming constantly happy and enthusiastic.
• If you are told who you can or cannot talk to or associate with.
• Say they are the only true group, or the best so why go anywhere else.
• Hyped meetings, get you to meetings rather than share with you.
• Experiential rather than logical.
• Asking for money for the next level.
• Saying that they have to make people pay for it because otherwise they will not appreciate it. This is of course a very silly reason, plenty of people are able to appreciate things which they did not pay for.
==================================================================
…….cultist behaviour.

Cult is a very loaded word and there are grey areas about what is and isn’t a cult. You could easily argue that many major world religions are a cult. In the very strictest sense I’m not sure I would call Quinn’s organisation a cult, but I do think there are very strong cultist elements. I’m not sure how important it is to you whether or not“Dr.” Quinn’s organisation is technically a cult or not. I think it helps to look at what you are doing in the future. Would you still recommend or trust him? Would you still attend the Sunday seminars and listen to him relaying his same stories of business success, healing etc..?
Is Tony Responsible?

When discussing these issues with some Educo friends it has been said to me that although there are some arguably crazy and dishonourable people surrounding Tony, that there behaviour is not his responsibility or fault. I think there’s a lot of truth in the old saying that “you’re only as good as the company you keep.” Personally, I don’t like spending time around associating with dishonest and untrustworthy people. This doesn’t seem to be a problem for Tony. Looking at “Dr.” Quinn’s life and actions, I see a consistency of lies, taking unfair advantage of people and mis-representing his abilities and results.
Coming to terms with it.
When the yoga people discovered that John Friend was taking their money and defrauding them, it was very difficult for many of them to come to grips with it. He was their greatest life teacher and they had grown so much through his teachings/seminars. Some of them seemed to find it hard to process at first. It can be hard to grasp and wonder how someone so good, could have such a side to them. I have had this feeling as well. It’s normal. There’s a feeling of surprise and almost anger and feeling stupid for being duped.
How were we so duped and why could we not see the reality, even though Quinn told us he was helping us see reality?
I’m no psychologist and I have no expertise in this area, but here are the reasons I suspect. There are probably others in addition:
– For many people (not all), the seminar was a high point in their lives. They were in a beautiful hotel, in a beautiful place in the sun and leaning life changing lessons. Many people had deeply moving and peak experiences in this environment. Quinn is a skilled teacher and obviously we inextricably associated him with what we saw as high quality almost spiritual teachings. To us, he was on the same level as the teachings we valued so highly, so in our eyes he could do no wrong. A criticism of him, amounted to a criticism of a part of our lives that meant so much to us, so we naturally paid little attention to it.
– If I noticed anything about Quinn that I wouldn’t normally approve of, my mind spontaneously made excuses for him for the reason above.
– Because of how we felt, anyone that criticised him was seen as being negative and anti-life.
– Quinn talked regularly about the fact the people have been out to attack (not physically) him all his adult life but that he didn’t pay attention to the newspaper reports or what was said about him. He just got on with doing what he was always doing. The message we would have taken away from this is that we should not pay attention to these reports either.
– Much of the press reporting about Quinn in the tabloid newspapers comes across as highly unbalanced and lacking in substance. This can make a supporter, more adamant in their defending of him. I remember a report on him in Monte Carlo titled “Boom & Bust”. The gist of the article could have been condensed into “look at him off enjoying himself in expensive Monte Carlo with his big boobed, young girlfriend while us Irish struggle at home with the recession”. There was very little substance to the article. I remember a Sunday Tribune piece in the early 2000’s which was highly critical. A friend of mine knew the journalist and offered to give an honest story of how the Quinn seminar had helped him. I know people who tried to phone the Joe Duffy show to say positive things but the producers weren’t interested. The media had no interest in hearing a positive side and just wanted to only attack. Since I had positive experiences with Quinn, this sort of reporting only served to make me more adamant in defending him against criticism as I perceived some of the attacks being baseless and unbalanced. The manner of the reporting only served to make me more pro-Tony Quinn
Where are you right now with all of this?
I started writing down the list of items at the start of this article as I just wanted to decide to myself whether or not I would endorse him anymore if somebody asked me about him. This is not a case where I read one “negative” article on him and then jumped ship. I’ve given this a lot of consideration as objectively as possible. How does it sit with you? Do you totally trust Mr. Tony Quinn in the same way that you used to? The good news is that Quinn doesn’t have to matter to me at you. It actually feels mentally liberating to step outside of his influence. Similar teachings (pitched at different angles) are available from lots and lots of sources even though he is highly skilled at putting his teaching across.
To any people who still think Mr. Quinn is completely genuine and honest, I suggest you take a step back and give careful consideration to everything you’ve seen with your own eyes. There may be a feeling of feeling duped and “how could I be so stupid”,but when you face up to reality it feels really refreshing and renewing.
Don’t be afraid to discuss these issues with some of your Educo friends. You might find several of them are thinking the same things to themselves but are cautious to say it aloud.
In terms of perspective for this article, I’m of the (personal) opinion that although Tony Quinn has caused harm, he has only caused a fraction of harm in Ireland as has been caused by the Catholic Church.
If someone asks me now why I no longer support Mr. Quinn, I’d just sum up my thoughts by saying I noticed too much incongruence between what he said and the poor behaviour he exhibited, particularly in relation to the oil company and I do not trust him anymore.
I hope my thoughts can help your or others to have an honest appraisal of your own direct observations of Mr. Quinn. In the comments below I’d welcome both comments that do and do not agree with this article.
Educo Fan.