October showdowns: After years of delays, Scientology-related trials are looming

[Rizza Islam and Danny Masterson: Trials and tribulations]

Way back in 2015, we told you that a Compton, California family had been charged with Medi-Cal fraud for sending the state insurance program fake reports of treatment from a jackleg Scientology “Narconon” rehab working out of the notorious World Literacy Crusade.

Two years later, we broke the news that Danny Masterson, Scientology celebrity, was being investigated by the LAPD in connection with allegations from three women (which later grew to several more) that they had been raped by the That ’70’s Show actor while they too were in the church.

In the years since then, Underground Bunker readers know that we’ve been following every development in those cases as the Islam family’s trial for ripping off Medi-Cal was put off time and time again for no discernible reason, and while Danny Masterson was charged formally in June 2020 and then had his legal team throw up one delaying tactic after another to slow the case down.

Now, finally, both cases may be coming to a conclusion, and remarkably, at precisely the same time.

We learned this week that Rizza Islam, 32, the last Islam family member still facing charges in the Medi-Cal fraud scheme, is now scheduled for trial on October 24 in Los Angeles.

Yes, at the same time that Danny Masterson’s rape trial is scheduled, beginning October 11, to be going on in the very next courtroom on the ninth floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, Rizza’s own trial will be starting up.

Danny Masterson and Rizza Islam, both on trial for felonies, and right next door to each other.

We’re going to have to clone ourselves or something if we’re going to keep an eye on both of them at the same time.

Just before last week’s “readiness hearing” was held in Rizza’s case, he went on a local radio program and dismissed the idea that he was facing a serious trial for defrauding the state of California. “They are charges that don’t apply to me,” he told KBLA’s Dominique DiPrima.

He said the case was “just a smear campaign,” and expressed the hope that the state would simply drop the matter at last week’s hearing. (It obviously didn’t.)

In case the state decided to pursue the matter, Rizza announced that he was ready. “I am choosing to go to trial to prove my innocence,” he said.

Rizza might want to make it sound like a minor occurrence and simply a smear campaign, but it’s no joke to face a felony trial on the ninth floor at the Clara Shortridge Foltz courthouse.

And we also find it interesting that he’s decided to roll the dice with a trial when his sisters got off so lightly after they decided to plead out from the case.

According to the state’s investigation that was presented in a preliminary hearing in 2019, the scheme’s mastermind was Rizza’s mother, Hanan Islam, a two-time felon who had founded the Narconon clinic at her partner Alfreddie Johnson’s infamous World Literacy Crusade, a Scientology front that was mired in controversy.

There’s no question that the clinic was offering Scientology’s style of rehab services, which it brands as Narconon. And also that Hanan Islam and her children were also involved in the church.

The clinic’s own website featured this photo of Rizza using a Scientology e-Meter with one of its young clients.

According to state investigators, the scam involved a sophisticated operation that brought in unwitting high school students (with the cooperation of some high school educators, who lost their jobs), and then pretended that the kids were given Narconon drug treatments, even though they didn’t need them. Rizza’s role, the state investigator testified, was to wrangle a set of “ghost writers” who created fake treatment reports that were submitted to the state Medi-Cal program for reimbursement. Over several years, the scam netted about $4 million in illegal takings.

Hanan Islam was probably facing a lengthy penalty if she was convicted because this would have been her third felony. But she died in March of cancer at the age of 62.

Two of Rizza’s sisters, who had also been charged in the crime, pleaded no contest recently, and were given very light sentences. Nimat (45) was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor and will, in a year, have the case dropped against her entirely if she keeps out of trouble. Zakiyah (40) pleaded no contest to a felony and was sentenced to 150 hours of community service, but if she too steers clear of trouble, in a year she will be allowed to plead to a misdemeanor.

With the scam’s main figure dead, and the accomplices pleading to almost nothing, why is Rizza Islam so determined to face a felony trial on the infamous ninth floor? Was he really unable to work out something as favorable as the deal his sisters managed to achieve?

The biggest difference between Rizza and his sisters is that while they’ve remained very low profile, he’s spent the last seven years since his charges were announced making a name for himself.

He may downplay his involvement in Scientology these days, but Rizza is an interesting figure in the Scientology-Nation of Islam relationship, and he’s has worked to make himself an NOI “influencer” on social media.

He’s been so successful, last year he was named one of the country’s twelve most pernicious spreaders of vaccine disinformation in a major study.

Still (and we know this is something we’ve pointed out many times before), despite Rizza’s notoriety as an antivaxx firebrand (Alex Jones even admitted he was envious that Rizza had made the list of 12 most problematic disinformation agents), and the years that he’s faced felony charges in the bizarre Medi-Cal fraud scam that made use of high school students and ended the careers of some prominent local African-American educators, the Los Angeles Times has not written a single word about the case.

It will be interesting to see what they do when Rizza is literally on trial in October.

Meanwhile, there’s yet a third trial going on at the same time that will be competing for our attention. The civil trial of Paul Haggis is still scheduled to begin on October 11 in New York even though Haleigh Breest, the former publicist who alleges that Haggis raped her in 2013, has asked the court to move the case up to October 3. We’re still watching to see if the judge in that case agrees to moving the case up, which would, at least, give us a chance to observe the beginning of that trial before we head out to Los Angeles for the Masterson and Islam spectacles.

What a month it’s going to be.

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