There she blows! More Scientology whales spotted, including some surprises

On Wednesday we celebrated the arrival of the new Impact magazine, the Scientology publication that annually (and sometimes more frequently) names the biggest donors to the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), which is Scientology’s membership organization.

We noted that the number of really big “whales,” the folks giving at least $1 million or more in cumulative donations, was down significantly this time, with only 7 of these big donors pictured in the magazine. (To mark the new year, for example, Impact pictured 22 million-dollar-plus donors.)

Well, the number of folks willing to pose for a photo might be well down, but we received some new material from the back of the magazine which lists all of the folks who qualified for status upgrades this time, and there are more whales listed there.

So we thought we’d put them all down here, as well as a few from the smaller ranks which we thought were notable.

Here are your Fall 2022 whales, as listed in Impact issue 172…

Diamond Maximus ($40 million)

Tom & Victoria Cummins

Diamond Laureate With Honors ($17.5 million)

The Hechtman Family

Diamond Meritorious ($5 million)

Chie Mihara & Francisco Sanchis
The Scharf Family
Buzz & Claire Taylor

Platinum Meritorious ($2.5 million)

Ed Marsh
The Melrose Family
Tim Stoner & Family
Brook & Nadia Zimmatore

Gold Meritorious With Honors ($1.75 million)

Bob Graves & Judy Norton (Yes, that Judy Norton)
The Kinney Family
The Klevit Family
Chieko Mabe
Ruaraidh MacLeod & Stuart Guy
The Roeder Family
Dr. Vineet Sidhu D.P.C.
The Speiser Family

Gold Meritorious ($1 million)

Andrea Abbate & the Wakley Family (Charlie, where did you go?)
The Barnes & Childers Family
Eric Brackett & Patricia Schlageck
Tony Falcaro, Pat Mooney & Family
Sheri & Robert Hamilton and Family
Florian & Abigail Laplantif
Eduardo & Celina Lima and Family
Art & Sue Moore and the Kaye Champagne Group
Mor Investments
Alissa & Ben Patrick
Jeff & Kelley Pomerantz
Kathrin & Stephan Streicher
David & Jodi Weissberg and Family

Silver Meritorious With Honors ($750,000)

Andre Adair
The Alserda Family
The Balin Family
The Capazorio Family (Yes, that would be Tom Cruise’s sister Cass.)
John De Silva
The Eckelberry Family
Stephen & Megan Epstein
The Dylan Gaines Family
Lisa Germano & Ira Finkelstein
Silvia Granado and Alessandra & Paolo Corbi
Bolke Koster & Family
The Malamas Family
Rick & Cynthia Manning and Family
The Morrill Family
Kevin & Maggie Nordenstrom
Jerry & Jinny Schmitz
Anne Zundel

Silver Meritorious ($500,000)

Kareem O. Abouzeid
Cassandra Auerbach
Pierre Auffret
Brigitte Emmenecker & Gerard Bernet
Lucile Bosche & Oscar Wegner
Debora Brown
Michael & Coleen Carberry and Family
Austin & Andria Carroll
The Chauchet Family
Dierdre Donnelly & Alex Strijewski
The Gillotte & Henry Families
Cornelia & Martina Hagl
The Lidia Li Ju Hsu Family
The Jaffri Family
Jon & Katie Jones
The Kath & Soler Family
The Me Ying Lien Family
Richard Lombardi
The Evan & Lisa Malm Family
Daniel Margolin
Jean-Claude & Aline Michel and Family
Nick & Lindsey Munson
Diane Paglia-Baggs
Adam & Danielle Pino
The Pohlmann Family
The Prost Family
Jan, Jeanett Skou & Family
Paul, Diane & Rachel Stein
Rob & Michele Tardi
The Tjarks & Talkenberger Family
Gwen & Rene Van Der Bijl
Earl Wertheim

The list of smaller whales — Patron Meritorious ($250,000), Patron With Honors ($100,000), and Patron ($50,000) — is lengthy, as usual. We decided to pick out just a few names…

Patron With Honors ($100,000)

Bruce & Leisa Goodman
Ava Paquette

Patron ($50,000)

Cass Warner

Leisa Goodman? Ava Paquette? Cass Warner? Wow, those are some names out of the past and we were surprised to see them hiding in the long lists of small-time donors in the back of an issue of Impact magazine.

At one time, Leisa Goodman was a familiar figure in Scientology, acting as a spokeswoman for the church in the 1990s, and someone who got quoted in a lot of news stories. We’ll never forget her appearance on an MTV special about Scientology in 1995, when she uttered the famous line to Kurt Loder that Scientology was “not a turn-the-other-cheek religion.”

It’s been years since we’ve heard anything about her, but apparently she just forked out enough to reach the Patron With Honors level nearly 30 years since she was a prominent face for the church. Hip, hip, hooray?

Ava Paquette is a name that probably still sends shivers down the spines of Scientology’s early online critics. In the mid-1990s, when Scientology still thought it might be able to control information about itself on the early Internet, it employed Ava — an attorney and a Scientologist — to send out threat letters to people who dared to post excerpts from Scientology’s own published materials online. Her letters became so prevalent, they were referred to as “Avagrams.”

Another relic of the 90s, Ava is still apparently forking over money to the church.

Cass Warner is a hardcore Scientologist as well as a member of the Hollywood clan that founded Warner Studios. She’s pretty well known for her rabid support of the church — she even put out an unhinged letter to ABC in 2017 for Scientology’s attack-dog “STAND League” — but we can’t help being a bit surprised that a wealthy filmmaker from a wealthy filmmaker family has only managed to fork out a measly $50,000 in donations to the IAS after decades in the church. What gives, Cass?

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