Day: December 3, 2024

TWICE IN MY LIFE I’ve experienced political realities so implausibly sinister, I mistook them for bad dreams. Both incidents involved my former congresswoman, Tulsi Gabbard.

The first was in January 2017. I’d been digging into wild whispers from some neighbors that Gabbard was in a money laundering cult in our community. I was a former journalist turned teacher with zero interest in political reporting at the time. I had just moved from Kauai Island to Kailua, in Windward Oahu. When one Kailua neighbor learned of my financial reporting background, he encouraged me to figure out “what’s up with the money laundering.”

I did have solid financial investigative reporting training from the University of California at Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism, and I had done a brief stint with Bloomberg News in Singapore. I’d long ago left the trade, though, to become a special educator, a career change I wrote about for The New York Times in 2008. I had no plans to return to it.

A Death in Kailua Bay

The one neighbor, a surfer, was particularly earnest, though, repeatedly asking if I’d looked into “the cult” yet. He complained that local news had been tepid on it, even though he and others had heard rumors for decades about its alleged “massive money laundering.” And it wasn’t as if its members kept a low profile in Kailua Bay. They flagrantly violated surfer etiquette, he said. They sped around in souped-up Zodiac boats, and one, he alleged, had recently struck and killed his friend in a reckless boating incident. He also claimed this cult owned a local health food store, Down to Earth.

I thought part of my neighbor’s story was likely a ‘coconut wireless’ rumor, but out of respect for his loss of a friend, I began digging. I found that Sri Shim, a native Hawaiian florist and skilled waterman, was in fact spearfishing in Kailua Bay in January 2016, when a speeding Zodiac’s propeller struck and killed him. In the aftermath, online Kailua community groups were abuzz about “the cult” and “the cult boat.” Many said an incident like this was inevitable, given the long-time reckless behavior of “the cult members” in the water. 

Although these community commentators did not mention Hinduism, multiple new online accounts kept popping up defending the group with seemingly disingenuous claims of “Hinduphobia.” The boat’s driver, Sai Hansen, was allegedly part of a group in Kailua called Science of Identity. Hansen’s business records, political donations, and social media pages did indicate strong ties to Science of Identity—and the family of Tulsi Gabbard.

I also learned that Gabbard, then in her mid-30s, had grown up in, and appeared to remain socially and politically immersed in, Science of Identity, whose devotees worship a man named Chris Butler (born Kris, with no middle name). Although today she typically dodges questions about Butler, Gabbard had publicly celebrated him as her “guru dev” at a 2015 gathering of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, or Hare Krishna). And she has never disavowed him or spoken critically of him. I also came across pictures and video clips posted by Butler followers on social media that placed Gabbard at more recent, private Science of Identity events in Windward Oahu. Most Gabbard congressional staffers were also followers of Butler, as are her parents, sister, ex-husband, current husband, mother-in-law, and others close to her.

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The Mysterious Guru

Early in my research, Science of Identity struck me as just another benign ISKCON copycat sect. As an L.A. teen in the ‘90s, I’d become familiar with the Hare Krishnas through their Venice Beach and LAX presences. I attended maybe 10 events at their Culver City temple for its free vegetarian food. The community seemed kind, but didn’t appeal to me beyond its diet. So, initially, I didn’t find it newsworthy that Gabbard was tied to Science of Identity. Yet there were red flags: its expressed homophobia was virulent, its finances suspect, and its guru politically power-hungry. Despite this, Gabbard’s ties to the group appeared staunch. 

Perusing decades of Hawaii news archives, I learned Butler had been claiming guru status in Hawaii since his late teens, in the 1960s, under a multitude of names. He told the Honolulu Advertiser in 1977 that he was expelled from Kailua High School. (One clue as to possibly why: As he wrote in his 1970 self-published booklet, “Sai Speaks,” he was “very familiar with mind-expanding chemicals.”) I also learned he is the son of the late Dr. Willis P. Butler, Jr., a Hawaii plantation doctor and Communist-leaning non-interventionist. Dr. Butler wrote in his 2006 book about his late wife, “Barbara: Memoir of a Love Affair,” that Chris declined to attend his mother’s funeral because he “would not care for any event at which he was not the center of attention.”

In July 1970, Honolulu Advertiser religion writer Janice Wolf interviewed Butler, then 22, and two female followers—“Boni,” 21, and “Tulsi,” 18. Wolf reported that Boni and Tulsi said they did everything Butler told them to do. They told Wolf they would kill themselves if Butler said to, and “they would kill anyone who tried to attack” him. Wolf described Butler as the group’s “spiritual leader—and dictator.” She reported that several followers “seemed completely hypnotized.” Wolf was careful to differentiate Butler’s budding group from ISKCON. Later, in 1970, Wolf reported that ISKCON’s founder had denounced Butler as a fraud. Butler then briefly joined and split from ISKCON, after being accused of selling a temple and pocketing the money. He was at that time known as Siddha-svarupa.

In a 1977 series, Advertiser investigative reporter Walter Wright exposed Butler’s grooming of about a dozen early followers to run for local political office with their new party, Independents for Godly Government. In 1992, Honolulu Weekly revealed that then-Hawaii State Sen. Rick Reed was a Butler devotee and that Honolulu Magazine journalists had been stalked and threatened while reporting on Butler and Reed. Butler also reportedly spent a lot of time unsuccessfully suing Hawaii news media.

Family Ties 

Gabbard’s father, Mike, is a Hawaii State Senator. Her mother, Carol, is a former Hawaii State School Board Member. Both have been extreme Butler loyalists since the early 1980s, when Tulsi was born. They ran a Science of Identity (then “Identity Institute”) school on Oahu called Ponomauloa School. Per its former students, the Gabbards taught children, among other things, to worship Butler, hate homosexuals, and fear Muslims. (Ponomauloa School is still listed in Mike’s bio on his website, under professional experience, the only tie to Butler he hasn’t yet whitewashed.) Mike was also Butler’s personal secretary for years, and Carol was president of Science of Identity’s Arizona branch, according to documents and local reporting.

Mike and Carol reportedly home-schooled Tulsi and sent her for two years to one or more Science of Identity girls’ boarding schools in the Philippines, where the Butler followers are also active. I located five ex-Science of Identity sources, two quite vocal online, all of whom said their Butler-devoted parents sent them to a similar boys’ boarding school in Baguio, the Philippines. They provided overwhelming evidence that their parents were Butler followers, and they all said that, while in the Philippines, they were isolated and heavily indoctrinated to serve Butler. Some also attended the Gabbards’ school.

I wasn’t the only journalist digging into this at the time. My sources told me The New Yorker’s Kelefa Sanneh was also contacting them. In his October 2017 profile of Tulsi Gabbard, Sanneh, the only journalist Butler has agreed to speak with in recent decades, assessed that, “Gabbard’s life would be unrecognizable without Butler’s influence.” Butler told Sanneh he was not Hindu, but he encouraged Gabbard to use the term for political expediency. Butler and Gabbard both told Sanneh that Science of Identity is not a religious organization, but it is in fact registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt church, which arranges religious visas for non-U.S. citizens to travel to Kailua to serve on Butler’s extensive kitchen and laundry teams.

The Money Trail

My sources said The New Yorker hadn’t focused on money laundering, so I kept digging. I found key Indian court documents on Scribd, uploaded by Chennai-based attorney, Mahesh Kanna, who was on a mission to combat white collar crime in India’s Tamil Nadu State (birthplace of the Bhakti yoga philosophy Butler purports to teach). This was the first step in proving my Kailua neighbor’s suspicions correct about major money laundering tied to Science of Identity leaders and Down to Earth executives. Sometimes the coconut wireless gets it right. 

The global money laundering ring is where the story gets especially convoluted (as organized crime tends to get), so I used my teacher skills to sum up key points in a handy Venn diagram, which I published as a key feature in my investigative series.

As I previously reported in 2017, a Chennai court document lists New Zealander Allan Ernest Tibby (known as Acharya das in Science of Identity) as an “absconding accused” for allegedly conspiring with Malaysian QNET Chairman Vijay Eswaran to set up a front resort company and launder $170 million of illegally earned QNET funds out of India. 

Tibby is essentially number two to cult honcho Butler. He travels globally to promote Science of Identity and serves as its arranged marriages officiant. He has close ties to the Gabbard family via their mutual close affiliation with Butler, and he officiated his own daughter’s Science of Identity wedding at Kua Loa Ranch in Windward Oahu in late 2016. The wedding was prominently attended by Gabbard, her parents, and her husband, who was the wedding photographer and a drummer in the musical festivities. The groom was a new Science of Identity recruit, and his close family and old friends were the only non-Butler devotees in attendance. 

Although the Chennai document was filed in 2009,  Kanna told me last week that Tibby remains an absconding accused, and police froze his bank accounts there. I dug up Tibby’s business accounting records in New Zealand and Australia. They didn’t remotely add up, and the businesses had clear Science of Identity ties. I reached out to Tibby several times. He initially replied then stopped communicating after receiving my specific questions.

QNET (aka QI Group, Questnet, etc.) has been accused of being  a major international Ponzi scheme company that has aggressively preyed on the poor and economically naive in at least 25 countries. Registered in Hong Kong, it has faced legal battles and arrests of hundreds of employees all over the globe, including as recently as September 2024 in Ghana. A 2010 Iranian documentary claimed QNET (then Goldquest) defrauded the Iranian people of up to $8 billion and caused one of the country’s worst economic crises. QNET has also been accused of using cult-like strategies to lure unsuspecting investors and of holding Ghanian recruits hostage in 2022. 

Another Science of Identity leader, Filipino Joseph Bismark (Sriman Japadas) co-founded QNET with Eswaran in 1998 and serves as its deputy chairman. Bismark’s interviews over the years indicate that he came from an impoverished, broken family and as a nine-year-old child ended up at an isolated Science of Identity school in the Philippines’ Sierra Madre region. It appears that his QNET co-founder Eswaran is not a Butler follower but became involved in Down to Earth and Science of Identity’s business affairs through Bismark. 

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I also dug up a 2007 Indonesian court document that details how Bismark and Eswaran were arrested together in Indonesia for “syndicated estafa” (racketeering). They narrowly legally escaped extradition to the Philippines, where they were alleged to have defrauded Filipinos of over $90  million. 

Back to Kailua and Gabbard: QI Group’s website boasts of a “Diversified Multinational Group of Businesses,” including Down to Earth, whose parent company is Healthy’s Inc., which lists a Kailua P.O. box as its headquarters. Bismark, Eswaran, and QI Group CEO Shekhar Balasubramaniam are all Healthy’s Inc. directors, as is Sunil Kehmaney, a long-time Gabbard political consultant and personal secretary to Butler. Gabbard described Khemaney as “like an uncle to me” at an Overseas Friends of BJP event in August 2014 in Atlanta. Thanks to IRS loopholes, Science of Identity is no longer required to publicly disclose its income sources. Before it obtained church status, however, as I previously reported, “a 2012 return shows [Science of Identity Foundation] earned 96% of its profit from a sale of Healthy’s, Inc. stock.” QI Group acquired Healthy’s Inc./Down to Earth in 2007. 

Though official records and the internet appear to have been wiped of the information, at the time of my investigation, in June 2017, I was able to find and saved screenshots of multiple online business directories naming Tulsi Gabbard as an “executive” of Healthy’s Inc. and several other Science of Identity-tied businesses. 

NEXT: Tulsi Gabbard’s Syria Misadventure and Me

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