Steven Fishman

Fishman submitted a declaration on behalf of Lawrence Wollersheim in 1993, claiming firsthand knowledge of tactics the Church had used to interfere with Wollersheim's lawsuit against the church. In the declaration (affidavit), Fishman alleged the Church had drowned the trial judge's dog and made harassing phone calls to Wollersheim at night.

In 1991, while Fishman was still incarcerated, Time magazine published a highly critical cover story on Scientology by Richard Behar. The story mentioned Fishman's fraud conviction and the alleged plot to eliminate him and Geertz. The church responded by filing libel lawsuits against Time Warner, Behar, and Fishman and Geertz jointly.

At the same time, according to Fishman, he participated in a conspiracy with church staff to deflect accusations of church involvement, by submitting fake documents and making false statements to his defense team. For these acts he was further charged with obstruction of justice. The court ultimately blocked Nurik's defense strategy by rejecting both expert witnesses, based on the testimony of opposing expert Dick Anthony. Fishman pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and one count of obstruction, and the court sentenced him on July 20, 1990 to five years imprisonment in the Butner Federal Correctional Institution. Fishman later claimed that the church hired Scientologist inmate Luis Martinez to kill him in prison. He was paroled in mid-1993.

The origins of Fishman's dispute with the Church of Scientology lay in a fraud scheme he conducted from 1983 to 1988. Fishman joined dozens of class action lawsuits by presenting stock purchase confirmations he had stolen from his employer and forged. In this manner he made approximately one million dollars, as much as 30 percent of which he spent on Scientology materials and services. Fishman was arrested in July 1988 and charged with several counts of fraud. The FBI also investigated the possibility of church involvement in the scheme.

Steven Fishman (born 1957) is an American former Scientologist whose inclusion of Scientology's secret Operating Thetan levels in a court filing led to the first public confirmation by the Church of Scientology of its doctrines regarding Xenu and the Wall of Fire.