What’s Coming From Corrupt Evangelical Churches and Ministries? Reputation Enhancement Management and Information Warfare. Nothing Shall Interfere with a Corrupt Racket and Acquisition of Money

A new businesses is growing on the internet. Its called reputation enhancement and is about protecting your reputation and erasing negative material about you from the internet. Its already being employed by corrupt ministries in the United States and reveals how far corrupt ministries and churches will go to protect their brand.

“The corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

David Hume

“God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.”

1 John 4:9 ESV

Several years ago I heard a disturbing story from the ongoing saga that is the Sovereign Grace Ministry sex abuse scandal. For me it represented an aggressive change and shady push back from Mahaney’s ministry. But when I heard what happened I was baffled and wondered how could the IT department at Sovereign Grace do what they did? Here is what happened. Someone who was a critic of Sovereign Grace and formerly involved left a critical comment on a public SGM website in some capacity. They actually did this from work. The IT department of Sovereign Grace was able to somehow track the IP address in greater detail and identified the individual. The corrupt ministry then called up the employer of the person and reported him and the individual faced a form of disciplinary action. All for speaking out against Sovereign Grace. I do not know much beyond that, but when I heard about it I was baffled. Can a corrupt ministry use IT to track people down and identify them? Was that possible? Does the technology exist? Honestly I didn’t think it was possible. It seemed unfeasible and something you would find in a Hollywood movie.

The Development of Reputation Enhancement

There has been a company that has become helpful to redefine your reputation on the internet. It can be hired to erase negative information and fluff up or flatter your reputation. Eliminalia is a company in Spain that was founded in 2011 by Diego Sanchez. It has offices in Paris, London, Barcelona and Chicago and its headquarters in Kyiv. Eliminalia is a company people turn to in order to erase negative information on the internet. When Ashley Madison was hacked and sensitive information about its client’s behavior, it was Eliminalia who offered its services to those who were hacked to erase their personnel details from the internet. Eliminalia has come under criticism because of how it has allegedly helped those engaged in corruption, or abuse. In 2021 an NGO called Qurium which is dedicated to digital rights accused Eliminalia of creating fake websites and back-dated articles and then spamming them with legal Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU General Data Protection Regulations.This was an effort to take down negative internet articles about corruption in Angola regarding Isabel dos Santos. To learn more about what is happening in Angola you can read the following here, here and here.

According to The Washington Post Eliminalia, has developed the nickname “Story Killers.” They have allegedly developed over 600 fake news websites and sent ultimatums to internet search engines to take down specific articles on behalf of their clients. It is estimated that Eliminalia has at least 1,500 clients. What Eliminalia has done is exploit a glitch in internet algorithms that can promote their fake stories. Some of Eliminalia’s alleged customers included a person accused of sexual misconduct, a Californian biotech entrepreneur who has been convicted of financial fraud, who is also facing new charges that he hired a hit man to murder a business associate. Than a controversial religious charity in Chicago, whose executives had high salaries, have also used Eliminalia to make the criticism disappear. Eliminalia has had links to the autocratic governments of Syria and Venezuela. And they have allegedly worked to erase the sex crimes of a clown in a European circus who sexually abused a 14 year old girl in Switzerland. To read more I would highly encourage you to read the following Washington Post article which is chilling. Its called, “Leaked files reveal reputation-management firm’s deceptive tactics.” This blog would consider reputation enhancement to be a form on information warfare.

 

Information Warfare and Hacking Will Also Grow in Evangelical Scandals

James MacDonald is infamous for bringing a lawsuit against a blog in 2018 that wrote about the Harvest Bible Chapel scandal. But as the internet evolves information warfare is changing. At the end of last year this blog wrote about the changing algorithms and how that was affecting independent blogs such as The Wondering Eagle. Information warfare has developed as the internet has evolved. Hacking is a part of the internet and many of its functions today. The question to be asked is when will corrupt ministries engage in hacking, spearfishing, or even use trojans to silence and threaten their critics? Going back to that lead story I was told a few years back, how did the IT department of Sovereign Grace learn to trace, and identify a person and report them to the company? I was puzzled as to why the person in question did not take legal action against the company for threatening their job. But as the internet evolves this blog is going to make a predication. Corrupt ministries are going to hire and bring on third party companies that are out sourced in Europe or Asia companies that can hack opponents and critics of corrupt evangelical ministries and churches. Sovereign Grace Ministries was a cash cow for C.J. Mahaney. While people were eating soup or oatmeal for dinner because of the financial giving programs they were locked in, Mahaney and his family allegedly lived high on the hog and took trips to Disneyworld in Florida. Due to the interconnected nature of the internet what is going to happen is that activity that is illegal here in the United States by corrupt ministries will be outsourced to places in the world that are dealing with corruption, and lax laws which can be exploited. There are many different kids of hackers, and some who do it, engage in it on the side while being employed.

 

This Blog is Seeing Reputation Enhancement and Information Warfare Grow on the Internet Among Corrupt Churches and Ministries

This issue of reputation enhancement is here and being utilized today. Reputation enhancement is a major internet business and the next time I see an example of it this blog will write a post about it. But some churches or ministries have entered into business agreements with internet companies who flood the internet with false, or positive stories that are not true. Sometimes I have checked out certain ministries that I have written about and have noticed that critical news stories from the media, or blogs like mine are being buried by ethically questionable websites that write puff pieces to inflate a ministry and what they have done. Buried are the stories about abuse, corruption and fraud. This is already happening and some are making a killing off of this behavior. Its already started and the point of this post is to make people aware of this behavior by corrupt ministries and churches. Never underestimate what some ministries will do in order to obtain and maintain their access to money and cash-flow. In this blog’s view many parts of evangelicalism is a business. The existence of reputation management companies only confirms that very point. Brand is to be protected at all costs.