I have the feeling we are entering a new era …

Comment on Hard-hitting new investigative report asks “Raw gurus: can you trust them?” by A Raw Vegan Village Fraud Victim.

I have the feeling we are entering a new era of awareness in the natural health movement in which we will all get a lot more realistic and constructively critical of persons and products.

This is well overdue. I am one of those who sent Storm and Jinjee Talifero tens of thousands of dollars as a downpayment on a property in the proposed Raw Vegan Village.

If this information had been out there back when I was deciding whether to enter into this business arrangement with them, I never would have.

Recent Comments by A Raw Vegan Village Fraud Victim

A cautionary tale: the “Raw Vegan Village”
I received this message from Jinjee yesterday:

“Our audit is almost complete. Our next and possibly final meeting with the IRS investigator is on Friday. Shortly thereafter we will have a clear idea of whether we need to re-file our last three years’ taxes claiming the investment income. It will make more sense to send you those amended tax returns rather than the ones we have now. Apparently the accountant who did those years’ taxes may have been wrong in telling us not to claim the investments as income, and we are not sure how she balanced the books as she did not claim them. We are looking forward to gaining more clarity as regards all the financial details and sharing them with the group in the near future. This is not our forte. We simply did our best to keep the village project moving forward and thought the accounting and record-keeping was in good hands. It has been really hard to take the time to delve in to all this as it is such a mess with all the parties involved, different bank accounts, and different paypal accounts – while we are also struggling with a hand-to-mouth existence at this time — but we realize the importance of doing so, only we felt it was more important to actually focus on raising money for repayments. Answering questions about how the money was spent is not going to make the debt go away. However now our hand is being forced because we are being audited by the IRS and so it is just a matter of time until we have the type of documentation you have been requesting, so that at least certain questions can be answered to everyone’s satisfaction and we can perhaps return to a full focus on money generation.

Calling the police will do you absolutely no good unless it is revenge you are out for. There is no way for us to get you any money from jail or wrapped up in time-consuming and costly legal actions. Just like there was never any way to get any money by having that article written. Think about what you are doing man, for the good of the group. The group decided together to allow us to make the money to pay them back, on their own conference call, and to not participate in Sara’s article. A few people went against the group and participated in the article, to the detriment of the whole group. Sara Best never cared about any of you. She cares about having a controversial article up that will forward her career and her position in the raw movement. She is also part of a movement to discredit anyone who stands up for 100% raw. Please consult a lawyer, have them do discovery on us, we own nothing, listen to their advice – they will tell the only thing to do is to allow us to continue to work and get the business to the next level, sell it, and get everyone their money back – which will happen probably in about a year’s time if not sooner, if we are allowed to continue to operate the business.

We already offered the business, our sole asset, to the core group. It was decided that it would cost as much to pay a couple of core group members to run it as it costs us to run it. The business currently operates at break-even, though it is growing. By automating, which we are currently in the midst of, and thereby lowering expenses, while continuing to grow, we will have it profitable within a year.

I pray you can find the patience to do what is the best thing for everyone, yourself included.”


A cautionary tale: the “Raw Vegan Village”
I wrote the following to Storm and Jinjee this week: “I’m still waiting for an answer to my last email, in which I requested a set of accounts, and an answer to the question of whether you are willing to begin a regular repayment schedule.”

These are requests I’ve made on numerous occasions over the last few years, yet this is the response I received from Storm:

“We are in the midst of a tax audit. As soon as the audit is finished I will post all of the information on line for the whole core group to view. It contains all of the details that you want. Sarah Best’s blog came out and she said some things that simply were not true such as we are still selling spots in the village. We have not sold one spot since we lost the land.

I don’t know how much her blog is going to hurt our ability to either con’t to grow the Garden Diet Website or in fact to sell it. But at this point I’m ready to throw n the towel and retire from being a raw food teacher and go not the film industry where I know I can make money publishing films and books.

If in fact we do cease to con’t with the Garden Diet website I will still honor our debt to you and the core group. I will let you know more as we see how much damage Sarah’s blog did and if in fact we should just scrap the site.”


A cautionary tale: the “Raw Vegan Village”
Storm and Jinjee, You have consistently refused to account for the money you have received from those of us who entrusted it to you. I am hereby publicly calling on you to PROVIDE A SET OF ACCOUNTS – do it here, and do it without delay. Please.