Speaker 1: Last time on the Instascammer, you heard about the night
Speaker 1: a house caught on fire in Wisconsin. The house that
Speaker 1: Tom and Joanne owned and that Laura, by then known
Speaker 1: inside the Liana Shanti community as Gahira, had been renting.
Speaker 1: Tom and Joanne were in Washington state when the news
Speaker 1: reached them, but Dean and Charlotte were much closer.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen the little fires everywhere? We were
Speaker 2: on the episode watching the specific part of this episode
Speaker 2: where the house is up in flames and the kids
Speaker 2: had something to do with it. And we get a
Speaker 2: phone call from his daughter crying because the house is
Speaker 2: on fire.
Speaker 3: Minutes after watching this part of the episode, minutes after that,
Speaker 3: it blew our mind.
Speaker 2: We were like, what the heck? So we get in
Speaker 2: the car. I tell my daughter, hey... The kids, their
Speaker 2: house is on fire. She's like, what? And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to leave real quick. As we're driving towards there,
Speaker 2: we could see the smoke from miles away.
Speaker 4: And this was.
Speaker 3: At like 10, 3, 11 o'clock at night.
Speaker 1: And in the days that followed, the questions multiplied. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Casey, and this is Episode 7 of the
Speaker 1: Insta Scammer. Before the fire, Dean and Charlotte say, the
Speaker 1: house in the quiet neighborhood appeared completely normal from the outside.
Speaker 1: Dean had been to the property many times. It was
Speaker 1: where his children were living. And he and Charlotte would
Speaker 1: pick them up from there regularly.
Speaker 2: It was a really nice house. She was going to
Speaker 2: rent it from them because they were moving out of state.
Speaker 2: And so her and the kids all moved into this house.
Speaker 2: We would go and pick up the kids from there.
Speaker 2: It was in a really nice neighborhood down the street
Speaker 2: from the high school. The kids were homeschooled, but they
Speaker 2: still attended for sports and all that other stuff. Down
Speaker 2: the street was the kids' work. They worked at a
Speaker 2: coffee shop down the street. Really nice neighborhood. Kahira had
Speaker 2: her own means of transportation. Then a few of his
Speaker 2: kids got their license, so then they would all share
Speaker 2: a vehicle. No, she lived a pretty normal life.
Speaker 1: According to Dean and Charlotte, things were pretty typical. Arriving
Speaker 1: to pick up the children, the street that the house
Speaker 1: was on looked ordinary, stable, beautiful. That is what made
Speaker 1: what happened next so difficult for them to process. Dean
Speaker 1: and Charlotte arrived at the fire as quickly as they could.
Speaker 1: Their first concern was the children.
Speaker 2: We leave just to make sure and we were like,
Speaker 2: we can take the kids back with us. But she
Speaker 2: was like, no, they're staying with me. We already got
Speaker 2: a place. But we stayed there for a little bit
Speaker 2: to make sure that the kids were calmed down.
Speaker 1: Everyone was physically safe. But according to Dean and Charlotte,
Speaker 1: the choices Laura made in those first hours and in
Speaker 1: the weeks that followed were not ones they could easily
Speaker 1: account for. The Ozaukee Press reported on the fire in
Speaker 1: Port Washington, Wisconsin. Port Washington Fire Chief Mark Mitchell was quoted,
Speaker 1: We got there just at the right time. It could
Speaker 1: have turned into something much more serious. In addition to
Speaker 1: the Port Washington Fire Department responding, there were five other
Speaker 1: local fire departments that responded to the fire, with a
Speaker 1: sixth one standing by at the firehouse. The article confirmed
Speaker 1: that the family was renting the property, describing it as
Speaker 1: the house the family was renting. The article described Kahira
Speaker 1: Noelani as a holistic life coach and noted she had
Speaker 1: changed her name from Laura Lambrecht the previous year. The
Speaker 1: article reported that a GoFundMe had raised approximately $ 6, 500 at
Speaker 1: the time of publication. Tom and Joanne say that in
Speaker 1: the days following the fire, they began hearing things about
Speaker 1: the investigation that they couldn't easily make sense of. They
Speaker 1: talked me through the moments after learning about the fire
Speaker 1: and the subsequent conversations with the fire chief.
Speaker 4: And I said, do you see Kahira and the kids?
Speaker 4: Are they okay? So she runs outside. and gets through
Speaker 4: all this mess, and she can't find them. She finally
Speaker 4: finds them in Kahira's car, like a block up the street,
Speaker 4: and she's sitting there on the phone. So my sister-in-law
Speaker 4: knocks on the window, and Kahira opens the window, and
Speaker 4: she says, Have you talked to Joanne? Knowing full well
Speaker 4: that she has not, because she never called us. She goes,
Speaker 4: I've got her on the phone right here. Talk to her.
Speaker 4: She finally says yes. There's a fire. It's in the
Speaker 4: bathroom upstairs. My son was doing laundry and the other
Speaker 4: one smelled some smoke and then we all got out
Speaker 4: and everybody's fine. And I'm talking to Leanna and she's,
Speaker 4: you know, helping me. And I said, okay, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm really glad that you guys are all safe. Are
Speaker 4: you okay? And she said, oh yeah, we're fine. We'll
Speaker 4: be fine. I'll go, okay. So I let her get
Speaker 4: back on her conversation with Leanna. What we found out
Speaker 4: was that the fire was a dryer fire. And it
Speaker 4: started in the dryer. That was like a bathroom laundry room.
Speaker 4: All the true horrific damage was just in that room.
Speaker 4: The rest of the house had water damage from the firemen.
Speaker 4: But otherwise, if you walked through the house, you wouldn't
Speaker 4: have noticed anything except that maybe there was wet underneath.
Speaker 1: It's important to note here that these are Tom and
Speaker 1: Joanne's recollections of what officials told them, presented in their
Speaker 1: own account. And Tom and Joanne are explicit on one point.
Speaker 1: They do not know what caused the fire. They make
Speaker 1: no attribution. The cause of the fire has not been
Speaker 1: publicly determined. What Tom and Joanne describe is what they
Speaker 1: say they were told by investigators. Observations that left them
Speaker 1: with questions they say were never fully answered. As the
Speaker 1: investigation was still underway, the story inside Liana Shanti's community
Speaker 1: was already taking shape. Joanne was still a member of
Speaker 1: the Lemurian sisterhood inside Liana Shanti's community when the fire happened.
Speaker 1: She says she was watching its private group chat in
Speaker 1: the hours and days that followed.
Speaker 4: The next day in our little group chat, within the
Speaker 4: Lemurian sisterhood. Everybody's all concerned. Kahira's been, her house burned down,
Speaker 4: and she's talking about how horrible it is, and Leanna
Speaker 4: has diagnosed her with PTSD. Kahira said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: I went back there the next day, and it was
Speaker 4: amazing that my bedroom, which was right next to this bathroom,
Speaker 4: was completely saved and everything in there and Leanna's painting
Speaker 4: that she painted and all of their stuff was fine.
Speaker 4: It was just the one room and Leanna took credit.
Speaker 4: She said, yes, that's because I was saving the rest
Speaker 4: of the house for you and all of you. That
Speaker 4: she was putting some aura on it all. But what
Speaker 4: was interesting is that she was going on about how
Speaker 4: much she lost in her house. And it was one
Speaker 4: of the other ladies. She actually said, well, hey, wait
Speaker 4: a minute. Kahira was renting from Joanne. It was Joanne's
Speaker 4: house that has burned down. And this is horrible for her, too.
Speaker 4: This was her family home. So then everybody, oh, gosh, wow. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, sorry, Joanne. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that type of thing.
Speaker 5: After a few days, I resuscitated the conversation and asked, okay,
Speaker 5: we need to still talk about things. I think she
Speaker 5: was under the false impression she was going to get
Speaker 5: back into the house if the damage wasn't so small.
Speaker 6: Suddenly, for me anyway, everything was blocked.
Speaker 4: Then all of a sudden, she wasn't returning my phone
Speaker 4: calls because the insurance people said, okay, sorry for your loss,
Speaker 4: but we got to get moving.
Speaker 6: We had home insurance and a homeowner's policy. with rental coverage.
Speaker 6: She had a renter's insurance.
Speaker 4: Which, by the way, her renter's insurance was completely paid up.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Joanne says she had to return to Wisconsin in person.
Speaker 1: The insurance assessment required access to the property, and Kahira's
Speaker 1: items still needed to be removed before their own insurer
Speaker 1: could complete its work.
Speaker 6: She was not helpful in working with the insurance adjuster
Speaker 6: for getting things out of the house. And that came
Speaker 6: to a head when Joanne was making a visit because we.
Speaker 5: Needed to get things out so we could have our
Speaker 5: own insurance assessment done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because part of the assessment was that our insurance
Speaker 4: would not pay for the removal of her stuff because
Speaker 4: she was a renter. One of my older sons and
Speaker 4: I got there first. So we had prepared ourselves for
Speaker 4: the fire damage. So I'm there in port. We go
Speaker 4: through the house and the most... heart-wrenching horribleness was going
Speaker 4: through the house and seeing all the damage that had
Speaker 4: nothing to do with the fire. I mean, our furniture
Speaker 4: and faucets and sinks and things had permanent marker scribbled
Speaker 4: all over it, paint everywhere. The bathrooms were just filthy.
Speaker 4: Some would say, oh, well, there was soot from the
Speaker 4: fire or whatever. It's like, no, no, this is just filth.
Speaker 4: There was grease everywhere in the kitchen, which also didn't
Speaker 4: make sense because if she was such a healthy food person,
Speaker 4: why is she prying stuff? There's like food splattered all
Speaker 4: over the walls. I mean, it was just filthy. Absolutely filthy.
Speaker 4: And then there was like garbage, like tons of garbage.
Speaker 4: Literally the day before our oldest sons and I arrived,
Speaker 4: she all of a sudden got everything out. We rented
Speaker 4: the dumpster. She should have. It was her stuff. But
Speaker 4: we rented it. So my son and I, we were
Speaker 4: going to have to remove everything. And I had texted
Speaker 4: her and said, if you don't remove your stuff, I
Speaker 4: guess we'll be going through all your stuff and removing it.
Speaker 4: Don't you want any of your things? So they all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, literally the day before we arrived, got
Speaker 4: rid of everything. So when our son and I are
Speaker 4: walking through the house, it's like filthy and tons of
Speaker 4: garbage and this and that, but that's without her furniture
Speaker 4: in there. It was just so devastating. I mean, the reason.
Speaker 7: We asked this and I put it in quotes, friend
Speaker 7: to rent our place was because they were going to
Speaker 7: take care of it.
Speaker 4: Like they loved it. And And it was just trashed.
Speaker 6: I think it's safe to say that you're finding the
Speaker 6: house was a real violation. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 5: And that physical house violation was kind of symbolic of
Speaker 5: what would become the violation of the relationship that you
Speaker 5: had with Laura and Liana.
Speaker 1: The fire occurred on April 22nd, 2020. And by April 24th, 2020,
Speaker 1: the GoFundMe fundraiser appeared online, with Kahira Noelani listed as
Speaker 1: the beneficiary. The campaign was titled Rebuilding Life After a
Speaker 1: House Fire. The campaign raised $ 9, 785 from 82 donors towards
Speaker 1: a $ 20, 000 goal. The campaign description stated that the fire
Speaker 1: had originated in a second-floor laundry area. It made no
Speaker 1: reference to the fact that Kahira Noelani was renting the property,
Speaker 1: nor to any outstanding debt owed to the property owners.
Speaker 1: The campaign is currently paused.
Speaker 6: A couple days after the fire is when the GoFundMe appeared.
Speaker 6: Somebody started a GoFundMe to help her.
Speaker 5: Nice picture of her kids in the attic with all
Speaker 5: the fire stuff.
Speaker 3: Nobody ever talked to us about it.
Speaker 5: No mention of the fact that it wasn't her home,
Speaker 5: which is kind of inconsequential, I guess, but very consequential
Speaker 5: if you're the actual homeowner.
Speaker 6: There was a follow-up article in the local weekly newspaper.
Speaker 3: Same thing.
Speaker 6: A lot of heartstrings pulled, but no mention of the
Speaker 6: fact that she was renting.
Speaker 1: And yet.
Speaker 6: owed us money.
Speaker 5: It's not like any of that ever came our direction,
Speaker 5: or she even talked.
Speaker 3: With us afterward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because she made almost like 60 grand off of
Speaker 4: this whole fire.
Speaker 1: Here, Tom is describing that when he added up what
Speaker 1: he understood Kihira to have received from all sources in
Speaker 1: the weeks following the fire, he believes it to be
Speaker 1: around $ 60, 000. He is clear that this is his estimate,
Speaker 1: drawn from what he was told about the insurance settlement
Speaker 1: and what was publicly raised. None of it, he says,
Speaker 1: came their direction or helped to settle the renter's debt
Speaker 1: that Kahira Noelani still had outstanding. And then, Tom says,
Speaker 1: what happened next was something that he hadn't anticipated.
Speaker 6: But about that time, I was still in Washington State,
Speaker 6: Joanne was in Wisconsin. I was contacted by a landlord
Speaker 6: down in Whitefish Bay, a suburb of Milwaukee. She reached
Speaker 6: out to me independently and said, I have an application
Speaker 6: for rent from a Kahira Noelani landlord. And I happen
Speaker 6: to know enough about Port Washington and I've heard about
Speaker 6: the fire. So I put two and two together.
Speaker 5: Okay. Here I had listed two, three, two, whatever as
Speaker 5: her last address, which is our address. So I said, Oh, Oh,
Speaker 5: we've got a lot.
Speaker 6: We can tell you about this.
Speaker 5: And I forwarded her onto Joanne and Joanne gave her
Speaker 5: the whole story. And as a result, the woman was
Speaker 5: very thankful and said, Oh, thank goodness.
Speaker 6: I learned this information. I'm not going to rent to her.
Speaker 5: And, uh, That little act, which was simply following up
Speaker 5: on somebody else contacting us, is what led to real
Speaker 5: problems for Joanne and that whole HMI world.
Speaker 7: So what was funny is she called and she said, oh,
Speaker 7: you know, would you be a reference for her? And
Speaker 7: I went, she put us down as a reference? She goes, no,
Speaker 7: it's just that I know about the town and I
Speaker 7: knew about you guys. And I just called you because
Speaker 7: I figured you were the last landlord.
Speaker 1: According to Joanne, that phone call set off a chain reaction.
Speaker 1: The very next day, she says she received a message
Speaker 1: from Liana Shanti herself.
Speaker 4: So then the key thing was the day after that,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden I get a text message directly
Speaker 4: from Liana saying that I have been kicked out of
Speaker 4: the Lemurian sisterhood. that the rest of my monthly fee
Speaker 4: of $ 89 would be reimbursed to me. And I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: that's nice. Because supposedly I had said all these horrible
Speaker 4: things to this perceptive landlord and made it so that
Speaker 4: Kahira could not rent from anyone. And so I texted
Speaker 4: her back because I was thinking, Wait a minute. I
Speaker 4: shouldn't be the one that's being kicked out. It should
Speaker 4: be Kahira. She's the one that's not legit here. And so, amazingly,
Speaker 4: Leanna did call me. And she didn't charge me. So
Speaker 4: I told her everything that had happened to the house,
Speaker 4: all the stuff that's going on. Leanna screwed up. She
Speaker 4: made a huge mistake. Because I said, yeah, she hasn't
Speaker 4: paid us 15 months of rent. And she goes, oh. Well,
Speaker 4: I knew she was behind on rent for maybe like
Speaker 4: two months, but I didn't realize it was that long.
Speaker 4: And the light bulb went on in my head. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 4: wait a minute. You're the clairvoyant one that supposedly can
Speaker 4: see people's bathrooms and if they're dirty or not. And what?
Speaker 4: You didn't know that she hadn't been paying rent? And
Speaker 4: she said, well, you're dark. For some reason, I'm dark. And,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm just going to let Kahira decide if
Speaker 4: and when you're allowed back into the group. And I
Speaker 4: was just like, what the heck?
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 2: Fine.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 4: I obviously figured out that it was a total scam.
Speaker 4: But the key thing she said to me at the
Speaker 4: end of that conversation was, do not talk to anybody
Speaker 4: in the group. Do not contact anybody. And if anybody
Speaker 4: tries to contact you, do not talk to them. And
Speaker 4: I will know if you do. So that was her threat.
Speaker 4: And then I thought back over time of threats that
Speaker 4: had been made to other people and other people that
Speaker 4: had been like kicked out or she removed them because
Speaker 4: they were dark. And she even went so far to
Speaker 4: say is this one woman who was going against her
Speaker 4: now has cancer and was dying because she went against Leanna.
Speaker 4: One woman had been sucked back in by her husband,
Speaker 4: and now she no longer does any of her artwork
Speaker 4: and stuff. She's lost all creativity because she went back.
Speaker 4: She got sucked back in by her husband. Anyway, so
Speaker 4: there was a threat. So I have no idea what
Speaker 4: horrible story was told about me within the group.
Speaker 5: You had seen people kicked out of the group while
Speaker 5: you were a member, so you kind of knew the drill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I knew that, you know, some horrible story would
Speaker 4: be told. Because no one could make a decision without,
Speaker 4: of course, asking Leanna first. And she would say, yes,
Speaker 4: you need to do this. You need to do this. But,
Speaker 4: you know, don't tell anybody that I told you to
Speaker 4: do this. It has to come from you. You have
Speaker 4: to believe. I just remember this one woman saying, And
Speaker 4: she was like so torn, probably like me, about leaving
Speaker 4: her husband. And she was being told, you know, you
Speaker 4: need to leave him. We need to leave him. And
Speaker 4: all of these, the planets are in the right vector
Speaker 4: or whatever. You need to do it now. Otherwise, you're
Speaker 4: going to lose your opportunity. And she would never do it.
Speaker 4: So then the next week they ask, oh, well, did
Speaker 4: you do it? No. Because I wasn't doing it either.
Speaker 4: You know, I wasn't leaving Tom, and I kept questioning,
Speaker 4: kept questioning. And you could just hear it in the
Speaker 4: things that she said, that she was just frustrated because
Speaker 4: they weren't doing it. I remember that woman, because she
Speaker 4: just would not take her star moments and leave her husband.
Speaker 4: Then all of a sudden, she just wasn't around anymore.
Speaker 4: Then she would come up with some crude story. I
Speaker 4: just remember one person, she said, oh, yes, I found
Speaker 4: out that she was very dark and she was doing
Speaker 4: voodoo on people in our group and had made all
Speaker 4: these dolls and was shoving pins into them.
Speaker 1: Alongside the community and spiritual elements of the group, there
Speaker 1: was also a business structure that Joanne had been operating within.
Speaker 1: As a now-certified HMI coach, she was supposed to earn
Speaker 1: commission when clients enrolled in courses through her referral code.
Speaker 4: One of the things that we kind of skipped over
Speaker 4: here was that I was doing HMIs things and, you know,
Speaker 4: working with people. And how it all worked was that
Speaker 4: your clients would buy the course material through Leanna, through
Speaker 4: Leanna's website, and they would use a code that was
Speaker 4: connected to the health coach directly. And so then that's
Speaker 4: how Leanna would then pay you our commission for it, right? Well,
Speaker 4: I think the very first client I had, I got paid,
Speaker 4: but then everybody else after that never got any money.
Speaker 4: I was working with a website guy who said, oh, well,
Speaker 4: we can fix that. Because I was told that Leanna
Speaker 4: was so busy, she couldn't get to everybody's commissions because
Speaker 4: she was working on all these new things and she'll
Speaker 4: get to it. She'll get to it. So I proposed
Speaker 4: what we can do is your customers can buy their
Speaker 4: course material on my website and my website would automatically...
Speaker 4: take my commission and then send Leanna her portion of it.
Speaker 4: And so no one has to do any kind of
Speaker 4: administrative work. And I actually talked to Kahira about it because,
Speaker 4: you know, now she's supposed to be managing the HMI stuff.
Speaker 4: And she's thought, wow, that's awesome. That's really a great
Speaker 4: thing because everybody was kind of having troubles, right? Getting paid.
Speaker 4: And she goes, this is fabulous. Well, she lent up
Speaker 4: the ladder to Kahira. Liana, and Liana absolutely kiboshed it.
Speaker 4: No way. Nope, that's not how I do business. We're
Speaker 4: doing it this way and only this way. So she
Speaker 4: wanted everything going through her thing and that she would
Speaker 4: pay out people when it was convenient or, in most cases,
Speaker 4: not convenient for her.
Speaker 1: Joanne says Liana Shanti's reasoning, as relayed to her, was simple.
Speaker 1: All transactions had to go through Liana Shanti's system. No alternatives.
Speaker 1: and Joanne says that left all commission payments subject entirely
Speaker 1: to Liana Shanti's timing and discretion. The irony, Joanne says,
Speaker 1: was not lost on her. Kihira had spent months doing
Speaker 1: advanced coursework through this same system. Coursework, Joanne says, Liana
Speaker 1: Shanti gave her for free, while owing Tom and Joanne
Speaker 1: nearly $ 20, 000 in unpaid rent.
Speaker 4: I don't know, a couple hundred bucks. But then there
Speaker 4: were all these courses... here and there. Then they had
Speaker 4: another one of these just for special people course, you know,
Speaker 4: like the second time. And they encouraged me, oh, you
Speaker 4: should do it again because you learned so much more.
Speaker 4: And Kahira was going to be on that one. And
Speaker 4: that one, I think, you know, it was probably $ 1, 500 or,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever it was. And I do remember her
Speaker 4: like saying to me, oh, well, Leanna is, she's letting
Speaker 4: me do this one. I'm not paying for it. So
Speaker 4: she did, she saw the disconnect of that she was
Speaker 4: doing all these things with Leanna.
Speaker 6: But not paying us rent.
Speaker 4: But not paying us rent.
Speaker 6: So the excuse was it was for free to her.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: By the end of 2020, Tom and Joanne say they
Speaker 1: had accepted that the informal route was not going to
Speaker 1: resolve things. They began gathering every document they had, communications
Speaker 1: the rent spreadsheet Kahira had agreed to, and filed a
Speaker 1: civil lawsuit. Tom says he also wrote letters to two
Speaker 1: people directly connected to Kahira's life at the time. The
Speaker 1: first letter went to Gordon Eisendrath, the actual owner of
Speaker 1: a property in Whitefish Bay where Tom understood Kahira to
Speaker 1: be living, identified through public tax records. The letter described
Speaker 1: the rental, the fire and the outcome of the civil proceedings.
Speaker 1: The second letter went to Dean, a factual account of
Speaker 1: the judgment. Tom says both letters were written without accusation.
Speaker 1: He wanted people in Kahira's immediate orbit to have the
Speaker 1: information he hadn't had when she first approached him.
Speaker 5: So we put together all the facts and communications and
Speaker 5: we put it in front of a small claims.
Speaker 3: Lawyer back home.
Speaker 5: Our goal was to get a small claims judgment against
Speaker 5: her for the facts. The rent, that's factual. So we
Speaker 5: filed for the full extent of the background. And it
Speaker 5: took about six months.
Speaker 3: From our court.
Speaker 6: She tried her best to defend herself.
Speaker 5: We made sure that the suit was.
Speaker 6: Filed against both her names, Laura Lamb, Brezhnev, Kaker, and Noelani.
Speaker 5: Our end goal is what we had got. If you
Speaker 5: want to do a public record search now, you will
Speaker 5: find it. We were given a default judgment against her.
Speaker 5: I sent her a note about every two or three months,
Speaker 5: just a kind little, hey, if you look at this
Speaker 5: judgment against you, you still.
Speaker 3: Owe us this money.
Speaker 5: It Nothing inflammatory, just, hey, you cut me off of
Speaker 5: all communications, but here's my contact information if you would
Speaker 5: like to call us to start to make good on
Speaker 5: this judgment.
Speaker 6: She never did.
Speaker 5: I also wrote two other letters.
Speaker 3: I wrote one to her ex-husband, and I wrote one.
Speaker 5: To her current landlord, whom I found by just public records. Again,
Speaker 5: not inflammatory, just letting them know that we were her
Speaker 5: previous landlord. She left us with a lot of rent owed.
Speaker 5: She went to the Whitefish Bay Wisconsin Police Department and
Speaker 5: tried to get some sort of complaint against me. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure what came of it, but we never heard
Speaker 5: from the Whitefish Bay Police Department per se.
Speaker 6: They called our attorney who told them the facts.
Speaker 5: But we got a strangely formal cease and desist letter
Speaker 5: from Kahira on a letterhead that was Kahira Noelani's.
Speaker 1: A lot of the documents and letters and evidence that
Speaker 1: are described in this episode have been forwarded onto the
Speaker 1: production team. On March 13th, 2021, Kohira Noelani sent Tom
Speaker 1: and Joanne a cease and desist letter written on her
Speaker 1: own personal headed paper, not from a law firm. The
Speaker 1: letter stated she had contacted the Whitefish Bay Police Department
Speaker 1: and ordered them to stop contacting her. Her current landlord...
Speaker 1: her ex-husband, her clients, her neighbours and her friends. The
Speaker 1: letter specifically named the rental house and the fire at
Speaker 1: Tom and Joanne's address as a subject matter they were
Speaker 1: ordered to stop discussing. Eighteen days later, another letter arrived.
Speaker 1: Dated March 31st, 2021, addressed to Tom and signed by
Speaker 1: someone identifying themselves as Aralyn Shiri, a community name associated
Speaker 1: with members of Liana Shanti's group. This was received at
Speaker 1: Tom's address. The letter carried no professional letterhead and no
Speaker 1: return address. It described Tom as a sexual predator who
Speaker 1: has stalked Kahira. It also contained a direct accusation against
Speaker 1: Joanne that she had asked Kahira to try to seduce
Speaker 1: Tom in order to prove his infidelity. No evidence has
Speaker 1: been produced to support either allegation. Aralin Shiri is still
Speaker 1: believed to be a community member within Lian Ashanti's digital ecosystem.
Speaker 1: No identification or professional credentials were listed in the letter.
Speaker 5: But shortly after that, I got a letter from this
Speaker 5: Aralin who's down in the Quad Cities. You know, no letterhead,
Speaker 5: but a short letter telling me that I'm a sexual
Speaker 5: predator and I needed to leave Kahiro alone.
Speaker 3: So it's like, uh-oh.
Speaker 5: The pit bulls are out.
Speaker 4: But that showed you how she could just go and say,
Speaker 4: you're a sexual predator. You know, she's just making up shit.
Speaker 1: The letter that accused both of them, Tom and Joanne,
Speaker 1: say they understood it for what it was, an attempt
Speaker 1: to generate a story about people who were asking difficult questions.
Speaker 1: Joanne notes it fit the same pattern she had watched
Speaker 1: play out against others inside the group. By the autumn
Speaker 1: of 2021, Tom and Joanne say they learned that Kahira
Speaker 1: had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.
Speaker 5: By fall of 2021, we had heard from our attorney
Speaker 5: that she had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Speaker 6: And although I tried.
Speaker 5: To insert myself into those proceedings, it looks like our
Speaker 5: legal judgment debt, along with every other.
Speaker 6: Debt she had, was all just wiped away with a
Speaker 6: Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Speaker 5: It was odd to us because she had apparently filed
Speaker 5: for Chapter 7 as a household back in, I don't.
Speaker 6: Know, 2013 or whatever, seven years ago, gets you.
Speaker 5: I'm still not quite sure how this is allowed in
Speaker 5: our society, but we were told by our attorney, once
Speaker 5: that debt has been retired by Chapter 7, you cannot
Speaker 5: and must not make any kind of a claim toward
Speaker 5: your previous judgment. So that was the last thing. I've
Speaker 5: really not heard or thought about that woman since.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And what was also interesting, when you file for bankruptcy,
Speaker 4: you have to wait seven years before you can do
Speaker 4: it again. It was almost to the date of when
Speaker 4: she could file bankruptcy again. One of the things, too,
Speaker 4: going through the house, she didn't get rid of all
Speaker 4: the garbage. like the garbage can. And there, when I
Speaker 4: went through the garbage can, there were all these unpaid bills,
Speaker 4: not even opened. So credit cards, and of course, Since
Speaker 4: she'd already gone through bankruptcy once before, she's not going
Speaker 4: to get a Visa or MasterCard or whatever. But they
Speaker 4: were all like stores, Ulta and those types of credit
Speaker 4: cards that they just sign people up no matter what.
Speaker 4: Don't really look at their credit history or whatever.
Speaker 5: Over the next few months, Joanne and I decided, you know,
Speaker 5: Joanne's totally out and is kind of re-evaluating all the
Speaker 5: things in her life.
Speaker 4: Like apologizing left and right i feel so stupid and
Speaker 4: that's you know my biggest thing is with this whole
Speaker 4: thing i feel like such an idiot when i finally
Speaker 4: see it and so in a sense this whole house
Speaker 4: thing while horrible it was probably the best thing that
Speaker 4: could have happened because to have this happen so you
Speaker 4: could see that oh these people are scam artists i.
Speaker 5: Don't know that it was uh crystal ball fortune but
Speaker 5: i think a lot of my feelings were just to
Speaker 5: play the long game on this because to confront joanne
Speaker 5: during the middle of it would have really caused more
Speaker 5: problem than it was worth it was just a question
Speaker 5: of waiting for it to resolve i'm.
Speaker 4: More upset with myself for falling for it and my
Speaker 4: friends you know and even tom have said no they
Speaker 4: were really really good They were so good at twisting, twisting, twisting.
Speaker 4: They're still the people that you married or loved or,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever. And now they're really going to need
Speaker 4: your help. Because if I didn't have Tom and my girlfriends,
Speaker 4: like my girlfriends would encourage me to do this because
Speaker 4: they said, I think you need closure, even though it's
Speaker 4: been this long.
Speaker 5: I felt like it was time when I found your email.
Speaker 4: We would never insinuate by any means that She started
Speaker 4: the fire. We don't know. And to this day, the
Speaker 4: insurance company, all they know is that they sent the
Speaker 4: dryer off to be inspected and they found nothing wrong
Speaker 4: with the dryer. So the insurance company couldn't go after
Speaker 4: the dryer manufacturer because that's what they were hoping, right?
Speaker 4: So to this day, and I don't know if it's
Speaker 4: because of COVID or whatever, we don't know why a
Speaker 4: fire started in the dryer and how that would have happened.
Speaker 1: While Tom and Joanne were navigating the financial and legal
Speaker 1: aftermath of the entire situation, Dean was living with a
Speaker 1: different kind of consequence, one that had been building quietly
Speaker 1: for years and that had by this point become the
Speaker 1: defining weight of everything that had happened. Dean's children.
Speaker 2: Three of his children stayed in his life after one
Speaker 2: decided not to come around anymore. From the outside looking in,
Speaker 2: somebody might say, like, why didn't you guys take legal
Speaker 2: action because this child was still under the age of 18?
Speaker 2: We did seek legal advice, even though our attorney said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I do feel like there's something here and we can
Speaker 2: take it to court. Have you ever put any thought
Speaker 2: into what then? You have this group. child who has
Speaker 2: been brainwashed to think that you guys are the enemy
Speaker 2: now you have taken this child away from the mother
Speaker 2: and now this child is in your home what then
Speaker 2: he was still able to see this child at the
Speaker 2: tournaments basketball tournaments and stuff well then those all ended
Speaker 2: and he was no longer able to see this child
Speaker 2: so then after a few months we didn't hear from
Speaker 2: another one of his kids And so we decided to
Speaker 2: do a wellness check.
Speaker 1: Whitefish Bay Police Department records confirm a welfare check was
Speaker 1: filed on April 27th, 2023. Dispatch notes record, caller states
Speaker 1: his wife is in a cult now. Leader convinces them
Speaker 1: to go to Florida and abandon their children. Officers attended
Speaker 1: the address. Kahira Noelani told them everything was fine and
Speaker 1: that the children were purposefully not communicating with their father.
Speaker 1: She also told the responding officer that she had domestic
Speaker 1: violence concerns about her ex-husband. Three days later, Dean returned
Speaker 1: to the police station in person. This time, he named
Speaker 1: the community directly. On April 30th, at the Whitefish Bay
Speaker 1: Police Department, Dean described concerns about his ex-wife's involvement in
Speaker 1: what he called the Liyana Shanti cult, and that the
Speaker 1: Liyana Shanti community was posting untrue things about him on
Speaker 1: the internet. He expressed concern about his 15-year-old daughter's welfare.
Speaker 1: Police advised him that his concerns were civil in nature
Speaker 1: and referred him to an attorney and to family court
Speaker 1: to address the placement of his daughter.
Speaker 2: Well, then the wellness check ended up backfiring a little
Speaker 2: bit because the mother lied. His ex lied and told
Speaker 2: the kids that he was doing a wellness check on
Speaker 2: the two boys that are in college, not even in
Speaker 2: the state. And when they blasted him on the internet
Speaker 2: for this, they didn't even mention the child that we
Speaker 2: were actually doing the wellness check on. Totally kept his
Speaker 2: child out of the equation and just focused on the
Speaker 2: two boys that were out of the state in college.
Speaker 2: And then the boys started texting.
Speaker 3: Nasty texts to me, calling me crazy for doing that.
Speaker 3: Using profanities that I had never heard from them before.
Speaker 3: And now all of a sudden they're just blasting me
Speaker 3: with it. and pretty much saying that we want nothing
Speaker 3: to do with you from now on.
Speaker 1: The exchange that followed was made public, not by Dean
Speaker 1: and not by his children, but by Liana Shanti on
Speaker 1: her Instagram. On her public Instagram account, at Liana Shanti,
Speaker 1: Liana Shanti posted a series of Instagram stories featuring screenshots
Speaker 1: of private messages sent by Kahira Noolani's adult sons to Dean.
Speaker 1: The post included Dean's full name, and was labelled Kihira's
Speaker 1: adult son's messaging dean. One post had a caption saying,
Speaker 1: the silly little story they kept trying to perpetuate. A
Speaker 1: separate story framed the posts as, truly a beautiful example
Speaker 1: of what it looks like when a powerful divine feminine
Speaker 1: woman who has healed her wounds raises three incredible boys
Speaker 1: into amazing young men. The accompanying text read, such strong
Speaker 1: divine masculine men Kihira raised. The sons wrote to Dean
Speaker 1: that they'd grown up and realized how terrible of a
Speaker 1: father he had been. One message, which Liana quoted separately
Speaker 1: on its own black slide in enlarged white text, read,
Speaker 1: We are finally happy without him in our lives. So
Speaker 1: stop this shit. We're sick and tired of all the
Speaker 1: pain he's caused. Posted by Liana Shanti as a standalone
Speaker 1: pull quote on her public Instagram stories.
Speaker 3: And so now I went from, you know, one of
Speaker 3: my children, not having a relationship with me to now
Speaker 3: all four not wanting a relationship with me. And I mean,
Speaker 3: that was heartbreaking. And I just remember sobbing. And if
Speaker 3: I keep thinking about it, it will affect me. I mean,
Speaker 3: it does on a daily basis. I think about my
Speaker 3: kids all the time.
Speaker 2: He still reaches out to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I send them texts here and there, and I
Speaker 3: never get a response, which is difficult. The one response
Speaker 3: I got was, stop texting us.
Speaker 1: For Dean and Charlotte, the silence from the children has
Speaker 1: been one of the most painful consequences of everything that transpired.
Speaker 1: And over time, they've developed their own view about why
Speaker 1: that distance remains and what they believe Kahira's fate will
Speaker 1: be if she remains within the community.
Speaker 2: Like, I honestly don't think she's going to turn her
Speaker 2: back on Leon. If she's in it till the end,
Speaker 2: that's how I feel about it. I would love to
Speaker 2: be wrong about that. I would love for her to
Speaker 2: wake up and get out of this and just be
Speaker 2: done with all of it. I think for Kahira, if
Speaker 2: Liana says it, then it's true. I've actually seen a post.
Speaker 2: If this is what Liana likes, I like it too.
Speaker 2: And I do feel like she loves Liana like a mother.
Speaker 2: Liana has taken over as her mother. And also, the
Speaker 2: kids feel the same way. I mean, they've wrote it
Speaker 2: numerous times, like, Liana has been more of a mother
Speaker 2: to me than anything. They think the same way of her.
Speaker 2: It's the same way Liana coaches Kahira. And who knows?
Speaker 2: Maybe Liana's coaching the kids. I mean, you know that
Speaker 2: they're all homeschooled, and you know Liana has homeschool programs, curriculums.
Speaker 2: And it's crazy when I found that out. I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, so they've been homeschooled by this woman too. Like,
Speaker 2: It just goes so much deeper than we thought. To
Speaker 2: be honest with you, this whole thing, like I used
Speaker 2: to be obsessed. I asked my husband, I was obsessed
Speaker 2: with this. And eventually there was just one day where
Speaker 2: like I'm working on this chronology and I totally lost interest.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm done. I'm walking away. I don't
Speaker 2: care anymore. And then from then on, like we've had
Speaker 2: such peace in our home. It was so freeing. It
Speaker 2: was so freeing. It was a weight lifted off of
Speaker 2: my shoulders.
Speaker 3: We started, you know, dating and we started having conversations
Speaker 3: about Jesus, the church again. And it all came pouring
Speaker 3: back into my life again. And I yearned for it. Well,
Speaker 3: then I started attending her church and, you know, meeting friends, family.
Speaker 3: The last couple of years now, we've been attending the
Speaker 3: same church, really got involved in volunteering, and it's been good.
Speaker 3: It's been really good. We've been serving together, we're volunteering together.
Speaker 2: It's what keeps us grounded, to be honest with you, because, like,
Speaker 2: going through what we've gone through, it's really hard not
Speaker 2: to be reactive, and I feel like, me personally, like,
Speaker 2: God has taught me so much through this process. I
Speaker 2: have learned not to be reactive. I've always been a
Speaker 2: very reactive person, like, You burn me, I'm gonna burn you. Like,
Speaker 2: I need to speak my truth now. Like, now you're
Speaker 2: gonna hear the other side of the story. But it's
Speaker 2: really taught me, like, I don't need to get the
Speaker 2: last word. Like, the other side of the story, would
Speaker 2: it even matter if I told it? Who knows? Would
Speaker 2: you listen?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of people, when you get married,
Speaker 2: you go through things over time. We faced it immediately.
Speaker 2: It was like, we got that craziness out of the way.
Speaker 2: Not to say we won't. face other craziness, but.
Speaker 3: We were literally thrown into the fire immediately.
Speaker 2: Like I had a huge death in my family. I
Speaker 2: lost my mom at the same time. He lost one
Speaker 2: of his children who just totally turned their back on him. Um,
Speaker 2: and it was heartbreaking. And I, you know, I'm grieving
Speaker 2: my mom and not realizing, oh my gosh, he's grieving
Speaker 2: his child. You know, so we're both trying to get
Speaker 2: this through together. I'm needing him to, like, be the
Speaker 2: strength for me. But I'm like, wait a minute. He's
Speaker 2: grieving too. And I feel like, you know, with a
Speaker 2: death of somebody, an actual death of somebody, there's a final.
Speaker 2: It's final. When you lose a child like that who
Speaker 2: you know is still out there, there's no closure to that.
Speaker 1: For Dean and Charlotte, the loss isn't final in the
Speaker 1: way death is final. The children are still out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: And that leaves one question that will never quite go away.
Speaker 1: What if, one day, they all decide they want to
Speaker 1: come home?
Speaker 3: I would just say that's an answer to prayer. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've both prayed over this whole situation that they all
Speaker 3: come out of it, snap out of it and wake
Speaker 3: up and see just how deceived they were and how
Speaker 3: deceiving Liana is. And that they just see the grander picture.
Speaker 3: But no, if that were to happen, I'd say we
Speaker 3: would both be welcoming and helping them to recover and
Speaker 3: supportive as much as we could be. I mean, my
Speaker 3: dream is to have my kids back again.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I definitely agree with him. As much as, I mean,
Speaker 2: the Bible teaches us that as much as we are forgiven,
Speaker 2: we're required to forgive. I forgive her now. Even though
Speaker 2: I feel like she's torn things apart and separated my
Speaker 2: husband from his children, like, I forgive her now. Because
Speaker 2: I'm not going to allow that unforgiveness to hold us
Speaker 2: down in our lives, you know? Like, we forgave her
Speaker 2: a long time ago. It's hard. It's not easy to forgive.
Speaker 3: And the crazy thing is, you know, we both, we
Speaker 3: have literal dreams about the kids all the time, you know?
Speaker 3: And a lot of it is, like, they're, you know,
Speaker 3: we can tell they're hurting and wanting to come out,
Speaker 3: but They're stuck and they're so lost and they're brainwashed.
Speaker 3: But we're ready for them to snap out of it.
Speaker 1: By the end of this story, Tom and Joanne had
Speaker 1: lost a home, money, and friendship they say was built
Speaker 1: on deception. Dean and Charlotte were left with something even
Speaker 1: harder to quantify. Children still alive, but increasingly unreachable. And
Speaker 1: in both cases... the same name sat at the centre
Speaker 1: of the fallout. Next time, we widen the lens again
Speaker 1: and follow that pattern further. Because the deeper we go
Speaker 1: into Liana Shanti's world, the clearer it becomes that none
Speaker 1: of these families were isolated cases.
Speaker 8: And then you see this person in front of you
Speaker 8: who is a real human being. It's the weirdest, most, like,
Speaker 8: validating experience ever the woman that i saw in person
Speaker 8: the woman that i listened talked to in a courthouse
Speaker 8: with a judge was a person who is very manipulative
Speaker 8: who is very aware of what she is doing liana
Speaker 8: shanty i think that's a made-up person.
Speaker 1: I'm your host casey And join us next time for
Speaker 1: episode
Speaker 4: Eight of the Insta Scammer.