3 Hancock County women who lost in gifting club to appear on ‘Oprah’

Three Hancock County women who say they were bilked out of $5,000 each told their stories on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” The episode “Have You Been Scammed?” is scheduled to air at 4 p.m. today on WLBZ-TV Channel 2.

Cathy Oleson of Lamoine, Stacie Mitchell of Ellsworth and Gina DeJoy of Blue Hill were taped for the show in early February. Each woman gave $5,000 to A Woman’s Project, a plan that law enforcement officials and district attorneys have called an illegal pyramid scheme.

They are three of 42 women seeking repayment and restitution from 29 women named as defendants in a lawsuit filed last year in Kennebec County Superior Court by Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe. That case is expected to go to trial in late summer or early fall, said James McKenna, the assistant attorney general in the Public Protection Division who is handling the case.

“We don’t know how Oprah found us,” Oleson said. “Why they picked us, I have no clue. I’d never met the other two women. They taped us on a Sunday afternoon at Gina’s house in Blue Hill. On Monday, they called and asked if we could leave for Chicago the next day, Feb. 4.

“They picked us up at the airport in a stretch limo and put us up at a hotel. We were taken to the studio at 7:30 a.m. the next day. Oprah came out and said, ‘Hi ya’ll.’ She was really down-to-earth and made us feel very comfortable. It was unbelievable.”

Winfrey’s show portrayed other frauds such as work-from-home projects that don’t pay what is promised, and the Nigerian check scam on the Internet.

A Woman’s Project was different than those, according to participants, because it involved friends recruiting friends, and family members asking relatives to join.

Set up to resemble a dinner party, participants were labeled as courses that might be served at such an event. Women joined the table as an appetizer, then moved up the food chain to the dessert position, according to the lawsuit, at which point they received $40,000.

The plan was introduced to women at parties in private homes, according to Mitchell, who was pregnant with her first child when she borrowed $5,000 to join A Woman’s Project. It will take her two more years to pay off the loan.

“A local lawyer said it was legal,” said Mitchell, explaining why she joined after attending several meetings. “They called it a ‘gifting club’ and there’s no law against gifting. Another big thing for me was that the women took the district attorneys to federal court for harassment. You don’t go that far if something’s illegal.”

What convinced DeJoy to join A Woman’s Project was the talk about women empowering other women and the dream that her “mother would live happily ever after.”

“I was in dire straits then,” said DeJoy, relating the story she told Winfrey. “I was taking care of my mother who was dying of cancer in Virginia. I’d go down every six weeks and stay two weeks. I had good plans on how to spend the $40,000. The day after I invested, my mother took a turn for the worse.”

DeJoy said she invested $5,000 but ran up $10,000 in credit card bills going back and forth to Virginia shortly before her mother died, thinking she’d be able to pay them off when she got to the dessert level. Last summer, she worked four part-time jobs – more than 80 hours a week – to pay off the debt.

All three women are named as victims in the lawsuit that charges the defendants with violations of the state’s Trade Practices Act by running an “unlawful pyramid” and by engaging in “deceptive and unfair conduct.” The lawsuit seeks restitution for the 42 women named as victims of the alleged scheme and seeks $10,000 in penalties for each violation of the act.

Four of the women named as defendants in the Maine attorney general’s lawsuit sued his office in federal court in February 2001.

The women also sought an injunction to keep prosecutors from charging participants in the project and a declaratory judgment that the activities of the organization did not violate state laws. They also said news releases sent out by local prosecutors that warned women not to participate in the project had violated their civil rights.

In August 2001, U.S. District Court Judge Brock Hornby denied the injunction, dismissed the civil rights lawsuit and sent to Superior Court the question of whether A Woman’s Project violated state laws.

Since then, a Washington County Superior Court justice has ordered a Baileyville man to repay $35,000 he received from his fellow participants in the NASCAR Racing Gifting Club, which is set up much like A Woman’s Project.

Seven women have signed settlement agreements in which they swore to stop recruiting others and agreed to pay back women who had given them money without admitting that they’d committed any crimes. They do not appear on the “Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Six of the seven are named in Rowe’s lawsuit.

Jeffrey Thaler, a Portland attorney who represents about 20 of the defendants in the lawsuit, said Tuesday that representatives from the show never contacted him or his clients. He said without their side of the story, the show was “a one-sided, biased presentation.”

“This has been very stressful for my clients,” he said. “They went into this with good intentions and good motives. There was no deception, no misrepresentation and no violation of the Unfair Trades Practices Act. No criminal charges have been filed against them. This has been a nightmare for them.”

The women who are on today’s “Oprah” believe they are not the only victims of Thaler’s clients and others who got in early on A Woman’s Project.

Oleson said she knows many women who have not – and will not – file a complaint with Rowe’s office. She estimated the scheme had touched “hundreds and hundreds” of women in communities like hers and that victims might not know friends and family who also have lost money.

“This was a different kind of getting taken,” she said. “My sister and my mother were in it and I had no clue. I found out after I’d lost my money. I’m so glad we got to go on ‘Oprah.'”

DeJoy said her experience with A Woman’s Project had a profound affect on her and how she interacts with people.

“I’m the one who trusted everybody,” she said. “I could always be counted on to be part of the baked bean suppers or other community events. Now, I don’t trust anybody. People cheat you and mistreat you. And if you can’t trust anybody, who can you trust? If I can warn 10 million people on ‘Oprah,’ then I will.”