Cult's Crooked Past Exposed

by Maureen Fan, Barbara Ross and Corky Siemaszko. With Robert Gearty, Tara George and Helen Peterson
Daily News, 11/14/96

Several members of a suspected Brooklyn cult that cops busted with a cache of weapons were convicted a decade ago on charges related to a trust fund rip-off, court records show.

A state probe of the shadowy group was launched after a follower who'd bolted told police that other members had resorted to fraud and forgery to siphon thousands of dollars from her trust fund account.

Mia Prior made the allegations after escaping in 1984 from the group, which experts identified as a cult known as the National Labor Federation and the Provisional Party of Communists.

Court records show Prior said she escaped from the group in July 1984, leaving behind checks for a Bank of New York account that held her $30,000-a-year trust fund.

Two members of the group -- including Harold Jones, an escaped murderer from Massachusetts -- forged Prior's signature on one of the checks and stole $700, records show.

Jones was arrested and charged, but the case against him was dismissed so he could be sent back to Massachusetts to finish his sentence.

Daniel Foster and Amanda Reid, both members of the group, were sentenced in 1986 to up to six years in prison on charges based on Prior's allegations.

The two were among those rearrested Monday after police checking a child-abuse complaint found the arsenal in the group's headquarters on Carroll St. in Crown Heights

Details of the old case emerged as Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes announced that weapons charges would be filed against three members.

The three residents of 1107 Carroll St. -- Ann Ribar, 46; Susan Angus, 45, and Diane Garret, 45 -- were to be arraigned last night.

Two other defendants, Reginald Williams, 45, and William Dobron, 34, were charged with obstructing justice for trying to get back into the buildings before cops finished a search.

Thirty members of the group were slapped with grand jury subpoenas.

At police headquarters, Mayor Giuliani released a list of the weapons cops found, including machine guns, rifles, ammunition and explosives.

Police also displayed a poster of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara and what appeared to be organizational charts written in crayon.

"It gives you a sense of how extreme these groups become and how weird and strange they can be," Giuliani said.

Cult experts said the group was founded in the early 1970s by ex-adman Eugenio Perente-Ramos and had a few hundred members in Brooklyn and elsewhere. They said the group recruited young adults, forcing them to sever ties with their families and work on campaigns for migrant workers.