Miriam Franklin – End Times Prophetic Words ‘Prophetess’ a Fraud? [UPDATED]

End Time Prophetic Words Author Sued for Fraud

It would seem that the self-proclaimed prophet over at End Time Prophetic Words has been sued in England on multiple counts of Business Fraud and Extortion. Rosalind Miriam Franklin owns the publishing house Diggory Press. At the current time, there are no less than 83 authors trying to recover royalties, manuscripts and other services. There have been two court hearings and the next is scheduled for October.

Miriam claims:

End Times Visions and Christian prophecy for the church and for the nations from a servant of God called to speak God’s word (Miriam Franklin): bringing prophecies and prophetic words of revelation, warning of End Times apostasy and lukewarm Christianity, and trying to bring people’s hearts, minds and souls back to the Lord their God.

Evidently, she’s called to speak God’s word, just not obey it.

Here is the nutshell version from one of the defrauded authors:

Dec 15th 2008

First of all, thanks to all the authors who have taken the time to email their experiences with Mrs Franklin these past months, and especially to those of you who have sent in statements of fact to be presented in Court.
Thank you.

We now have seventy authors who have engaged Mrs Franklin’s ‘services’ since 2006 who feel they have just cause for complaint. Most report non-payment of royalties; overcharging; rudeness and aggression; and (in many cases) being attacked and falsely accused in emails if they dare to air any concerns or make enquiries about the status of their accounts.

Several aggrieved authors have already taken independent action via the Small Claims Court in order to secure the monies owed to them, and despite Mrs Franklin’s increasingly desperate attempts to stall or circumvent the process, some are reporting success. Approximately three weeks ago for example, one County Court Judgment was enforced against Diggory Press to the tune of around £1,400 UK pounds. But when PayPal tried to refund monies to another aggrieved Diggory client recently, Mrs F made sure there was nothing in the account.

Meanwhile, Mrs Franklin continues to use every trick in the book to avoid being accountable to her clients; obfuscation; feigning illness; claiming not to have received recorded documents; and the usual litany of lies, exaggerations, and false counter-accusations levied at anyone who dares to stand up to her.

Most of you will be aware that both Private Eye Magazine and The Guardian Newspaper have written articles on the situation, and we have now had two Court hearings in Cornwall. At the first hearing in August, ‘The Seventeen’ presented their Small Claims together in the hope that we would be of mutual support to each other. However, amongst many other false accusations, Mrs Franklin accused several of us of ‘fraud and conspiracy’ etc., which, despite the evidence to the contrary, obliged the Judge to schedule our cases to be heard on a ‘Multi-Track’ basis. In effect, this means scheduling the cases to a higher Court that will cost remaining claimants £1,000 each to proceed.

Naturally (and quite understandably) under the advice of the Judge, several claimants felt more inclined to try to mediate with Mrs Franklin rather than pay another £1,000 – often much more than they were claiming in the first place. It is worth noting however, that of the four-or-five claimants who agreed withdrawal terms with Mrs F – none have reported receiving monies back, despite Mrs F’s promises to the contrary. In frustration, three of them had to reinstate their claims again in Court. It now appears Mrs F’s main intention was to use those mediation agreements to ‘run out the clock’ on Court deadlines, and thus have claims struck out by default.

As things stand at present, a small but determined group of us continue to press ahead with our claims – despite a withering flood of false counter-accusations and exorbitant counter-claims from Mrs F. At the latest hearing on Dec 10th, the Judge admonished Mrs F on several occasions-as well as in writing-for the rude and uncivil manner in which she referred to certain claimants. He also drew her attention to the absurdity (although he didn’t use that word) of her counter-claim for £1,045,185 against myself – especially all the undocumented ‘costs and damages’ she seems to have pulled out of thin air. The result of the latest hearing was that we are now scheduled for a full-blown five-day civil trial sometime in 2009, where (if we get that far) we fully expect an outright win to all the remaining cases. However, given the amount of ‘evidence’ Mrs F is going to have to magic into existence if she has any hope whatsoever of presenting a reasonable or rational defence… some of us will be surprised if we ever do get to trial. It is not unreasonable to anticipate Mrs F being unable to present a coherent case or defence at the document disclosure stage – and therefore being liable for all our costs, expenses, and damages…

As always, I have to be careful about how I present the information here, but in response to many requests by aggrieved authors, may I advise that you take the following steps if you wish to extricate yourself from Mrs F’s / Diggory Press / Exposure Publishing influence:

1. Write or email to RF formally cancelling your contract
2. Request a full account statement and payment of royalties due (you should not have to pay for this).
3. If you are not happy with the response, then write to Lightning Source (printer-distributors) with a copy of your ‘cancellation’ notice to RF, and advise them you are ‘in dispute’ with RF, and that she no longer has your permission to publish your copyrighted work. Lightning Source should NOT print any more of your books under these circumstances.
4. Contact Neilsen Bookdata (UK-Europe) and Bowkers (USA) and advise you wish to have that ISBN ‘suspended’ or ‘abandoned’ as per 1 and 3 above. Their options are limited if Mrs F actually owns the ISBN – but every complaint counts, and they can eventually stop selling her more ISBNs.
5. Lodge a Small Claims Court action via the HMCS website (Her Majesty’s Court Service).
6. Once you have done this, feel free to contact me and I will advise as best I can how you might republish your book at minimum cost and inconvenience.
7. Tell as many people as you can about your experiences.

Meanwhile, we are investigating why Mrs F publishes titles under different imprints. Although illegal in the US, and a ‘highly irregular’ practice in the UK, we will have to wait for more data before sharing any conclusions.

Finally – I paste below a couple of Internet links that will take you to a couple of other ‘manifestations’ of our good Mrs Franklin. On one site she poses deceptively as an ‘independent author’ who just happens to believe that Diggory Press is simply the most wonderful thing to have ever tumbled from the heavenly realm.. and, whilst repeatedly denying she is affiliated with Diggory, advises all who will listen to take their business there.. http://selfpublishingnews.wordpress.com/about/

And the second site – only recently discovered – is where Rosalind claims to be an end-times prophetess no less – in direct touch with God Himself! Given our knowledge of who ‘Miriam Franklin’ really is, I believe it’s fair to say that the posts on that site (many of which condemn liars, false prophets, charlatans and the like) beggars belief. The scary part is that the site has apparently registered over 2 million hits – on the prophetess’ words of wisdom, prophecies and revelations, as well as many ‘divinely-inspired’ judgments on various individuals and religions whom she personally deems to be apostate / heretical / or downright demon-possessed..

For example, the prophetess says..
“The charlatans a-plenty who do not fear man, God or Beast are out to fleece the vulnerable and undiscerning for every last dime… Then there are the more sinister ones who intentionally prey like vultures – …who disguise themselves as angels of light… Satan knows scripture, (and very well), albeit he twists it for his own ungodly purposes. He is a good counterfeiter, looks, walks and talks almost like a real Christian.”

Trust me, this is even better than fiction folks.. (if any link doesn’t work because Mrs F has already taken them down – then please try the others in the following message, including the archive pages…)

http://propheticwordsrevelation.blog…-biblical.html (Editor’s Note:  This site has now disappeared.)

Then there is her latest ‘enterprise’-Kingdom Come Publishing-where she has again received a ‘mandate from God’ to take as much money as she can from unsuspecting Christian authors I suppose? See for yourself folks..

(Editor’s Note:  This site has now disappeared, but the DIggory Press site clearly says Diggory Press and Kingdom Come Publishing.)

Hopefully there is enough material here to help those of you who need to, to make some speedy and informed decisions.. And please feel free to pass on this information on to any who need to hear it..

Finally, the list of the first 18 complaints (now 70) from authors on my personal website – and other related evidence. I apologise that I haven’t updated it in quite some time, but I have moved the site to new servers, and need to work out how to get access. Please scroll down the page to the Rogue’s Gallery.

Thanks again for all the encouragement and support. Next general update when we hear of any developments.

Best wishes – and a happy festive season to all..

Stephen

source: http://rahabsplace.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/end-time-prophetic-words-author-sued-for-fraud/