DANNY : DE HEK

I was born into a cult. The kind that walks through your front door in polite suits, smiling with answers to questions you didn’t know you were asking. It took me years to realise it, and decades to say it out loud.

But now, I say it loud, often, and publicly: The Jehovah’s Witness religion destroyed parts of my life and my family that I will never get back. It took my sister. It took my stepfather. It took my identity. And for a while, it almost took me.

The reason I speak out today—on my blog, on my podcast, and across my YouTube channel—is not to attack people of faith. It’s to expose systems of control that prey on the vulnerable, whether spiritual or financial. And the striking truth is this: the very same manipulation techniques used by religious cults like the Jehovah’s Witnesses—emotional blackmail, community isolation, guilt-driven compliance—are now being weaponised by crypto scammers, fake investment gurus, and Ponzi scheme predators. These schemes don’t just mirror cult behavior—they evolve from it. They all thrive on isolation, authority, shame, and blind obedience.

This is my story. It’s also the reason I became The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenger. I’m not a victim—I’m a vigilante. And I will confront anyone who gaslights vulnerable people into buying products, beliefs, or promises that destroy their lives.

A Childhood Built on Fragile Hope

My mother was struggling. My alcoholic father had left us when I was just two-and-a-half. She was raising three kids alone in Christchurch, New Zealand, and she was desperate for support. When two Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on our door, she didn’t let them in out of belief—she let them in out of politeness. But like many cults, they don’t just take your time. They take your pain and repackage it as purpose.

They offered her what she didn’t have: structure, community, love bombings, and a promise of salvation. We became Jehovah’s Witnesses. And that decision changed the trajectory of every life in our family.

Faith or Fear: The Rules That Broke Us

If you’ve never been disfellowshipped, let me explain what it means. It means losing your family, your friends, and your emotional lifelines overnight. You can be disfellowshipped for many things—and I was. Twice. Once for being human. The second time for not learning to suppress my humanity well enough.

The elders told me I couldn’t have sex before marriage. They told me to pray harder, try harder, suppress harder. But I failed, because I was a young man, not a robot. I was disfellowshipped and shunned. Even my own mother distanced herself. I remember sitting at the back of the Kingdom Hall, crying my eyes out while no one would speak to me. My community, my family, my pseudo-fathers (the elders) had vanished.

It was psychological abandonment disguised as “spiritual discipline.”

This is the same technique I see in MLMs and crypto scams. Build people up, then cut them off to break them down. Give them a family, a dream, a way out of their pain—then shame them the second they step out of line.

The People I Lost

My sister, Linda Warfield, was bright, wild, funny, troubled. Though she was never baptised, she reached the status of an unbaptised publisher and was raised fully within the Jehovah’s Witness religion. She was also tragically unsupported. The system that promised healing instead ignored her pain, reinforcing shame instead of offering care. The institutional neglect she endured amplified every struggle she faced—her mental illness was not met with compassion but with silence and spiritual deflection. I often wonder how different her life could have been if she had received the kind of help that truly listens, rather than a doctrine that demands obedience and punishes imperfection. The expectations the Jehovah’s Witnesses placed on her became too much. The same cult that promised her salvation instead gaslit her mental illness. She turned to drugs, prostitution, and years of suicide attempts. She was electroshocked, institutionalised, and ultimately died by suicide at 36, hanging by a belt from a window ledge at Sunnyside Hospital.

My stepfather, Robert de Hek, also died by suicide. He was a baptised Jehovah’s Witness, and he was the same age as my sister—36—when he died on the same date, December 3rd. I was just nine years old when it happened. But the method was different. He drove himself to our family camping spot at Coe’s Ford, drank whiskey from a glass milk bottle, and gassed himself inside his car. The same religion that turned its back on our family played a devastating role in both of their lives. Both their lives were tormented by shame, silence, and spiritual gaslighting.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses never allowed a Kingdom Hall memorial for them. They were dead to the congregation long before they died physically. That’s how cults operate: if you stray, you vanish.

The Scam Parallels

When I expose scam artists today—like those behind Beonbit, VIDME, Megan Lynch’s VYB scheme, or fake AI crypto platforms like RiotXAI—I see the same playbook:

  • Love bombing and false hope
  • A powerful inner circle with unquestionable authority
  • Rules that benefit the leaders and suppress the followers
  • Financial pressure wrapped in spiritual or emotional manipulation
  • A us vs. them mentality that demonises critics
  • Complete disconnection if you speak out or walk away

Whether you’re selling eternal paradise or passive crypto income, the formula is the same. Just look at Megan Lynch’s VYB matrix scheme, where religious language and community guilt are used to recruit unsuspecting believers into a $25/month Ponzi disguised as empowerment. Or consider RiotXAI, which fabricated an AI CEO named Alex Goldsmith to push fake trading profits—complete with worshipful testimonials and cult-like secrecy. These aren’t just scams; they’re spiritual cons with a modern interface. Isolate, indoctrinate, and profit.

What the Stats Say: When Cults and Scams Collide

These stories aren’t just personal—they’re statistically predictable outcomes of high-control environments:

  • Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than the general population, according to a 2018 study in the Journal of Religion and Health.
  • Shunning practices like disfellowshipping are directly linked to increased depression, anxiety, and suicide, per The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.
  • The Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society exhibits all four components of the BITE model of authoritarian control, a framework developed by cult expert Steven Hassan: Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control.
  • Affinity fraud, where scammers target tight-knit communities (often religious), accounts for an estimated $50 billion in losses annually, according to the U.S. SEC.
  • A 2020 FINRA study showed that people recruited with “faith-based language and testimonials” are 75% more likely to invest in fraudulent schemes.

These numbers confirm what so many survivors already know: cults and scams feed on faith, loyalty, and hope—then leave devastation in their wake.

Why I Speak Out

When I speak out against scams, cults, or abusive structures, I do it with fire. Because I know what it’s like to be in one. I know what it’s like to be shunned, humiliated, and blamed. I know what it’s like to lose people you love to silent indoctrination or suicide. And I know what it’s like to be called an apostate, a traitor, a lunatic—just for telling your truth.

But the truth needs a voice. So I became that voice.

Today, I run a private group for ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses. I expose MLM scammers on YouTube. I publish blogs that make predators squirm. I go into Ponzi Zoom calls and crash their party. And I share stories—not just mine, but yours too.

Because this is bigger than me. This is about every person who got kicked while they were down. Every mum-and-dad investor who lost their savings. Every cult survivor who was told to stay silent “out of love.”

Healing Through Truth

People sometimes say to me: “Danny, why can’t you just let it go?” I understand that what I share can make people uncomfortable—it’s raw, it’s confronting, and it challenges the neat boxes we put around religion, grief, and mental health. But these stories matter. When survivors stay silent, systems of abuse continue unchallenged. Speaking out isn’t about bitterness; it’s about breaking the cycle and shining a light for those still stuck in the dark. And the answer is: because letting it go would mean letting them win. I didn’t survive this for nothing.

I fight scammers and cults because I want the next generation—whether they’re born into a religious cult or recruited into a crypto pyramid scheme—to know they’re not crazy, they’re not alone, and they can get out.

This is why I speak. This is why I fight. This is why I survive.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. It means you’re either healing too, or you’re ready to help someone who is.

Let’s keep talking. Let’s keep warning. Let’s keep surviving.

With raw truth and relentless hope,

Danny de Hek

P.S. If this story resonated with you, please share it. You never know who might be silently suffering, stuck in a cult or scam, afraid to speak out. And if you’re looking for support, join our private Facebook group: Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses Family. You are not alone.

About the Author

Danny de Hek, also known as The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenger, is a New Zealand-based investigative journalist specializing in exposing crypto fraud, Ponzi schemes, and MLM scams. His work has been featured by Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Guardian Australia, ABC News Australia, and other international outlets.

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