Weekend Update

[massageblog]

A lot has happened this past week. First of all, the massage world lost a wonderful person with the passing of Dan Barrow. He was the long-time moderator in the AMTA House of Delegates, among his many other accomplishments, and was just one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He will be missed. My sympathies go out to his lovely wife Virgina and his family and friends. You can read his complete obituary here.
One good thing happened this week. Stephanie Rae Lasch was arrested at the Minneapolis-St.Paul airport after she had boarded a plane bound for Beijing, China, with her husband and her son. This has been a long road for a lot of massage therapists. In case you don’t know the background, you can read it here.
Since last fall, I have been communicating regularly with the Lino Lakes Police Department to keep up with what has been happening in her case. I had provided them with numerous pages of FB conversations and other print items where she claimed to be a certified public accountant, a certified fraud investigator, a third-year law student, a tax expert, a marketing expert, and everything except the president of the United States.The dozens of massage therapists who reported her to that department, and also to the FBI, the Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau, and everywhere else they could turn to will hopefully get some justice now. People may never get their money back, but it is my big hope that her actions do not go unpunished.
Although she never got any of my money personally, I had appeared, along with three other women, as a blogger (about professional ethics, at her request) on a massage coaching website she had going on. She had announced far and wide that I was her mentor, and I felt compelled to just keep trying to spread the word about the avenues people could use to complain on account of that. The police report actually focuses on the money she defrauded massage clients of at her business location, and not the dozens of therapists she stole from. In any case, she’s currently in jail. I’d love to attend her trial. You can read about it here. My last piece of advice to her was to get her act together for the sake of her child. I contacted the LLPD again this evening and they told me that her son was handed over to her husband; they were on the plane with Steph but her husband was not charged with anything. READ MORE…