In France, Scientology is being treated like an organized crime rather than an organized religion- and not for the first time.

The latest suit centers on a complaint made in 1998 by a woman who said she was enrolled into the Church of Scientology by a group of people she met outside a metro station. In the following months, she said she paid 140,000 francs (21,340 euros) for "purification packs" and books which she said were a fraud. Other complaints then surfaced, prolonging the investigation. Judge Jean-Christophe Hullin ruled that the Scientologists' Celebrity Center, bookstore and seven Church leaders should be tried for fraud and "illegally practicing as pharmacists".