Recent Spotlight readers may have noticed an ad (February 12,2001 page 9) soliciting readers to send in money to get registered for free electricity for the rest of their lives.   One's first thought would be "Gee, this sounds too good to be true".  The fact is that such promises have been around for hundreds of years, going back to counter-balanced wheels and perpetual motion machines of the 16th century.  The only perpetual thing seems to be a constant flow of people coming out of the woodwork making money off such claims. Such people often hide behind an elaborate conspiracy theory as an excuse for not delivering.  The most prominent of such people are Dennis Lee who has been promising free energy "in a few months" . .. . for the last 15 years.
    Dennis started out as a more simple con man in the early 70's when he was passing bad checks for a construction business that did more destruction than construction.  Harvey Terwilliger gave Lee $14,700 for repairs and gave up on ever getting it all back in spite of a court order.  Dennis moved on to do a MLM buying card scam that cleaned out a number of people.  One victim, Alvin Wikle lost his life savings of $65,000, and Jim Scanapico lost $36,000.  In this scam, Dennis learned to mimic born again Christian lingo, and managed to take Pat Robertson for $150,000.  At this time, Dennis started claiming to receive direct revelations from God. (when you hear God and money in the same breath - it's money doing the talking!)  By this time, free energy claimant, Joe Newman was getting national air time and doing shows to stadiums of people. Dennis went to one of his shows and was smitten.  When Newman refused to team up with Lee, Lee just started his own touring free energy show.  Again people started losing money, and the state of Washington investigated him for consumer fraud in 1985.  In 1990 Dennis was charged in California for a number of crimes.  He likes to say he spent time in prison even though he never was convicted of a crime.  He doesn't explain the simple reason for this . .. He plea bargained down to 8 counts of fraud with felony penalties.  In a few years he was right back out of jail and getting people to send him more money. Of his many constantly changing deals, the one that seems to net him the most money is selling dealerships to people who expect to get rich having the right to install free electricity machines in people's houses.  Dennis claims to have 2000 dealers and claims to have sold some for as much as $100,000.  His 1996 nationwide tour cost 100's of thousands to put on what with getting full page ads in major newspaper and renting out venues which included the Philadelphia Core States Spectrum. During that tour he said he planned on installing free electricity machines in peoples homes the same year.  People eagerly signed up to have the machines installed in their homes, but the real agenda was to get scores of people to then pay $10,000 for dealerships.  At the time, he was dealing with the Communist front company, Norinco.  Norinco made 100's of dangerous, heavy poor quality welding machines that don't weld and Dennis managed to get mostly patriots to buy the communist made machines at inflated prices.  As far as I know, no welding shops even use these devices. Dennis distracted his dealers from the never quite ready free energy machines by focusing them on "other" technology, most of which either didn't exist, was not legal to sell or at best was available more cheaply elsewhere.  Dennis may not be able to get anything to work, but he does know how to work a crowd.  He's learned to rattle off patriot lingo very effectively and does fairly well with older people or folks with no technical training.  In 1999, Dennis got his dealer network to pay for him to go on another nationwide tour.  By this time many dealers realized their money was only really going for Dennis to self promote and to line up fresh people with remaining money. A former worker of Dennis's, Jim Murray says he quit when Dennis tried to get him to fake electrical readings to make a device appear to be overunity to investors.  In Dennis's training seminars which border more on indoctrination sessions, Dennis is known to tell his followers "You can take in partners, limited partnerships, get a loan, break the kids piggy bank, max out the old credit cards, borrow against the insurance, cash in the Christmas fund or even the college fund . .. ".  But it gets worse, Dennis encourages his dealers to get their friends and even their entire churches to send in money.  By the time dealers get wise to how it really works, they are too financially and emotionally drained to mount any fight.  They also know that Dennis had them sign carefully crafted disclaimers.  I have tried to let the world know what is going on - mostly through my internet site at: http://www.phact.org/e/dennis.html  It hardly gets the attention that Dennis's TV, newspaper, web, and radio ads get.  I did get the mainstream investigative shows were very interested in exposing Dennis, until they found out the damage that Dennis manages to inflict on the Patriot movement.  At Dennis's last 1999 show to the Philadelphia arena, I and others started peacefully passing out literature (which included bible verses) to very appreciative people waiting in line.  But by the time Dennis had started his usual conspiracy whine inside about how powerful people are trying to stop his message, he had a team of big guards physically stop us from passing out literature and threaten us with jail.  I have offered Dennis $50,000 if he would just show me a working free energy machine - his only real response was to threaten to sue me and to tell his followers that I'm a CIA agent. As a part time volunteer, I face an uphill battle.  Many dealers have put out so much money to Dennis, they are just too deep in denial to consider that they've been had.  They keep wanting to believe that in a few months, the free electricity machine will finally be done and they will rake in money.  Dennis's latest way to separate to harvest more money from his followers has been to announce that  before the free electricity machines can start to be installed the dealers must pay Dennis for 1.6 million advanced registrations which they are to then try to sell to the the public.  Many dealers have paid for these registrations and find themselves unable to even give them away.  About the only way they have "earned" significant money is from 10% commissions from getting friends to buy dealerships from Dennis. Sometimes I don't really know whether to describe the whole operation as a scam, a cult or a cancer.
 

about the author.  Eric Krieg is an electrical engineer and president of the 150 member group called PhACT, the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking.  In addition to taking on free energy con men, Eric and his group attempt to expose lies in all kinds of paranormal and new age claims.  Eric's favorite motto is, "extraordinary claims deserve extraordinary proof"

    WILKES-BARRE With plenty of gizmos, videos and an apparently endless supply of talk, Dennis Lee, who claims to have an electric generator that can run without any fuel, came to Wilkes-Barre.
Before a crowd of about 300 people, Lee talked about microbes that he said would eat the oil from the floor of garages before being washed down the drain.  He discussed a welding torch that he said worked by separating the hydrogen and helium from ordinary water and then burning the gases.  And of course, he talked about his Sundance generator, which he said operated by manipulating especially powerful magnets.
One of his chief critics, Eric Krieg, an electrical engineer and president of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking, made a special trip up to Wilkes-Barre to hand out sheets questioning Lees demonstrations.  He stood outside the doorway to the Woodlands, where Lee was speaking, asking people if they were coming to the free technology seminar.
Heres a few facts they dont want you to know, he told passers-by.
He said Lees employees asked him to leave.  Soon after, a hotel staffer asked him to go to the parking lot.  When he continued to pass out his fliers there, two staffers told him to leave the property.
Dennis says theres a conspiracy to keep him from talking, Krieg said as he left.
Krieg and other scientific critics say that many of Lees inventions, the Sundance generator in particular, are physically impossible.
They also point to Lees lengthy history of cease and desist orders in several states for other sales projects.  Lee once pleaded guilty to eight counts of fraud and was sentenced to serve three years and four months in prison in California in connection with a heat pump that was supposed to produce free electricity.  He was released in 1993.
But that didnt stop a good-sized crowd from turning out to watch Lees demonstrations Friday night.
Reporters were allowed in as well as the general public.  However, they had to sign a promise to leave when asked.  They were also told that Lee would give only live television interviews or pre-arranged radio interviews by phone.
Science skeptics At the beginning of his speech, Lee denied breaking any physical laws.
We believe in God, he told the crowd.  Who made the physical laws?  God did.  We cant break that.  Were not that stupid.
But we dont believe much in the scientific community.
That community wants to protect its funding sources, he said.  Reporters try to protect the owners of their papers, he said.  Politicians are protecting the oil and other energy interests in the country.  Together, they are working to keep his products off the market, he said.
Lee demonstrated a torch that he said ran by water.  The machine would split hydrogen from helium and burn it.  The flame it produced would automatically adjust to whatever it was used to cut.
To demonstrate, he used it to burn through a piece of copper and fire brick.  Then he vaporized a thin strip of what he said was tungsten.
This is 13,000 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.  Thats the temperature of the suns surface.
Then he quickly passed his hand through the flame, saying it adjusted itself to his temperature.
He also demonstrated what he said was a small reactor that would allow cars to run with no pollution on almost anything mixed with the gas.  To prove it, he mixed in pickle juice, soda, A-1 steak sauce, sugar and other products with gasoline, then attached it to a motor to fuel it.
A white cloth he held to the exhaust showed no dirt, proving it didnt pollute, he said.  He also spoke with his mouth at the exhaust, proving it wasnt poisonous, he said.
He used magnets to roll a steel ball uphill, and he used a copper tube to make a magnet float slowly down it.  He also took a sample of thorium, mixed it with hydrochloric acid and water, ran it through a machine and said it would be less radioactive when it was finished.
That particular demonstration wasnt over by 10 p.m., when the Press Enterprise began approaching its deadline.
Im amazed Some demonstrations were shown only on videos, such as a camera Lee said could see through 6 feet of concrete.  The video showed a television monitor next to a wall.  A man walked back and forth in a room on the monitor.
Not all of his demonstrations went quite as planned.
A lawn mower that was supposed to run on water wouldnt keep going, despite several false starts.  Lee said it had a leak.
Another motor that was supposed to run on water also had trouble continuing to run.
But once it finally began to hum steadily, the audience cheered.
Some people who came to hear him said they were skeptical, but wanted to hear what Lee had to say.
Im amazed, said Jean Ditzler, 52, of Nanticoke, after watching a demonstration of a motor Lee said would save electricity by controlling the amount that came out of the socket instead of wasting the excess as heat.
But Im sure a lot of people would be skeptics.  Theres so much at the same time.
She said she was interested mostly in the free electricity Lee promised in his ads in local newspapers.  But she said she didnt have enough scientific background to evaluate everything Lee said.
Still, he said anything is possible, she said.
Don Beagle, 42, a welder from Bloomsburg, also said he had his doubts.
Tungsten, he said, does not have to be heated to the temperature of the sun to melt.  And he doubted the temperature of the sun was 13,000 degrees anyway, as Lee claimed.
Id check his figures, he said.
NASAs Web site gives the suns temperature as 10,000 degrees on its surface and 27 million degrees at its center.
Oxygen doesnt burn, as Lee said, he added.  Oxygen just supports burning.
The torch, which Lee said could slice steel in unusually thin, smooth pieces, was not especially impressive, he said.  Other, conventional torches work as well.
Still, before passing judgment, hed have to try the torch, he said.
Contacted schools Lee was still going strong at 10 p.m.  Workers said he usually continues past midnight.
This isnt the first contact Lee had with the area.  In March, one of Lees dealers asked to use local school districts letterhead and mailing lists to market its products last March.
In exchange, JACCAR Marketing in Walnutport offered to give the districts $1,000 for every person that signed up for a buyers club that would entitle them to receive an electric generator that would produce electricity without any fuel, using only magnets.
Residents would have to pay $25 each to join the buyers club, which would also entitle them to 20 percent off other products in a catalog, including magnetic laundry balls that he said would clean clothes without soap.
Once those 1.6 million signed up, the working generator would be unveiled before an unnamed national church organization, which would broadcast the demonstration across the country, a letter touting the program to the districts said.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bwt/messages/358

-----------------------------------------------  The following article appeared in the Allentown PA Morning Call:

Free energy scheme tags fire companies ** Local groups are wary over a deal offering no-cost electricity in return for selling a "generator. '
Morning Call; Allentown, Pa.;
Aug 26, 2001; ELIZABETH BARTOLAI Of The Morning Call;
Abstract:
[Dennis Lee]'s assistant at UCSA in Butler, New Jersey, Bob Pirrone, said he's witnessed the machine making free electricity. He declined to say how much electricity it generates.
[Paul Pavelco Sr.] pitches the program in person. He distributed literature at a Northern Lehigh School Board meeting this summer, but Superintendent Nicholas Sham Sr. asked Pavelco to abandon his presentation shortly after he began. Sham said at that time the school board meeting was not an appropriate venue for Pavelco's pitch.
Joe Sherman, chief of the Vera Cruz Fire Department, said Pavelco talked to 18 members in June. "It was going to be a free electric program. And if the fire company members bought it, we'd get free electricity for the fire company and be able to sell some of it back to PPL," he said of how Pavelco explained the program.
 

Kevin Hunsicker of Slatedale's fire companythought the deal sounded too good to be true. A company was promising to plug the fire department into a deal that would give it free electricity and the potential to earn thousands of dollars for help in selling a machine the company said generates electricity.

"There are people saying it is a gimmick-type thing," Hunsicker said.

Citizen's Fire Company No. 1 in Slatedale didn't take up the offer. As it turns out, Dennis Lee, the man behind the offer, has a 25-year record of brushes with the law, including jail time in California for claims he made about the energy-saving potential of an electric heat pump.

Lee also was fined $31,000 in Washington state, and he and his New Jersey-based companies have been barred from selling anything in Maine, where an engineer consulted by the state called the machine "science fiction." A local dealer for Lee's company said Lee was too busy promoting his latest energy generator in a nationwide tour to speak to a reporter. "He's not even getting any sleep," said Doug Long of Long Enterprises Inc., Stockertown.

In the case of the Citizen's Fire Company, to tap into the cash, the fire department would have to mail a preprinted brochure to residents explaining how they can get a machine from Lee's United Community Services of America that would generate electricity for free.

The fire department would pay the mailing costs, but receive none of the $25 that people would send to a Walnutport marketing firm affiliated with Long.

No money would come to the fire department until the electricity generating machine went into widespread operation.

Then it would get $1,000 for each generator it helped United Community Services of America put in place, although UCSA couldn't promise when the machines would be shipped, according to New Tripoli Fire Company members.

Citizen's Fire Company and at least two other area fire departments considered the deal.

"It all comes down to whether the machine works or not," said Chris Feinour, a Lynn Township businessman who urged New Tripoli to find out more about the machine before participating.

Feinour, a member of New Tripoli, learned about the program from his brother Scott, who heard Paul Pavelco Sr. of JACCAR Marketing in Walnutport plug it to members of the fire company. "People trust us at the fire company," Chris Feinour said.

Lee was in Wilkes-Barre on Aug. 3 to put on a show at a 400-seat auditorium that was rented for $1,000. But he didn't demonstrate the free energy machine, only a portion of it, Pavelco said. Long and Pavelco have never seen the machine generate electricity. Pavelco said the half of the machine demonstrated in Wilkes-Barre needed to be plugged in to run.

Lee's assistant at UCSA in Butler, New Jersey, Bob Perrone, said he's witnessed the machine making free electricity. He declined to say how much electricity it generates.

Feinour said one of the frustrating aspects of investigating the validity of the machine is the number of companies linked to the free electricity promise. Pavelco's company is an independent contractor for Long who has been promoting the free energy program as a fund-raiser for both local fire companies and school districts.

Pavelco pitches the program in person. He distributed literature at a Northern Lehigh School Board meeting this summer, but Superintendent Nicholas Sham Sr. asked Pavelco to abandon his presentation shortly after he began. Sham said at that time the school board meeting was not an appropriate venue for Pavelco's pitch.

Residents of the Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill Country received mailings urging them to send $25 to JACCAR as a way to curb increasing school taxes. But Acting Superintendent Joyce Romberger said the school district is not endorsing this program.

Joe Sherman, chief of the Vera Cruz Fire Department, said Pavelco talked to 18 members in June. "It was going to be a free electric program. And if the fire company members bought it, we'd get free electricity for the fire company and be able to sell some of it back to PPL," he said of how Pavelco explained the program.

Pavelco said Thursday that people send his marketing company $25 to get into the buyer's club, not to buy the electric generating machine.

"He had mentioned the buyer's club," said Sherman, who said fliers intended to be sent to people served by the Vera Cruz fire department are sitting in boxes. "At this point, we're not going to get involved," Sherman said.

Once the nationwide company gets 1.6 million club members, it will begin distributing the electricity machine to individual homes, according to locally distributed brochures. But Pavelco, Long and Perrone couldn't say how close the company is to its goal. Perrone said the company plans to distribute the machine early in 2002.

In November 1999, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the machines would be shipped to customers during the first quarter of 2000. But in Maine, officials are trying to ensure the machines are never shipped to their state. In July, Maine obtained a temporary restraining order barring the device and memberships in the buyer's club from being sold.

In a lawsuit filed Aug. 14 by the Maine Attorney General's office against Lee and his companies, UCSA and Better World Technologies, it was disclosed that Lee reported 840,000 people signed up for the buyer's club.

The state argues in the suit that the device to be installed in homes will not produce free electricity. "In fact, it is not scientifically possible for the machine to perform as represented," according to the document.

Lindi Conti, a Maine assistant attorney general, said Lee has a constitutional right to talk in her state. "But he can't take money from anyone in Maine," she said.

Conti said a detective signed up for the buyer's club and received Lee's videotape. It was reviewed by electrical engineer Ralph F. Sweet, who called it "science fiction."

"There is nothing in the video that supports the claim that the unit will provide free electricity to anyone," he testified in July.

Perrone said business and government are conspiring to keep Lee from marketing his machine. He also blames them and the power companies for Lee's legal woes.

"If indeed we have what we say that we have, then everyone is going to want what we've got," Perrone said. There is no patent for the machine, he said.

Conti said advertisements run last year alerted them to the program. Those ads read a lot like the brochures targeted for fire department members. The Maine ads plugged a machine to be installed in someone's home that would produce enough electricity to power the home for free and allow the homeowner to make big money selling the excess electricity to the local power company. The first to sign up would pay $5. The price jumps to $1,000 or $2,000 after 1.6 million join, the ads claim.

Lee has run full-page newspaper ads inviting people to his free electricity seminars, including one in USA Today.

It was such an ad that drew Eric Krieg to one of Lee's shows in Philadelphia in 1996. Krieg, who has an electrical engineering degree from Lafayette, works as an independent computer consultant.

Now, Krieg and fellow skeptics in the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking warn people not to invest money into Lee's products. "It's become kind of a hobby of mine," said Krieg, who has tracked Lee's ventures for five years. Krieg said Lee has buyers sign a nondisclosure statement that signs away their legal rights.

Krieg said the real losers are dealers who may have paid thousands of dollars for the right to market Lee's products. Long would not disclose what he paid for his dealership. But he said if someone wanted to buy in today, it would cost $100,000.

Lee's company sells other products such as a laundry ball for $59.95 that claims to clean clothes without detergent. Buyer's club members get 20 percent off the sale prices of products.

"I believe in the products that I'm selling," said Long. The Pennsylvania Attorney General's office wouldn't confirm or deny whether it is investigating Lee, his businesses or dealers. But among Lee's legal troubles is the $31,000 outstanding fine in Washington for a 1985 violation of the state consumer protection act.

Morning Call librarian Dianne Knauss contributed to this report.

Reporter Elizabeth Bartolai 610-820-6554

elizabeth.bartolai@mcall.com