For years, Fumiaki Tada was an ideal member of the Unification Church, a follower who donated all his money to the organization and worked to bring new people into the fold.

He later became one of the church’s biggest adversaries in Japan.

Tada, a 57-year-old journalist, now reports about fraudulent practices by going under cover and pretending to be duped by scamming street vendors, telephone call hustlers and other con artists.

“Duping and robbing people of their money is unforgivable,” he said. “I expose fraudulent marketing schemes that could be occurring near you so that you can protect yourself.”

He also wants to explain again, through his own experiences, how the Unification Church gets its grip on followers.

The activities of the Unification Church, now formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, have come under the spotlight since a gunman, apparently harboring a deep grudge against the group, shot and killed former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July.

The suspect’s mother had donated heavily to the Unification Church, leading to the financial ruin of the family.

In the 1980s, the Unification Church’s “reikan shoho” (spiritual sales) emerged as a social problem. The church members preyed on followers’ anxieties to get them to buy expensive vases and other items from the group.

Church officials said the organization made a “compliance declaration” in 2009, pledging to guide its members to behave responsibly.

A group of lawyers says the organization is still causing problems and victimizing followers through its tactics because it continued to seek donations from them as its fund-raising strategy.

Tada was a member of the Unification Church for about 10 years from 1987, when he was a fourth-year university student.

After a friend invited him to play volleyball together, Tada was told about “self-help learning.”

Through counselling sessions, the Unification Church’s doctrine was engraved on Tada’s mind, even though he didn’t know about the group’s involvement.

When he was finally informed that the Unification Church was behind the sessions, he had already been brainwashed and found that he could not refuse the instructions from the group.

Near train stations and other busy places, Tada, as a Unification Church member, would say to passers-by, “Are you interested in divination?”

If people showed an interest, he would take them to a nearby room where a Unification Church member pretended to be a fortune teller.

Tada worked for a company after graduating from university, but he spent his salary on kimono, seals and paintings at the Unification Church’s instructions.

He said that after he left his job, he donated all his money to the church and started acting as a lecturer at “training” sessions given to prospective members who had been lured by sweet talk and bogus sales pitches.

“My role was to tell (prospective members) that this organization is actually the Unification Church. Almost no one left when they were told that. I just thought the church did an amazing job in luring people,” Tada said.

In 1992, he attended one of Unification Church’s famous mass weddings. He married a woman whom he had met for the first time on the previous day.

The reason he left the church had to do with his family.

When he returned to his hometown of Sendai as part of the church’s propagation activities, he found that his parents, younger sister and relatives were concerned that his work as a church member could be making people suffer.

Tada said: “I was told (by the church) that if I believe in its doctrine, my family and relatives would go to heaven and become happy, but I found that wasn’t the case at all. I became aware of (the church’s) contradictions.”

In 1999, after leaving the church, he and other former members sued the organization. They sought damages for the mental anguish they said they suffered as a result of being coerced into joining the church without being informed of its true identity.

District and high courts ruled in favor of their lawsuit. The Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the Unification Church in February 2004, finalizing the victory for the plaintiffs.

Tada made his name public in his legal battle against the church.

Since then, however, he had remained rather low-keyed about his involvement with the church.

But the shooting of Abe put the focus back on the church, its financial practices and its long and deep ties with politicians from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Tada again started talking publicly about his experiences with the group, saying, “The problems with the Unification Church will not disappear unless we create an environment where former members find it easier to speak up.”

He said such an environment could have helped to prevent the killing of the former prime minister.

“Church members’ family members or relatives who have a grudge against the organization could behave outrageously,” Tada said. “The suspect could have found another direction in life if there had been something in society that could accommodate him, such as a place where he could consult, when his mother became so committed to the church.”

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Fumiaki Tada is a journalist who wrote a regular series of magazine articles based on his experience of infiltrating fraudulent sales practices and other schemes in 2001 and 2002. He published a book titled, “Tuite Ittara Ko Natta” (Things turned this way when I followed people), on a related topic in 2005. This book was turned into a series of special TV programs.

He will publish a new book this fall titled, “Shinjite Mitara Damasareta. Moto Toitsu Kyokai Shinja Dakara Kaketa ‘Mind control’ no Teguchi” (I trusted and was duped. The “mind control” methods that only a former member of the Unification Church could write about).