Jean-Michel and His Team

In the early 1970s, in French-speaking Switzerland, Jean-Michel Cravanzola founded a Christian community that quickly attracted hundreds of young people searching for meaning. Charismatic and ambitious, he promised to save drug addicts, idealists, and outcasts through community life and faith. But behind the sermons and the promised miracles lay a lucrative organization based on donations, sales, and aggressive proselytizing. While followers were subjected to forced labor, humiliation, and the guru’s absolute authority, Cravanzola lived a lavish lifestyle.

In 1979, convicted in Lausanne of charity fraud, he fled to France and then to the United States. There, he launched a new project, Bibleworld, and continued to solicit money from his followers before disappearing.

Yet the community survived for nearly twenty more years and pivoted to business. The organization transformed itself into a formidable door-to-door sales machine centered around a revolutionary iron: Laurastar.