I'd be a lot happier if the poster used their actual name. All of the claims in this link need to be checked.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/newsbotbot/comments/hm4vb1/nytimes_durek_verrett_friend_of_gwyneth_paltrow/Durek's claims about his "special shaman lineage," which he says is the source of his "powers," are all based on lies. Below are key details, and attached are scans of his book plus his aunt's book and Ancestry database info, corresponding to the facts. There is a lot of info here but it is actually very simple.
He is perpetrating fraud against innocent people who believe his lies, and the truth should be known by the public. Too many people are being fooled by him and he is making a big profit from the lies. He also uses his girlfriend's royal title to increase his prices and pretend like he is respected in Norway and Europe. Some people rely on him for serious advice about critical issues so they should be warned publicly that everything he says about his spirit guide Mamal and his special lineage is fake.
In his book he claims his lineage is "mystical AF (as fuck)." Scans attached. He makes many comments in print interviews, videos, and podcasts in which he talks about his special heritage based on spiritual communications with his great-grandmother Mamal.
Fortunately for those who appreciate truth, Shirley Verrett wrote many facts in her book that reveal Durek fabricated the foundation of his shaman career and his stories about Mamal. His so-called "voodoo family culture" and "shaman lineage" are all fake. Shirley was a successful opera singer who published her autobiography in 2003, titled “I Never Walked Alone.” In her book, Shirley detailed her family background (attached). Also there are US Federal Government databases that have extensive documents showing evidence of Durek's real family history since the early 1800s.
First a look at the lies he's been selling:
Even before publication of his book in 2019, Durek made many public references to his grandmother Mamal, stating that she was the central figure in his shamanism. He also publicly identified as a third generation shaman, and references to him being a third generation shaman still exist on his website and his Facebook page. However, since 2019, he changed references to Mamal to great-grandmother (instead of “grandmother”) and changed his lineage rank to identify himself as a “sixth generation shaman.”
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:e07ed7f1-2c85-4545-94cd-9b1bfccf024d-------
Shaman Durek is a fraud, he's a self proclaimed shaman liar! He is completely full of shit. Every other word out of his mouth is a lie. I know him personally and he molested many people close to me, males, all males, some underage. He needs to be arrested, he's a sexual predator who molested and continues to mollest many vulnerable people who come to him for healing, many are men, married and embarrassed, confused and ashamed at what happened so they don't want to speak up about it. . He is 100% gay and has HIV.
He is now denying his HIV status since dating princess but everyone in LA knows he did a fundraiser with Jimmy Chamberlain for his kidney transplant from HIV. It was public knowledge until he hired someone and had everything on the web cleaned up. We have nothing against HIV but we do have a serious problem when someone doesn't disclose their health status and molests people. His whole entire story of being a third generation shaman, then a 5th generation shaman and now a 7th generation shaman is obviously a lie as we can see the generations and claims keep getting grander and grander. His background is all made up. His nationality is all a lie, he claims to be whatever suits him best for that time. I heard him say he was turkish, indian, african, hatian, egyptian, native american, norweigian, hawaiian. His ancestry.com
files are public, he is zero percent norweigian. He is from the United States, born and raised, his parents are from America and so are their parents. WHY HASN'T THE NEW YORK TIMES OR THE DOCTORS DONE A BACKGROUND CHECK ON THIS SHAM MAN FRAUD OF A SHAMAN.
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On page 7 of his book, he writes: “My great-grandmother Mamal started visiting me in my dreams when I was five… my traditional shamanic powers come from my father’s side of the family.”
On the same page: “Mamal was a powerful medicine woman from Ghana, where she worked with spirits, herbs, and music, in service to her tribe—a mix of Mende, Yoruba, and Bantu traditions. When the slave traders infiltrated the African tribes, Mamal fled to Haiti where she studied hoodoo and became a spiritualist before ending up in New Orleans. Mamal’s shamanic powers are legendary in my family.”
On page 10: “My dad used to apprentice for his grandmother Mamal and for his aunt… both of whom practiced shamanism in New Orleans. So he had witnessed firsthand the trials and tribulations [of shamanism].”
And previously in a 2008 interview published by Frontiers Magazine, a gay publication in Los Angeles, Durek stated his father’s family’s tradition was Voudou, and his great-grandmother “came from Haiti to New Orleans where she worked with Voudou.”
On pages 219 / 220 of his book, he says: “My great-grandmother Mamal is my closest guide in the spirit world. She’s always with me.... I talk to my great-grandmother pretty much every day…. Mamal was a great medicine woman in Ghana. She fled Africa in the early 1800s when her tribe was invaded by the Dutch, and her family was put into the slave camps. Mamal escaped by boat, as a stowaway, and ended up in Haiti, where she studied healing and shamanism with the Haitan people. From Haiti, she landed in New Orleans, where she fell in love, got married, and had children, one being my grandmother. My grandmother married a Native American Blackfoot Indian; and together, they had my father."
On page 301 of his book, he thanks Mamal "for keeping our African heritage alive."
And now a look at the facts that tell a very different story:
According to Shirley Verrett’s autobiography and all US Government records, Mamal’s real name was Eugenie Morel. Her nickname was Mamal.
Mamal was never in Africa and never in Haiti. She was born in New Orleans in October 1862, which is where she lived her whole life and where she died November 1937, just days after Durek’s father turned 8. See attached family tree summary. If you or anyone you know has an Ancestry.com
account, we can send you an invite to see the full tree electronically with all relevant historical documents attached. A dozen of us in both Norway and the US have done a lot of research on Ancestry.com
and related historical databases to make sure it's factual and transparent.
Mamal was Durek’s great-great-grandmother (not his great-grandmother as he says). Mamal’s parents were not from Africa either. They were both born and raised in New Orleans too. Mamal’s maternal grandparents, recorded in government documents as mulatto, were both born in France. They emigrated from France to New Orleans in the early 1840s, and later moved to Mexico City. Mamal’s paternal grandparents might have moved to New Orleans from Haiti, as Shirley Verrett’s book suggests, but documentation on their status is unclear.
In the first chapter of Shirley Verrett’s autobiography, she adds her personal recollection of Mamal, who was her great-grandmother. On page 6 of her book, Shirley states Mamal was a strict Catholic. She recalls Mamal raised her children and grandchildren in a “strict Catholic household,” including Shirley’s mother Elvira and grandmother Rita.
Carrying on that Catholic tradition, Shirley’s mother (Durek’s grandmother) “strongly disapproved of anyone who practiced voodoo,” which she described as “negative arts.” She recalls her mother went from being a strict Catholic to an even stricter Seventh Day Adventist.
Therefore, Durek’s claims of “voodoo culture” in his father’s family’s tradition via Mamal are totally false. His claim that his father was Mamal’s “apprentice at the age of 11” is also false, since Mamal died when his father was barely 8. And according to Shirley’s book, the claims that Durek’s father witnessed Mamal’s shaman activities are also false.
In fact, the opposite was true. Shirley knew Mamal personally, and stated that Mamal and her family strongly opposed non-Christian practices. Her writing attached states this.
We also found that as recent as January 2020 during a Michael Sandler podcast, Durek repeated a story about his father being Mamal’s shaman apprentice from age 11. This is clearly false based on the above facts.
Regarding Durek’s claims that Mamal was “a powerful medicine woman from Ghana," it is worth noting that the nation of Ghana wasn't formed until 1957. The Empire of Ghana, which was not in the same geographic location as the modern nation of Ghana, ended in the year 1100.
So Mamal could not have been “from Ghana" in any case. Perhaps he intended to indicate a region in Africa that is currently Ghana.
However, on page 7 of his book, Durek states Mamal’s tribal ancestry was "a mix of Mende, Yoruba and Bantu." Based on research, during the time of slavery the Bantu people weren’t anywhere near the area that is now Ghana. They still aren't there today. Also, the Mende people’s current territorial area is at least 400 miles away from modern Ghana and was even further away during the era of slavery. To have a “mix” of these tribes in 1700s Africa, among tribes that span a distance of 1,000 miles apart, would have been impossible.
Also the idea of an African woman during the slavery era fleeing from Sub-Saharan Africa to Haiti in order to avoid slave traders would also be impossible, unless she was a slave herself. Sadly, the only transportation for a tribal African woman to go from Africa to the New World in that era was on slave ships. In any case, Durek’s stories have no relation to the real Mamal whatsoever.
So who does he think he has been talking to all this time? The "spirit" he claims he speaks with daily clearly isn't Mamal. Either he is just lying, and is really bad at researching his own family... or if he really does hear voices in his head, then the voices are lying.
Either way it is disturbing and fraudulent. We're guessing it's just him who is a liar. And the saddest part is that he is fooling people with these blatant lies about his mystical Ghana medicine woman lineage and shaman voodoo family history, charging people $1,000 per hour to listen to him lie and pretend to speak to "Mamal" to heal people of their problems and illnesses. It would be comical if it wasn't dangerous and despicable. People are trusting his input, including for medical advice, and even with children! It's dangerous.
It is especially disgusting that he and his girlfriend tell others how important it is to live their truth and be authentic, but then in reality they are just selling expensive lies and totally fabricated stories about themselves. We hope the facts will be published in both Norwegian and English so everyone can be aware of the truth in all the locations where they have been targeting people for this scam.
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:c76c23da-3865-4f02-b18e-54022aef9879------
"In many interviews and in his book Durek lists details of an important life event, his "shaman right of passage" at age 27. On the Michael Sandler podcast last month Durek said that when he was 27 a spirit told him he would die soon and then he collapsed in his room in Belize. Durek said he called his friend Marcus who drove him to the hospital.
On the way to the hospital, he said he “smashed his head into the dashboard” of Marcus’s car because he was having seizures as they drove. Yet, minutes later on the same podcast Durek said an ambulance took him to the hospital and there was a paramedic talking to him in the ambulance.
On page 1 of his book, Durek says a medicine woman in Belize told him he would die soon -- not a spirit as he said on the podcast. And in his interview with DUST magazine in 2018, Durek told the story of nearly dying at age 27 in Los Angeles. He didn’t mention a jungle or medicine woman, as he does in the book. Instead, he described his friend driving him to the hospital in Los Angeles where doctors “had to open my throat and my chest.” These words are still on his website today under a post for that magazine interview, even though it contradicts the story in his own book.
On page 13/14 of his book, the emergency scene takes place in Belize and Durek said he underwent "a tracheotomy." Checking video and photographs from that time in 2001 to today we see no trace of tracheotomy scars on his neck.
Durek says on page 14 that Marcus sat next to him in the ambulance -- not driving him in a car in Los Angeles as he said in 2018 interviews. He also said in the book and in interviews that Marcus watched in the surgery room while doctors worked on Durek. This is an impossible scenario, whether in Los Angeles or Belize, as no proper hospital allows a friend to watch in an operating room during emergency surgery.
In 2018, Durek stated the doctors had to “open my throat and chest,” yet on page 15 of the book he states that after the doctors’ efforts failed, they repeatedly used "defibrillator paddles" on his chest. That would also be impossible if doctors had really opened up his chest.
As a matter of common sense, it is also strange that he makes no mention of any specific names of hospitals, doctors, shamans, tribe elders or others he claims to have met. He doesn’t mention them in his book, or in the book acknowledgements, although he says they are an essential part of his shaman right of passage and his life in general.
For example on page 16 of his book he says he was paralyzed, spent two months in a coma, and couldn’t walk. On page100 he also said he had brain damage and organ failure. Any reasonable person would imagine at least one of the medical staff who nursed him back to health would deserve a mention by name or a thanks to the institution where he recovered, but there is no mention. Especially odd since he talks about the importance of expressing appreciation. This type of fabrication would be funny if it weren't for the fact that a lot of people are being fooled by this nonsense and taken advantage of.
Also there are people online who say they know him and that he is HIV+. It is a fact that HIV+ status can make kidneys fail. So it seems like a much more likely cause that the near-death episode at age 27 was related to his HIV status. Or maybe alcoholism too, which he talks about in the book.
A medical clue he gave in the book and in magazine interviews is "potassium overload." He says on page 14 that his potassium level was 10 mEq/L. That is called hyperkalemia. Hyperkalemia is more likely in HIV+ individuals and is the result of kidney failure due to some other factor, such as HIV. Google says: "Symptoms of acute hyperkalemia include muscle fatigue or paralysis, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat or heart attack, dizziness, nausea, and if not treated can lead to death". These are the same symptoms he said he had in his near-death right of passage.
Whatever the cause, if someone really almost dies and goes through all those terrible effects for months, they could at least know what country they were in when it happened, or a name of hospital or doctor who nurtured them back to health. But this guy apparently isn't sure because his story changes all the time. Just another example of habitual lying, and he apparently cannot keep track of his fabrications even when it's something as important as a so-called shaman right of passage. "
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:125ef1a0-9f90-4112-b780-7efc51e2f2c4------
"In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail in May 2019, Durek said he has “adapted to royal life in Norway with ease” because he said his “father was a multi-millionaire architect who built hotels in San Francisco.” He claimed in the same interview that he “grew up with yachts and servants.” He repeated this story about his background throughout 2019.
On page 130 of his book, he also said his father “was very African and very Haitian.” But then on page 220 of the same book he says his father’s father was a “Native American Blackfoot Indian.”
Family records and US Government documents show that both of those stories are false. Durek’s father, David Benjamin Verrett, was born and raised in New Orleans. Many generations before him on both sides of his family were also born and raised in Louisiana according to all government records. Documents related to his paternal grandfather’s family end with generations that were apparently born slaves in Louisiana, as the public records show on Ancestry.com
and as Shirley Verrett’s book confirms. So his description of his father as very African and very Haitian is totally false.
As for the claims his paternal grandfather was Blackfoot Indian, that is also false. Amazing that in the same book he claims his father was very African/Haitian but then in a different part of the book also claimed his father was half Native American. It is incredible that any book publisher in the world could release such garbage. In any case, Blackfoot territory has always been located in central and western Canada, more than 2,000 miles northwest from Louisiana. Records show no one in the Verrett family tree traveled to that region. In fact, no one went West until Durek's paternal grandfather moved to California in the late 1940s. Documents show every member of his father’s lineage were listed as “black” in all government census records. No Native Americans at all.
Regarding the story of his father being a wealthy architect, public records show Durek's father was a laborer and construction worker in his youth, then became a contractor. He settled in Sacramento, where Durek was born in the 1970s, then moved to Foster City near San Francisco. Durek's father ran his contracting work out of his home, which was a modest single-family property in an average neighborhood. According to the California state contractor database, the bond on his contractor license was a maximum of $7,500 USD, indicating that the jobs he did were on a relatively small scale. Durek’s father was not an architect, and never held an architect license according to the database of CA state board of licenses.
Durek’s father filed for bankruptcy twice, most recently 2010. Sadly, he lost his home in Foster City, which was going into foreclosure before it was offered for short sale. His final bankruptcy filing in 2010 indicated no savings and negative net income per month. The 2010 bankruptcy filing is available on the PACER public database and a copy of it is attached.
Based on the facts, which are all publicly viewable, every story Durek has told the media and his followers about his "Native American multi-millionaire architect father" is totally false."
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:8edc782a-df49-4890-93d3-c3c1530738dd------
"Facts about Durek’s Norwegian ancestry story: His mother is Sheila Farmer, born 1943 in New York. She was Durek’s father’s third wife (of four total that we can confirm). Records show she has rented a small apartment near Queens, NY for the past 22 years. On page 7 of his book, Durek states “My mother comes from a long line of Norwegian oracles, as well as Native American medicine men/women.” And on page 8: “Ancient Viking spirituality runs deep in her roots. Rejected by her stepfamily early on because they were black, and she was white…”
However, based on all documentary evidence of his family tree, including photographs posted to his own social media accounts, his mother is black. She apparently doesn’t have Norwegian lineage, nor Native American lineage. The 1930 Census shows Sheila’s mother, Vera Tyson, was born in Pennsylvania, the child of two “negro parents” as described by government records. Vera’s maternal grandparents were born into slavery in Virginia, while her paternal grandparents were born in Florida directly after the end of slavery in the late 1860s. Both sets of their parents were likely slaves in Florida as well.
Government records show Sheila’s father was Oscar Eugene Farmer, Sr., born 1914 in Maryland. The 1920 Census shows him as a “black child” and both his parents were also listed as “black” and born in Maryland too. It appears likely both sets of their parents were born into slavery in Maryland.
Durek has recently been telling a story that his mother is part Norwegian. In an interview with DUST magazine in late 2018, he said his mother is part Russian too. However, based on documentary evidence, it appears these stories are false.The origin of the Norwegian story may arise from a point in Durek’s grandmother’s life when it appears she had a boyfriend named Edward Brinn. Edward was half Norwegian and half black. Edward’s grandparents were from the West Indies. His father was a black man born in the United States, while his mother was a white Norwegian immigrant. Edward’s father was deaf and orphaned as a child. A close family friend who lived with Edward’s father in a deaf children’s home in New York later adopted Edward. That man’s family name was Urquhart, so Edward became Edward Brinn Urquhart. Recently, it appears Durek's mother Sheila began using the name "Veruschka Urquhart." The reason for this change is unclear, but documentary evidence shows both of her parents were black Americans who had no relation to Norway, no relation to Native Americans, and no relation to Russia. See the Ancestry.com
link for her full lineage details and related government documents."
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"Checking criminal background and court records in the state of California: Los Angeles Superior Court records show Durek married a foreigner (apparently a Czech citizen) in Los Angeles. His wife's name was Zaneta Marszalkova. It appears likely it was an attempt to defraud the US government into issuing Zaneta a green card. When the scheme failed, Zaneta filed for divorce from Durek in 2008 and it was finalized in 2009. This record is available at the LA Superior Court database.
LA Superior Court records also show that Durek's half-brother, David Benjamin Verrett, Jr., born in 1956, lives in the South Central LA area. He has worked as a security guard for many years, but last year had his security guard license canceled after he disobeyed court orders related to alimony and/or child support payments.
The San Francisco area court systems show Durek was previously arrested at least 3 times as an adult in San Francisco. People online who claim to have known him since his youth have said that in addition to his multiple adult arrests, Durek was also previously arrested and convicted as a juvenile. Juvenile detention reports aren't publicly viewable, but the online posts say he was a neighborhood thug and bully, and when he was a teenager was convicted of arson for burning down a house in his neighborhood, and selling drugs including to children as young as 12.
During the 1990s, San Francisco court records show Durek was also arrested and charged by the State of California for riding public buses without paying the fares. Court records in San Mateo county also show two more criminal offenses. Charges were brought against him by the State of California, but those criminal files from San Mateo aren’t viewable online and must be obtained by visiting the courthouse to research in person in San Mateo."
