Dustin Muscato

Like so many others who work at, or have worked at GPB Capital Holdings, Scientologist Dustin Muscato does not list the firm by name on his LinkedIn page — and who can blame him? As we previously reported, the entire senior management of GPB Capital has removed itself from the firm’s website.

GPB Capital’s CEO David Gentile is leading this group vanishing act. According to his LinkedIn page, Gentile has given himself a big demotion. He is no longer the CEO of an NYC private equity firm with $1.7 billion AUM. Rather, he is now merely a partner at his father’s plain vanilla Long Island CPA firm Gentile, Pismeny & Brengel:

What is happening at GPB Capital Holdings? Why have the current and former executives gone into stealth mode? Is there an internal collapse in progress?

SCIENTOLOGY: ENABLE STEALTH MODE

Just as he does not list GPB Capital Holdings by name on his resume, Dustin Muscato also does not list by name the ten years he served as an Executive Director for Scientology Orgs in New York and Long Island.  Following the trajectory of a few other smart young Scientologists like GPB’s Brian Marshall, Muscato left Scientology staff, earned a college degree with honors, and then entered the business world where he could make some real money instead of the exploitative slave wages Scientology paid him as a religious worker.

RESUME SMOOTHING

Many former Scientology Sea Org and staff members struggle with how to write a resume which avoids any explicit mention of Scientology. This is understandable given the toxic reputation of Scientology has created for itself by its decades of malicious Fair Game, Disconnection, etc.  Scientologists support  this with their financial donations and are thus complicit.

What Scientologist working professional wants his or her name associated with the vile hate pages and websites created by the vicious lunatics who work in Scientology’s Office of Special Affairs? Many Scientologists are extremely secretive about being Scientologists for this exact reason: Scientology is a sleazy organization that does sleazy, dishonest, and depraved things to its own members, critics, journalists and everyone else. While Scientologists feel they benefit personally from auditing, they abjure the organization and thus become stealth Scientologists in the workplace.

Dustin Muscato sweeps his ten years on Scientology staff under the rug in one of the smoothest and most professional resume transitions we have ever seen:

Prior to GPB, Mr. Muscato managed a portfolio of non-profits, executing strategic initiatives and ultimately leading a successful turn-around before exiting the non-profit sector.

Translation: When he worked for the Church of Scientology, Dustin Muscato was given a group of insolvent Scientology Orgs and engaged in a massive Scientology “stat push” to make the numbers look good for David Miscavige. It is axiomatic in Scientology that any Org can be turned around for a short time but will always come crashing back down to Earth. Nevertheless, Muscato’s statement is a deft rephrasing of having managed “a portfolio of non-profits” and then “exiting the non-profit sector.” Well played Mr. Muscato. Other former Sea Org and staff should take your lead when exiting “the non-profit sector” for the secular business world.

Muscato’s choice to take a job with GPB Capital right out of university was, in hindsight, unfortunate. However, how could have anyone known? GPB looked so good on paper at the time.

THE SCIENTOLOGIST-OWNED REALISTE POOLED INVESTMENT FUND IN NASHVILLE

Muscato’s resume shows him presently serving as a board advisor of a new Scientologist-owned Nashville pooled investment fund called The Réaliste Fund. Scientologists Megan Epstein and her husband Stephen own the Réaliste Fund .

Stephen Epstein has spoken at Scientology’s prosperity events in the past. Click here for Stephen Epstein’s Scientology Service Completions.

Megan Epstein founded her Nashville real estate development company CA South in 2015.

She and her husband Stephen founded their Réaliste Fund in 2019.

One section of the Réaliste Fund website reads as if CA South and Réaliste are separate entities:

The Réaliste Fund has partnered with local developer Megan Epstein of CA South Development to fast-track the development of desperately needed residential condominiums, office condominiums, and flex-office space which the market is not currently offering in adequate supply for a variety of tax reasons and the difficulty in getting such projects debt financing.

It is obvious that the Epstein’s created Réaliste Fund to finance CA South’s projects. Indeed, the Réaliste Fund goes on to state:

The Fund’s proprietary equity and debt relationships allow for creative deal structuring and financing, which opens a whole universe of transactions not otherwise available to other local developers who are forced to use traditional bank financing.

Réaliste’s advantageous “proprietary equity and debt relationships” exist because CA South and Réaliste are both owned by the Epstein’s. A Réaliste press release shows the arrangement without mentioning ownership:

The Réaliste Fund is a private equity fund that backs real estate development projects in Nashville sponsored by CA South Development.

The Réaliste Fund is, essentially, the captive finance arm of CA South. According to the Réaliste Fund’s SEC Form D filing of February 2019, the firm is looking to raise $100 million USD. The Réaliste Fund stated in its Form D that it expects 15% of the $100 million to be spent on management fees:

Payments for functional services, e.g. investment management fees, development fees, and profits interests are estimated at $15 million over the fund’s life.

Réaliste’s Form D further shows that the firm paid $2.2 million in commissions to its broker BA Securities LLC of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania on $15 million in sales, thus pushing its commissions above 10% and into GPB Capital territory.

REALISTE FUND FOUNDER SCIENTOLOGIST MEGAN EPSTEIN

Réaliste Fund founder Megan Epstein’s webpage is an exercise in stealth; Scientology is nowhere mentioned. Instead, she slips in this innocuous mention:

I spend a significant amount of my time doing philanthropic work and hold an active role in a local Human Rights charity, supporting the local Nashville chapter called CCHRnashville.org in its efforts to empower parents and protect children from prescription drug abuse and over-drugging.

CCHR is, arguably, the most insane part of Scientology. However, this is open to debate when we consider David Miscavige’s Religious Technology Center. CCHR is an acronym for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. The goal of CCHR is to criminalize and destroy Psychiatry. Scientologist John Alex Wood stated this on Twitter:

L. Ron Hubbard taught that Psychiatrists — or “Psychs” as he called them — came to Earth from a planet called Farsec. The goal of the Psychs, according to Hubbard, is to enslave humanity using electronic implants and psychiatric drugs. The only way out of this trap is Scientology’s $360,000 program of auditing in which the systematic telepathic exorcism of body thetans is accomplished over a period of 5-10 years or more.

In order for Scientology to triumph over Earth, then, Psychiatry must be destroyed. This is what Stephen and Megan Epstein and all other Scientologists believe. This is why you will see Scientologists protesting outside of meetings of the American Psychiatric Association making absurd and hysterical claims such as this one: Psychiatrists are manically engaged in the mass-electroshocking of our children:

Given their goal as Scientologists to destroy Psychiatry in favor of Scientology, one can see why Stephen and Megan Epstein would want to go into stealth mode and not explicitly mention Scientology while trying to raise $100 million for their Réaliste Fund. The Epstein’s are big Nashville boosters. However, they have a definite purpose as Scientologists to destroy the psychiatric and mental health infrastructure of Nashville, and this while hoping to become wealthy by developing and building new properties in Nashville using pooled investment funds. This is schizophrenic, this desire to get rich off a community while simultaneously working to destroy its mental health infrastructure that non-Scientologists want and need. This conduct and thinking explains why Scientologists are insular and don’t fit into the larger Culture.

The Epstein’s Scientology beliefs aside, any potential investors must ask direct questions about the seemingly high management fees collected by the Réaliste Fund and the equally high commissions it appears to be paying its broker BA Securities, LLC of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. This same approach applies to investing in any pooled investment, private equity firm, REIT, etc.

Réaliste Fund advisor Dustin Muscato has brought GPB Capital DNA into the mix at Réaliste Fund. What, if anything, does this portend for Réaliste? And is Muscato still employed by GPB Capital?

Below: The Réaliste Fund’s initial February 2019 SEC Form D filing. Note: Please hover your cursor over the bottom of the page frame to invoke the page up/page down controls: