Liana Shanti, Truth-Teller? — What She Said vs. the Record

Liane Wilson — “Liana Shanti” — built her brand on a single promise: that she tells the truth, and that the truth always comes out. This page takes her at her word. Below are her own public statements about her honesty and her past, set beside the documented record. We reproduce her words to document them; we adopt nothing as true. Judge for yourself.

1. The Liana Shanti truth-teller claim, in her own words

Two of her statements frame everything on this page. On January 5, 2023 she wrote that her critics “can’t find one single thing” about her — “That’s why they HAVE to make up something.” Three days later she wrote that she has “led an impeccable life for 51 years” and has “zero to hide.” Both stories are reproduced below. Every section that follows sets those two claims beside the court filings, licensing records and her own words.

— the Liana Shanti truth-teller claim, in her own Instagram stories —

@lianashanti Instagram stories — reproduced to document her statements, not adopted as true.

More of her self-portrait is gathered on In Her Own Words. She made these statements while on federal probation for a felony.

2. Then the truth came out

On March 3, 2023, investigative journalist Jennings Brown published his findings in The Daily Beast, naming “Liana Shanti” as Liane Wilson — a convicted felon running a spirituality-and-health school out of Princeville, Hawaii. The reporting documented the relocations, the coached “memories,” and her criminal record. Two weeks before it ran, she had told her followers she had “zero to hide.”

3. The record she said didn’t exist

Convicted felon — fraud under bankruptcy supervision

In May 2021, Wilson pleaded guilty to a federal felony — Concealment of Bankruptcy Assets (18 U.S.C. § 152(1)). She pleaded guilty to the whole federal indictment, which charged that from about May 17, 2011 to August 20, 2014 she and a co-defendant concealed from the bankruptcy trustee “cashier’s checks from the sale of a diamond ring, a long-term disability insurance policy and a claim made on the long-term disability policy, and business assets of Rawganic Vegan” (Doc. 1). In her plea agreement she agreed she “is in fact guilty of Concealment of Bankruptcy Assets as charged in the Indictment” (Doc. 43, ¶ 6). The conduct she admitted in detail: about five weeks before her 2011 Chapter 7 filing, a five-carat diamond ring was sold for $42,000, the proceeds taken as five cashier’s checks — each under $10,000, in a co-defendant’s name — and never disclosed to the bankruptcy court. In December 2021 she was sentenced to five years’ federal probation and a $21,000 fine. (Criminal case 1:19-cr-00105; Chapter 7 bankruptcy Case 11-01392.) Previously, in 2014, the U.S. Trustee contended that Wilson concealed $333,386.87 in UNUM long-term disability income — paid into a third party’s account between 2011 and 2013 and left off her sworn Chapter 7 schedules. Wilson disputed it; rather than litigate, she agreed to have the case dismissed with a 30-month bar on refiling. It arises from the same Chapter 7 case and reflects the same pattern: money routed through other people’s names and kept off schedules signed under penalty of perjury. (Quoted from the U.S. Trustee’s motion in Chapter 7 Case 11-01392.)

The pattern, in the paperwork

Read side by side, the two bankruptcy filings show the same moves repeating — all visible on the face of the sworn documents:

• Income that collapsed exactly when it was useful. In the 2010 Chapter 13 she swore monthly take-home of about $16,000; eight months later, in the 2011 Chapter 7, she swore about $2,266 — after reporting roughly $950,000 earned across 2008–2010. The smaller number is what made each case possible.
• Money routed through other people’s names. The diamond-ring proceeds were issued as five cashier’s checks, each under $10,000, payable solely to her co-defendant; the $333,386.87 in UNUM payments went into a third party’s account.
• “None” answers the same file contradicts. Her Chapter 13 swore “None” to garnishments while a schedule in the very same filing disclosed a recent $5,768.58 wage garnishment; her Chapter 7 swore “None” to property transfers in the prior two years — a window that included the April 2011 ring sale.
• Two trips through bankruptcy, zero debt discharged. She filed twice in eight months and obtained no discharge either time — the second case ending in a 30-month bar on refiling after the Trustee flagged potential fraud.

Drawn from the Chapter 13 (Case 10-02786) and Chapter 7 (Case 11-01392) court filings.

Misrepresented credentials

She advertised a “Certified Clinical Nutritionist” designation she does not hold — so much so that the certifying board notified the court (Doc. 113). She has also described herself as a “Fellow of the Harvard Medical School Institute of Coaching” — the Institute removed her profile from its website in December 2024 — and as a former Wall Street attorney. Each is checked against the documents on the Credentials Fact-Check. When the CNCB Board put its finding in front of the court, she branded the board a “scam” — see the The Nutrition Board Letter.

Separated from Wyndham after customer complaints

Before the bankruptcies, she sold timeshares. In 2011 she sued her former employer, Wyndham Vacation Resorts. In its answer to her lawsuit, Wyndham stated that a vice president “informed her that numerous customers had complained about her misrepresentations,” that she “remained suspended from work” while the complaints were investigated, and that on October 4, 2009 he “advised her that she would be separated from employment.” (Wilson v. Wyndham Worldwide Corp., No. 1:11-cv-00538 (D. Haw.), Doc. 6, ¶¶ 36–37.)

Lost real estate license

On her December 31, 2022 license renewal — filed a year after her federal conviction — she answered “No” to the question “have you been convicted of a crime.” Under a settlement approved by the Hawaii Real Estate Commission (Case REC 2023-0159-L), she surrendered her real estate license effective August 23, 2024 (license RS-63187). The Commission’s case summary also sets out the property record behind her: state tax liens recorded in 2008 and 2015; a 2009 lien from the owners’ association of Alii Cove, on a property later foreclosed; a 2010 IRS lien; and a final judgment against her in Hawaii’s Fifth Circuit Court for $253,885.85.

Sued over money

That $253,885.85 judgment came out of a lawsuit a Kauaʻi couple filed against her and Robert Beard in December 2008 (Civil No. 08-1-0251, Fifth Circuit). The court granted the couple summary judgment in April 2010, granted judgment against her counterclaim in June, and entered final judgment on July 30, 2010; garnishee summonses followed to her bank and credit-union accounts and to The Westin Kaanapali Ocean Resort Villas, a Starwood timeshare property (case record). In her own bankruptcy schedules she listed the debt as “Breach of Contract,” $254,000 (Chapter 7 petition, p. 28). Separately, a Maui plaintiff, joined by Prudential Maui Realtors, filed a small-claims case against her in Lahaina in October 2010 and filed again in January 2011 (2010 record, 2011 record). Her bankruptcy filing lists that case as a claim for “Moneys Owed” (p. 38); it was stayed by her bankruptcy and dismissed in September 2011.

The defamation case she brought — and the truth that came out in it

Wilson did not only claim to tell the truth; she sued on it. In December 2022, as the story came out online piece by piece — mothers in her community moving, or trying to move, children across borders — she brought a defamation action against two people from the families on the other side of those moves, waving a “30+ page investigative report” as proof they were the liars. She also threatened to add more defendants. On January 7, 2023 she posted that she was “seeking MAXIMUM DAMAGES from every single person, many yet to be added to the existing filing..: sparing no expense, and we are just getting started there.”

It had the marks of what is called a SLAPP suit — a strategic lawsuit against public participation, filed to make critics go quiet rather than to win on the facts. Among the things she sued over were the families’ letters to her probation judge. Judge Otake ruled those letters absolutely privileged, explaining that if they could be sued over, “witnesses and victims may be reluctant to come forward with concerns over a convicted person’s compliance with their terms of probation” (ECF 92, p. 48). At ECF 92 (May 22, 2026), Judge Otake’s 70-page Order excluded that report as unreliable, dismissed several of her claims — and adjudicated Wilson herself a defamer on the “abandoned child” statement. The woman who told her followers the truth would come out is the one a federal judge found published a falsehood. Forty-four months after she filed, a unanimous jury found for the people she sued. The full trial record is on The Verdict.

4. The Psychic Advocate

The “advocate” was a rebrand, and it arrived in stages. In 2022 her own website still called her “Psychic since childhood” (Wayback Machine copy, June 27, 2022). In September and October 2022, cult-information specialist Joe Szimhart published three video analyses of her and her group (Joe Szimhart’s analysis). In November 2022 she launched ExposingFamilyCults.com, the advocacy website covered in section 5, and the next month she filed her defamation suit. By March 4, 2023 — the day after The Daily Beast published its investigation — “psychic” was gone from her profile page (Wayback Machine copy). On April 7, 2023 — between that story and her April 24 status conference before her probation judge — she completed an online “Human Rights Education Training” — listed at $97 and 8–10 hours of study — and became a “Certified Human Rights Consultant” (as filed with the court, Doc. 116, Ex. 4.3). By the end of that month, after the hearing, her Instagram bio read “CERTIFIED Human Rights Consultant.” Since late 2022, Wilson has presented herself as a champion for abuse victims — a self-described victims’ advocate. The public court record shows a different choice when the accused was her own ex-husband. In 2012, Wilson’s then ex-husband was charged with rape, kidnapping, and assault of a woman on Hawai’i Island (State of Hawai’i v. D.C.W., Case No. 5PC121000345). At his 2015 trial, Wilson testified for the defense; he was acquitted. We state only what the record states — he was charged, she testified on his behalf, and he was found not guilty — and leave the contrast with “victims’ advocate” to the reader. What the advocate did inside her own community is also on the record, in two layers. In March 2023, two months after the “nothing negative or wrong” story, The Daily Beast published leaked exchanges from her private groups and reported that followers “often ask about past trauma, or if their children have been abused, and Liana almost always provides definitive clarity and affirmation about the alleged abuse.” A follower asked: “Who sexually abused me?” Liana: “Your grandfather.” Another: “was I sexually abused and if so at what age and by who…?” Liana: “You have experienced sexual abuse, yes. You’d [sic] uncle and a brother, both.” (The Daily Beast, 3 March 2023). Those answers came as psychic readings, and the readings were what she sold. Her own website introduced her as “Psychic since childhood” (Wayback Machine copy, June 27, 2022; see I See Dead People), and the price list a former student filed with her sentencing judge in July 2023 describes private groups where members could “participate in Liana’s psychic readings,” alongside one-on-one sessions at “15 minutes @ $300.00” (Document 110; see Paid access to a self-described psychic).

Three years later, two former members swore to the same practice. One, involved from 2017 to 2025, states that she “witnessed instances in which students who had not previously identified themselves as abuse survivors began to report supposed memories of abuse only after participating in Ms. Wilson’s community and teachings,” that Wilson would “correct or redirect students’ accounts when they questioned the identity of an alleged abuser, responding by definitively naming a different individual,” and that in “psychic” question-and-answer sessions she “affirmed or confirmed abuse narratives for students” in a manner “presented with certainty and authority” (ECF 84-2 ¶¶ 26–27). The other states that in Q&A sessions Wilson “repeatedly told members of the community that they had experienced abuse by family members — including fathers, brothers, or grandparents — even when they did not initially identify those experiences as abuse,” and “that failure to recognize such abuse was due to insufficient healing work” (ECF 84-3 ¶ 7). Wilson denies having coached anyone to claim abuse (ECF 63, Fact 16); the jury heard both accounts.

5. The website she said was hers, then said wasn’t

Put the dates in a row. On January 5, 2023 she posted that there was “nothing negative or wrong about anything I’ve ever done.” On August 2, 2023, answering the letters former members had sent to her sentencing judge, she filed a Position Statement in her criminal case saying the Exposing Family Abuse website “was started NOVEMBER 2022” and “I created this website specifically to create a platform for my advocacy that could grow” (Position Statement, criminal Dkt. 125-1 at 23, filed in the civil case as ECF 83-2, Exhibit X). On January 28, 2026, in the defamation case she brought, she declared under penalty of perjury: “I have never created, authored, controlled, or published the website allegedly entitled ‘Exposing Family Cults’ or ‘Exposing Family Abuse’” (ECF 70 ¶ 16).

On May 22, 2026 Judge Otake, with both documents before her, found that the public version of the Position Statement “nonetheless establishes a diametric inconsistency,” and unsealed it. The court declined to impose sanctions, because the Position Statement had not been signed under penalty of perjury, and said it was “not for this Court to determine which of the two statements is false.” It added: “Nevertheless, this conduct is troubling… At worst, Liane intended to mislead this Court or Judge Mollway” (ECF 92 at 22–25). Two former members, in sworn declarations filed in the case, describe what she said at the time. One, involved from 2017 to 2025, states that “beginning in 2022 and continuing through to 2024, she spoke on numerous occasions about her creation and authorship of the website known as ‘Exposing Family Cults,’ which she later renamed ‘Exposing Family Abuse,’” describing it as a platform “to publish information about individuals she considered harmful” in “efforts to damage their reputations,” and that she “informed me in advance when she intended to upload content about specific individuals” (ECF 84-2 ¶¶ 4–5). The other states that “in group discussions throughout 2023, she stated that she was responsible for the strategy and direction of the website and that another individual would serve as the public face” (ECF 84-3 ¶ 16). The registration records tell their own story. Under subpoena, the domain-privacy service produced its file for exposingfamilyabuse.com: the registrant is Robert Beard, a convicted felon (he pleaded guilty in the same bankruptcy-fraud case as Wilson), whom Wilson refers to as her husband, and the company on the account is Health Mastery Institute, her own business (ECF 48-8). The court did not say which of her two statements was false. This page keeps to that limit; the fuller record is on The Verdict.

The pattern

On January 8, 2023, Wilson wrote that she has “zero to hide.” In 2021 she had pleaded guilty to concealing assets from a bankruptcy trustee. The same gap runs through every section of this page: wherever a document exists, her account and the document part ways.

• Her work: Wyndham’s court filing says customers complained about her misrepresentations.
• Her money: her own bankruptcy schedules list a $254,000 breach-of-contract debt and a claim for “Moneys Owed,” and $333,386.87 in disability payments went into a third party’s account without the trustee’s knowledge.
• Her license: a year after her conviction she answered “No” to the conviction question, then surrendered the license.
• Her credentials: the certification board has no record of her applying for or taking its Certified Clinical Nutritionist exam.
• Her website: she told her probation judge she created it, then told another federal judge she never owned it — what the court called a “diametric inconsistency.”
• Her lawsuit: she sued for defamation, and the court ruled that one of her own statements about a defendant was defamation.

When the record catches up, the response follows the same course. The label changes: by the day after The Daily Beast published, “psychic” was gone from her website. And the person who raised the problem becomes the target: “they HAVE to make up something.” Nothing on this page was made up. Every statement links to the document it comes from.

She was right about one thing

She told everyone the truth would come out. It did — in The Daily Beast, in the bankruptcy and criminal dockets, in the Real Estate Commission’s settlement, and in federal court. In May 2026 a federal judge ruled that one of her statements about a defendant — that the defendant had abandoned her child — was defamation per se, noting that she had “not even bothered to justify or explain why it was made.” That ruling was only the beginning. In August 2026 a unanimous jury heard the whole case and awarded the people she sued $40.1 million. The record outlasts the narrative. Convictions, sentences, and the Real Estate Commission settlement are matters of public record. Media findings are attributed to The Daily Beast. In the federal civil case (1:25-cv-00297), the court’s rulings are stated as its holdings at ECF 92, and the verdict as the jury returned it on August 13, 2026. Wilson’s statements are reproduced to document them, not adopted as true.

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Her statements are also listed by date and venue, each marked sworn or unsworn, on In Her Own Words.