Are you experiencing buyer's remorse after purchasing an extremely costly, Church of Scientology-sanctioned e-meter and hope to assuage your guilt by selling it on the secondary market? You might be out of luck. According to a recent report, the Church has been granted direct access to eBay auctions to block the secondhand sale of the nominal lie detectors, both to prevent them from being sold to "suppressives" as well as to ensure that all would-be e-meter purchasers buy them directly from the Church (at a higher price, of course).

E-meters—essentially tin-can contraptions that pass an electric current through the user and spit out a dubious assessment of his or her state of mind (these are the machines that street recruiters and maybe even John Travolta have tried to hook you up to for a "free stress test")—have zero scientific utility, though that hasn't prevented the Church from selling them for upwards of $4,500 a pop. Now, the Church, through eBay's Verified Rights Owner Program, has been granted permission by the online auction house to go in and delete any listings for second-hand e-meters.

The VeRO program is ostensibly for sellers who wish to block the sale of such counterfeit goods as, say, fake Prada handbags. However, given that the e-meters being sold on eBay are authentic, it appears the Church is operating outside of VeRO's intended scope, and is thus guilty of, among other things, "price fixing, tortious interference with a contract, misrepresentation, perjury, unfair competition, discriminatory business practices, and religious discrimination." (Most auctions have already been removed, but screengrabs are available here).

This isn't the only price-gouging practice by the purportedly "religious" organization. One estimate pegs the cost of ascending from novice to OT9—one of the highest levels in Scientology—at between $365,000 and $380,000. Church-sponsored seminars and auditing sessions often run into the thousands of dollars. But, hey, that's probably cheaper than psychiatric drugs!

An e-mail to an eBay spokesperson seeking comment was not returned by post time.