Sergio Gil, aka Serge Del Mar, wanted to be on TV so much that he spent two years filing increasingly outrageous whoppers to the police against his former religion to satisfy his Aftermath masters.

After working desperately to land a spot, Gil finally appeared on an Aftermath episode, with police complaint in hand. There he spouted bogus and egregious allegations with impunity.

But as one police officer who recorded Gil’s outlandish claims noted: “a report had to be filed in order for [Gil] to be on the [TV] show.”

Another officer noted the oddity of Gil wanting him to “speak to Mike Rinder,” who had nothing to do with the complaints but was the co-host of Aftermath.

In March 2019, Clearwater Police detectives met with Gil and conducted a two-day, video-recorded interview seeking specifics about his claims. Leah Remini’s head hunter, Aaron Smith-Levin, accompanied Gil to the police department. A month earlier, Smith-Levin had been identified by Clearwater police as having criminally conspired to hack Church computers for the show.

Smith-Levin ran the operations of the so-called Aftermath Foundation, the front group used by Remini and Rinder to recruit Aftermath participants through such means as cash and in-kind payments. Smith-Levin, a self-admitted adulterer, was later removed from the Foundation for boasting of a “cocaine-fueled sex” trip to Colombia, consorting with prostitutes, and slamming a female paramour into a stone wall, leaving her bloody and crumpled while he stalked off.

In January 2021, after an exhaustive, three-year, taxpayer-funded police investigation—one that consumed countless detective hours and included face-to-face interviews with numerous potential “witnesses”—the Clearwater Police closed Gil’s case. The detective wrote in the concluding police report:

“Gil was advised that after conducting my investigation there was no evidence to support his allegations…. This case will be closed…due to the lack of evidence. Gil’s allegations could not be supported or validated by physical evidence or witness testimony.”

To those who knew Sergio Gil, the case’s conclusion was not a surprise. For this is the Sergio Gil who had once said, “the Scientology religion is the best thing that ever happened to me”; who had said of the Church’s religious order, “At all times, honesty, integrity and ethical conduct are emphasized”; and who had observed that the Church had “taken great care to abide by the law and has demanded the same from its staff.”

So what happened? How had Sergio Gil gone from that, to being obsessed with outlandish stories woven from whole cloth about his former religion?

The full answer began in 1992.

At that time, the Gil family—Sergio, his two sisters and their parents—moved from Mexico to Clearwater, Florida, to be close to the Church’s international center. Sergio soon begged to join the religious order, the Sea Organization. But his father, Pedro, did not permit it until Gil was older and had completed sufficient personal study in the religion so he “knew enough about Scientology that he knew what he was doing.” 

When Gil fulfilled the requirements and his father granted permission, he joined the Sea Org in December 1993. He trained to become a Scientology study courses supervisor, assuming that position in 1995.

Less than a year into his tenure, Gil was removed for repeated violations of Scripture and policy in performing his duties. The violations were severe enough to warrant dismissal. Given the choice of being dismissed or completing a redemption program designed to give Sea Org members a second chance, Gil voluntarily chose the latter. He completed the program and resumed his position as a course supervisor for the next six years. 

But Gil’s behavior never changed. It was only discovered later that his violations of Church Scripture became even more egregious, acts so bad that he lied repeatedly to cover them up. In fact, Gil developed a habit of lying to cover up ethical violations, ranging from stealing money from his family to skipping work.

In 2004, Gil and his wife chose to leave the Sea Organization, and Gil was explicit that his decision was not due to any “upset,” saying, “I felt proud to help this team and be a part of this humanitarian goal.… I saw how people made amazing changes for the better.”

Gil was an active Scientologist for another seven years, applying at one point for a position as a Scientology counselor in the field.

However, the family began noticing a change in his behavior.

It began with multiple instances of Sergio appearing in clothing they knew he could not afford. When one of his sisters questioned him about how he had purchased the high-end clothing, he acted offended and dissolved into tears.

It reached a climax when Sergio called his father from a Los Angeles jail—arrested for shoplifting clothes and needing bail. His sister Monica picked him up and the family tried to help him get his life on track. They learned from Sergio it was not the first time he’d been stealing, but only the first time he’d been caught.

They also found that Gil, who they said frequently lied in his youth, was back at it. His sister cited examples—one on Facebook where Gil claimed a false country of birth, and another where he claimed to be a famous Mexican soap opera actor to get a good deal on a condo.

His lying was well known within his family. As Monica said:

“Anyone who deals with Sergio should be aware of the fact that he can be a very artful liar. This includes producing very convincing tears to make you sympathetic towards him. This is an unfortunate aspect of Sergio’s character.” 

Within a year, Sergio divorced his wife and told his family he was gay. “I told him… ‘first of all, you are my son and we love you very much.’” Pedro Gil recalls telling his son. “And I gave him a hug and a kiss and I said, ‘Okay, so let’s move on.’”  

Sergio also told his father he didn’t want to continue in Scientology.

“You make your own decisions,” Pedro told Sergio. “You are old enough and it’s your life.” The elder Gil further told Sergio he was welcome at their home anytime.

But Gil drifted further and further away from his family—changing his name to Serge Del Mar, ignoring phone calls and skipping important milestones, including scheduling a vacation on his sister’s due date. “It hurt me deeply…. He was alienating himself more and more,” Monica recalls. 

The family later discovered a hidden influence in Gil’s estrangement: He had begun to associate with a circle of expelled, anti-Scientologists who were involved in acts of harassment and aggression against the Church. Prominent in that circle were Mike Rinder and Leah Remini.

By 2015, Gil sought “counseling” from Rachel Bernstein, an anti-Scientology psychotherapist. Bernstein was a deprogrammer or “exit counselor”—a euphemism for those who are paid to coerce individuals out of their chosen religion using deception, misinformation, manipulation and various pressure tactics.

Bernstein’s techniques were so egregious that in January 2020, the California Board of Behavioral Sciences ordered her license revoked for gross negligence, incompetence, violating confidentiality, acting unprofessionally and practicing “beyond the scope of [her] competence,” and put her on three years’ probation.

As for Gil, concurrent with his “therapy,” he suddenly began to spout fantastical allegations that escalated from absurd to malicious defamation, including fraudulent claims of sexual abuse.

He embellished the charges for media attention, even hiring a public relations and media firm in 2016 to shop his new stories.

The lies were so absurd, multiple news outlets rejected his story. The Tampa Bay Times’ Tracey McManus, a notorious antireligious bigot with extremely low journalistic standards, said of Gil’s claims as told to another publication, “What we have didn’t meet our standards…We didn’t feel a need to respond to that trash.”

But in one ABC television appearance with Leah Remini in January 2017, the narrator did reveal an ugly truth about Gil:

“[His] psychotherapy finally allowed him to… see that it was actually healthy for him to cut ties with anyone in the Church, including his family.” 

“There’s people out there saying, stop the disconnection,” Gil affirmed on the program. “I say, bring on the disconnection.”

Rachel Bernstein had done her deprogramming well. Sergio Gil was manipulated not only to destroy his family relationships but his grip on reality.

Between 2017 and 2019—during the lead-up to the third season of Aftermath—Gil made numerous outlandish and unfounded reports to the police department in Clearwater, Florida.

His accusations grew increasingly deranged and outrageous. Gil came up with an over-the-top Pizzagate-inspired conspiracy claiming the Church and Clearwater police maintained underground tunnels through which hundreds of minors and adults were trafficked daily, including himself. An officer noted that a lot of what he said made no sense.

His family was at a loss to explain the accusations Sergio had never before voiced.

“Our family lived in Florida for many years, including while Sergio was in the Sea Org in Clearwater,” his sister Sofia said. “He would visit when he had time off and was always happy. After he left the Sea Org, Sergio told me that his time in the Sea Org was a rewarding experience and he was a much better person for it.” 

Gil’s false claims that aired on Aftermath bore no resemblance to the actual, untold story, nor to any story he told before.

Sergio Gil was lying. He knew it. His heartbroken family knew it. His deprogrammer knew it. Most of all, Leah Remini and Mike Rinder knew it.

In 2024, an Aftermath insider posted, “Serge told lies in his police filing, such as claiming that there are tunnels underneath the Fort Harrison Hotel which are used to traffic Scientology children. These days he goes on about ‘the hotels’ where supposedly children are kept as sex slaves, a claim so preposterous even ex-Scientologists are fed up with hearing it.”

And still, Rinder and Remini ran with Gil’s fantasies—knowing full well they were fiction. They needed a spectacle—and Gil’s fabrications delivered.