Hello concerned friend, I am really sorry to hear of your friends involvement with this group.
As others have pointed out there is a thread about this already here that you should check out.
The link is here just in case you had trouble finding it [
forum.culteducation.com]
Here is a link to archived articles concerning the founders of this group and the enormous fraud they were convicted of:
[
hss.fullerton.edu]
I'm afraid "dubious" is quite an understatement.
Any group with such a terrible history would try and hide its past and that is exactly what this group has done. Despite the different names, the group your friend is involved in is the same group.
Rick has a page containing several articles about this group. [
www.culteducation.com]