And in general religions are in business of extracting money from people and using it for their own means. Scientology is not any different from any other. Including the mainstream Christian cults...
And their means both as determined by their doctrine and expressed by their history vary greatly. In the US religions have been legally defined (a subject of much debate historically) as they are given tax and regulatory exemptions and often public funding. Here’s a good read on the topic from 1969:
