Eduard Albert Meier, commonly nicknamed "Billy", is the founder of a UFO religion called the "Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien" (Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies) and alleged contactee whose UFO photographs are claimed to show alien spacecraft. Meier claims to be in regular contact with extraterrestrial beings he calls the Plejaren. He also presented other material during the 1970s such as metal samples, sound recordings and film footage. Meier claims to be the seventh reincarnation after six prophets common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Enoch, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Immanuel (Jesus), and Muhammad. Meier has been widely characterized as a fraud by skeptics and ufologists, who suggest that he used models to hoax photos claimed to show alien spacecraft. Meier's prophecies repeatedly blame Jews (whom he refers to as "gypsies") for future atrocities. Background Born was born in the town of Bülach in the Zürcher Unterland. Meier left public schools before finishing 6th grade. In his teens he was convicted multiple times of minor offenses. In 1953, he was convicted of thievery and forgery and sentenced to a prison term in Rheinau. After escaping from the facility, Meier illegally crossed the border and joined the French Foreign Legion. He went AWOL from the Legion to return home. In 1965, he lost his left arm in a bus accident in Turkey. Some time later, he met and married a Greek woman, Kalliope Zafiriou, with whom he had three children. The nickname "Billy" came by way of an American friend who thought Meier's cowboy style of dress reminded her of Billy the Kid. Alleged extraterrestrial contacts Meier claims his extraterrestrial encounters began in 1942, at the age of five, when he met an elderly Plejaren man named "Sfath". After Sfath's death in 1953, Meier said, he began communicating with an extraterrestrial woman (though not a Plejaren) called "Asket". All contacts ceased in 1964, he said, then resumed on January 28, 1975, when he met "Semjase", the granddaughter of Sfath, and shortly thereafter another Plejaren man called "Ptaah". Other extraterrestrials have since allegedly joined the dialog as well. Meier founded a non-profit, tax-paying organization based on his alleged contacts with Semjase, called the "Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien" (Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies) in the late 1970s and established his "Semjase Silver