Charity group linked to militia organization
Seven Greater Ministries officials are named unindicted co-conspirators in an upcoming trial involving a militia activist.
The Tampa Tribune, August 16, 1999
By Michael Fechter
TAMPA - A local charity already under federal investigation for its unorthodox gift program has been linked in court papers to an area militia movement.
At least seven Greater Ministries International representatives, including founder Gerald Payne and his wife, Betty, are named unindicted co-conspirators in the case against Emilio Ippolito.
Ippolito's ``Constitutional Common Law Court'' declared war on the United States, threatened judges and grand jurors, and is listed as a militia movement by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala., nonprofit organization that tracks militia groups.
Ippolito and nine co-defendants go on trial in federal court May 27 on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
Greater Ministries runs church services, an herbal research center and a series of financial ventures from its Sulphur Springs headquarters. Its principal gift program, called ``Faith Promises,'' is the subject of a federal investigation and state attempts to shut it down failed.
Investigators here and in Pennsylvania believe Faith Promises is a Ponzi scheme, in which money from the most recent investors is used to pay off those who got in earlier. Pennsylvania authorities have issued two cease-and-desist orders in the past two years and issued a warning to religious communities after a January Greater Ministries event in Lancaster.
Also listed as unindicted co-conspirators are Ministries officers Don Hall and Randy Hester, minister Patrick Talbert, and Charles and Sandra Eidson.
Charles Eidson, whose Church of the Avenger gained notoriety for racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, has been working with Greater Ministries for months. He and Payne filed a $10 billion suit against The Tampa Tribune and newspapers in Kentucky and Pennsylvania April 28 claiming each is engaged in conspiracy against Christianity.
Eidson also helped a Ministries-affiliated development company buy a Kentucky hotel. A $2 million common law lien filed Dec. 30 included the name of Eidson's Church of the Avenger and his home address handwritten in the margin.
Payne could not be reached for comment. Eidson said he was aware of his identification as an unindicted co-conspirator but said he does not support Ippolito's efforts.
``I am diabolically opposed to anyone who would try to overthrow our present system,'' he said.
Greater Ministries used to work with Ippolito but Eidson said he put a stop to that.
That would have to be a recent change. While the state comptroller's office tried shutting down Faith Promises in February 1996, Payne signed common law papers dissolving Greater Ministries' corporate status and aligning it with Ippolito's Constitutional Common Law Court of We the People.
In April 1996, Talbert testified at a bond hearing for Ippolito co-defendant Charles P. Dunnigan.
