Greater Ministries tells faithful it has purged records
Greater Ministries tells followers it will fight government inquiries and make good on its financial promises.
The Tampa Tribune, November 23, 1998
By Michael Fechter
LEBANON, PA.-- The head of a Tampa ministry banned from soliciting funds in Pennsylvania told a group gathered there Saturday that church officials destroyed computer records subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
``In a pig's fanny,'' Greater Ministries International founder Gerald Payne recalled as his reaction to a subpoena last month from Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Mosakowski in Tampa. Greater Ministries had ``purged all of the church's computers'' in defiance of the subpoena, Payne said.
The ministry also is not cooperating with a federal probe by the U.S. Postal Service, Payne said.
Mosakowski's subpoena followed a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court injunction ordering Greater Ministries to stop soliciting cash donations, called ``gifts,'' for the church's Faith Promises program. Speakers only indirectly alluded to the program Saturday, but Greater Ministries was held out by Payne and others to be a ``gifting ministry.''
Payne's comments about the investigations were directed to a small, informal gathering of about 20 people following a prayer service where more than 850 people packed the Lebanon Expo Center, including about 200 first-timers. Church leaders hawked gift programs under the auspices of the church's Herbal Research Center and Health Benevolence Christian Fellowship, and literature was available.
Pennsylvania law enforcement officials monitored the meeting and could seek a contempt citation if they think the order was violated. It bars Greater Ministries from promoting any financial operation in which people stand to get back more than they put in.
Pennsylvania authorities sought the injunction after Greater Ministries ignored two cease and desist orders issued by state securities regulators in 1995 and 1996.
The organization cites biblical passages to support the claim that it can double someone's money in about 17 months. State and federal officials suspect it is a hybrid Ponzi - or pyramid - scheme of monumental proportions.
In a Ponzi, very high interest rates are paid to the early participants from money collected from new ones. When the new money can't keep pace with payments, the pyramid collapses and those who are still in the scheme end up with nothing.
Greater Ministries has participants in all 50 states and abroad, and it is believed tens of thousands of people have put hundreds of millions of dollars into the program.
Greater Ministries spokesman David Whitfield said Saturday night that 80,000 ``families'' are members.
To become a member, a person must participate in the Faith Promises program, and make monthly donations to the ministry, according to court testimony.
Members who demand a refund are immediately excommunicated, and the money they ``gifted'' is kept by Greater Ministries, a ministries official testified during a hearing on Pennsylvania's injunction.
Whitfield also said Saturday that Greater Ministries will again be issuing a debit card, this from an unnamed Liberian bank the ministry claims it owns.
Greater Ministries' first debit card was issued by the now-defunct BestBank of Boulder, Colo., which the Colorado Banking Commission closed in July for insolvency.
Greater Ministries lost anywhere from $20 million to $35 million in uninsured deposits in the bank's collapse.
In addition to Pennsylvania, cease and desist orders prohibit the promotion of Faith Promises in Ohio and California. Bakersfield, Calif., police arrested two Greater Ministries representatives Friday on charges of selling unregistered securities.
Rev. Don Hall, one of Greater Ministries' charismatic ministers, told those attending Saturday's meeting that Greater Ministries was having financial problems.
The standing-room-only, three- hour service drew traditionally garbed Old Order Amish, women in designer outfits, the young and the old.
Hall said that the monthly payments many Greater Ministries members had come to expect probably will not be forthcoming. However, he said, if believers just ``hang on, buckle the seat belts and pray,'' they will get back ``seven times.''
Hall told of hundreds of gold and silver mines the ministry owns in Liberia, and said that Faith Promises dollars will be exchanged for gold- and silver-backed certificates redeemable on demand, less a 45-day lag time for Liberian bank clearing.
Between segments of gospel hymns and a smattering of prayers and speaking in tongues, Hall described a Liberian mine believed to hold the mother lode - $40 billion of gold, a mere 15 feet below the surface.
``The money [returned to participants] will circle around every 20 days,'' Hall said, adding that the Holy Ghost, not the U.S. Postal Service, would be the ``mailman'' delivering the cash, even on Sundays.
``Hang on, stay in the boat,'' Hall said to those whose Faith Promises payments have stopped. ``What did you do before Greater came along?''
Payne told the crowd that the ministry is also under investigation by the U.S. Postal Service, but that church records will never be surrendered.
``We're not turning over no list to nobody,'' Payne said. He told of Greater Ministries buying the ``tallest building in Africa'' for $8 million and that the church now owns its own airplane.
Ministries' meetings have been witness to grand boasts before. Payne told a 1996 audience that the ministries had outgrown banks. And former elder Patrick Henry Talbert told an Indiana gathering in 1997 that the ministries would make $1 billion annually from a platinum mine.
Payne's message was long on generalities and short on specifics, leaving many of those attending less than exuberant when he asked for resounding amens.
As many of the attendees shuffled out of the meeting, more than a few were grumbling about not receiving their Faith Promises checks, yet no one would agree to comment.
