Church tied to anti-government organizations

The Tampa Tribune, August 16, 1999
By Michael Fechter

TAMPA - Greater Ministries enhances its links to the militant right-wing movement while two members try buying a bank.

Carl Thomas sells gold coins and jewelry minted by Greater Ministries out of a Duluth, Ga., post office box. He wanted to zbuy a bank, First Western Bank in Broward County.

He had one problem: Thomas has declared himself a ``sovereign citizen'' and won't supply banking regulators with financial and personal information. It's not the state's business, he said.

So the state turned down his bid for a controlling interest in First Western Thursday.

Thomas's thinking - expressed as he and a Plant City partner tried to move into mainstream banking - dovetails with Greater Ministries' increasingly open affiliation with radical right-wing dogma in the common law movement.

The ministry has run full page advertisements at least three times in The American's Bulletin, an Oregon-based magazine catering to Christian Identity and common law adherents.

February's issue included a story about possible health threats created by mysterious jet trails over Michigan.

The advertisements tout asset protection and ways to become a sovereign citizen through the Tampa Freedom Centre, .a division of Greater Ministries.

The American's Bulletin is ``very much within the patriot movement in a big way. It is full of New World Order conspiracy theories,'' said Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report. The report is published by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a monitor on militant right-wing political groups.

Common law and Christian Identity each grew out of the Posse Comitatus, a white supremacist terrorist group prominent during the 1970s and '80s and responsible for killing two U.S. marshals, said militia expert Mark Pitcavage. Christian Identity espouses a belief that white European Christians are the true Israelites and God's chosen people.

``These people are very radical, and they are targeting a vulnerable community and getting a lot of money out of it.''

A historian who studies right-wing extremism, Pitcavage educated law enforcement executives on domestic terrorism in a Justice Department-funded program. He posts much of his research on a World Wide Web page called ``The Militia Watchdog.''

While not all common law advocates espouse racism or violence against the government, they are philosophical brothers to the Montana Freemen and the Republic of Texas. In each instance, common law-based, anti-government movements engaged in lengthy and potentially violent standoffs with state and federal law enforcement agents.

In the Republic of Texas case last spring, state police exchanged gunfire with at least one fleeing member of the movement. The standoff started when Republic members took two neighbors hostage.

Nothing in Greater Ministries literature or taped programs advocates violence. And little suggests a white supremacist doctrine, but there has been increased use of the ``sovereign citizens'' doctrine that says a citizen can be exempt from federal, state and property taxes.

Part of the October 1997 American's Bulletin advertisement said ``You are sovereign when: 24. You DO NOT support the genocide of the Christian white race by the interbreeding and mixing of races.''

Sovereign citizen doctrine appears throughout correspondence between Thomas and Florida banking regulators. Thomas and Charles Tomlinson of Plant City began buying stock of the small Cooper City bank last fall and appear to have triggered state-mandated review by acquiring 25 percent, considered to be a controlling interest.

Because he's a sovereign citizen, Thomas said the state has no right to ask about his personal life or business.

``Where do statutes, regulations and or laws require that sovereign citizens provide public servants with information that will help the government to determine that the sovereign citizen is not what the citizen says he is?'' Thomas wrote Jan. 18.

In a letter dated Thursday, the state Department of Banking and Finance said it would reject the men's application for a controlling interest in First Western. They didn't list other partners buying stock, the price per share and verification of how the men were paying for the deal.

State law requires such information to ensure buyers are qualified ``by reputation, character, experience and financial responsibility'' and to protect other investors in the bank, wrote Linda Townsend, Bureau of Financial Institutions chief.

Thomas did not return telephone calls, and Tomlinson could not be reached for comment. The men have three weeks to request a hearing before the state decision is final.

Greater Ministries is not involved in the Broward bank deal, founder and President Gerald Payne said. The ministry is based in a four-story former bank building in Tampa's Sulphur Springs neighborhood. It's a subsidiary of Greater Ministries International Inc. of the Cayman Islands in the British West Indies, known for its extensive bank secrecy laws.

As recently as December, its newsletters list a series of active organizations under its umbrella, including an herbal research center, a prison ministry and the Tampa Freedom Centre.

The center was founded by Charles Eidson, who ran the racist and anti-Semitic Church of the Avenger.

The American's Bulletin advertisements were published in October, December and February. Eidson is listed among contributors to the Bulletin.

Volunteers run Greater Ministries and the church can't control other ventures they pursue in their free time, Payne said in a written response to The Tampa Tribune questions.

He did not challenge the involvement of Tomlinson and Thomas in Greater Ministries.

The ministry ``has no present connection or relationship'' with the Freedom Centre, Payne said.

Payne is listed as signing portions of the October advertisement with ``VICTIM'' printed beneath his name. That follows an essay entitled ``Churches Under Siege,'' which describes a methodical government assault on freedom of religion.

Payne criticizes tax-free 501c3 status with the Internal Revenue Service, which Greater Ministries has, because it put a church under the laws of man rather than the laws of God. The attorney general, the advertisement said, is the head of an incorporated church.

``With this thought in mind, you can see why Janet Reno took her authority to wipe out the insurrection at Waco,'' the advertisement said.

In 1993, disciples of cult leader David Koresh, suspected for weapons law violations, killed four federal agents before the FBI stormed the Waco compound, an action in which 72 people died.

Federal agents are investigating Greater Ministries for its gift program, ``Faith Promises.'' Citing Biblical passages, Greater claims it can double a donor's church contribution within 17 months.

No one has reported losing any money to the ministry, but investigators suspect the program is a Ponzi scheme that pays established participants with new money coming in.

A recent brochure boasts of having participants in all 50 states and eight countries. In videotaped meetings from early 1997, Payne boasted paying out $500 million and collecting about $230 million.

A ``Charles T. of Florida'' and a ``Carl T. of Georgia'' are listed in testimonials for the ministry in a recently produced glossy brochure.

``I have experienced the power of God as a result of Greater Ministries,'' Charles T. of Florida is quoted saying. ``I now understand the true joy of giving. Each month of gifting is a new miracle of God.''

``A few years from retirement, my wife and I has [sic] very little hope in the Social Security system,'' said Carl T. of Georgia. ``Now my wife and I have ample provision, and we are able to give away more each month than we are accustomed to earning.''

Payne has criticized Tribune stories about the program and Greater Ministries officials. Some letters signed by him and Eidson have included anti-Semitic statements. Questioning ``Faith Promises'' is equal to ``calling our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ a damn liar,'' they said in a September letter.

``We do not believe in any prophecy given by a Jew. This issue is wearing thin between [the] Tampa Tribune and all other Christian endeavors all across this country. In that we do not believe in what the Jew has done and is doing to our country.''

Advertisements in The American's Bulletin also reference Jewish domination of the United States and the ``Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' a classic work of anti-Semitism purporting to represent a Jewish plot for world dominance.

In December, U.S. Customs inspectors seized 99 $100 bills and about $26,000 in gold coins from Payne as he and his wife returned to Tampa on a British Airways flight from London. Payne has sued the Customs Service to return his belongings.

Payne, Eidson and seven other Greater Ministries officials were named unindicted co-conspirators in a federal obstruction of justice and conspiracy trial of another local common law court. Emilio Ippolito's Common Law Court of We the People sent threats to jurors in other cases and issued complaints of treason, arrest warrants and contempt of court orders against public officials.

Some of Ippolito's followers even talked of kidnapping a federal judge in Orlando to use in a prisoner exchange for incarcerated followers in California.

Ippolito and seven co-defendants were convicted last summer and await sentencing.

And a Greater Ministries elder, Patrick Henry Talbert, awaits trial on state charges that he and another Greater Ministries affiliate bilked a dozen elderly investors out of $280,000 in 1994 and 1995.

That case is unrelated to Greater Ministries.

But Talbert sat in jail four months, while issuing common law writs denying the state's power to prosecute him. Talbert also claimed diplomatic immunity as an ambassador for Jesus from the Kingdom of Heaven.