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Participants in the Greater Ministries program were victims of a massive Ponzi scheme, a conspiracy based on "fraud, greed and misrepresentation," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hoffer argued. A defense attorney contended, however, that they were simply "giving their money to God."

For more than five years, beginning in 1993, Greater Ministries operated what was variously called a "Double Your Money," "Double Your Blessing," or "Faith Promise" program, in which participants expected to double their money in less than 18 months.

This extraordinary rate of return was possible, staffers said, because of the ministry's involvement in highly lucrative overseas mining ventures for gold, silver, platinum, and diamonds. At one point, the ministry claimed to own an international bank and the largest hotel in South Africa.

Greater Ministries' "gifting program" was promoted across the country, in revival-style meetings large and small. Further, many early donors did get money back through "gifts" that usually came in cash through the mail. Their word-of-mouth enthusiasm helped spread the program into all 50 states, until it ultimately took in hundreds of millions of dollars. Then the program suddenly began to implode in the summer of 1998. Payments faltered, and by October they had stopped.

In March 1999, Pennsylvania authorities obtained a $6 million judgment against the ministry, and an injunction banning it from further fundraising in the state. Seven staffers were indicted the next month on up to 20 federal counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, money laundering, and evading bank reporting laws.

The charges carry potential sentences of many decades, plus enormous fines. One group of participants forced the ministry into involuntary bankruptcy; other participants filed a class-action suit in an effort to get their money back. In August 1999 authorities raided and then seized Greater Ministries' Tampa headquarters, a converted bank building.

Now the ministry staffers are in court. Only five of them gathered at the defendants' table, however. Two of the original defendants, John Krishak and James Chambers, have pleaded guilty to lesser charges and are expected to testify against their former colleagues.

Religious liberty defense
The lead defendants are Gerald Payne and his wife, Betty. Gerald Payne started Greater Ministries in 1993, ostensibly to support an outreach to Tampa-area drug and alcohol addicts, ex-convicts, and the homeless.

They were joined by Don Hall, a veteran tent revivalist who was Greater Ministries' missions director and principal evangelist; David Whitfield, the finance manager; and Patrick Henry Talbert, whose role was to underline the gifting program with his brand of antigovernment, "common law" rhetoric. Talbert is already serving a ten-year prison sentence on unrelated state fraud charges.

Defense attorneys calmly argued that the defendants either had no knowledge of or no connection with any financial irregularities, and were only trying to bring good news and urgent help to the poor at home and missionaries abroad.

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March 5 2001, Vol. 45, No. 4