(Photo: Apollo Quiboloy is identified as the “Appointed Son of God” during a TV broadcast of his Sunday sermon.)

Apollo Quiboloy, the Philippines’ most popular televangelist (1.2 million followers on Facebook), was recently charged with sex trafficking.

The Associated Press reported, “The indictment accuses Quiboloy and others of recruiting women and girls, typically 12 to 25 years old, as ‘pastorals’ who cooked his meals, cleaned his houses, massaged him and traveled with him around the world. Some also had sex with Quiboloy on scheduled “night duty,” including some minors such as a 15-year-old girl, according to the indictment.”

Quiboloy has the support of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and might be found innocent of the charges.

Meanwhile, Quiboloy’s twisted theology and business practices should have served as warning signs, but discernment is lacking in the church today.

Continue reading “Philippine Televangelist Charged With Sex Trafficking, Operated Church as Business”

A couple of months ago, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published the Audit Technique Guide for Religious Organization.

Could this signal the IRS is intending to take stronger action against churches and ministries abusing their tax-exempt status?

For the past 15 years, the IRS rarely audited religious organizations or prosecuted pastors for financial crimes.

Prominent Christian religious leaders are more likely to die in a private plane crash than to be prosecuted for tax evasion.

Since 2014, Bahamas-based televangelist Myles Munroe and Remnant Fellowship Church founder Gwen Shamblin both died when their privately-owned jets crashed. Trinity Foundation has attempted to investigate both Munroe and Shamblin for international money laundering.

During this same time period only one televangelist, Todd Coontz,  was prosecuted and convicted for tax evasion. His ministry’s tax-exempt status has not been revoked.

Continue reading “Religious Leaders More Likely to Die in Plane Crash Than Receive Federal Prosecution”

 

By Warren Cole Smith, President of MinistryWatch

OPINION—At a recent meeting of Bible translation organizations in Newport Beach, Calif., one of the speakers stood at the podium and asked the 50 or so leaders there a series of simple questions:  How long does it take to translate the Bible?  And how much does it cost to translate the Bible into a new language?  How many Bible translations have been completed in the past year?  How many will be completed in the coming year?

You’d think these questions would be simple enough to answer.  After all, ask an executive of almost any business on the planet these same questions about his or her business, and that leader will have a ready answer.

But if you ask a leader in the Bible translation industry, the answer you are most likely to get is: “It depends.”  To drive home this point visually, the speaker held up a coffee mug on which he had printed the words “It depends.”  His prop generated some laughter, and a few tight-lipped smiles.

In fairness, that answer – “it depends” — has some truth.  Every project is different.  The people doing the work vary in efficiency and training.  But the same things might be said of virtually every service sector business operating in the world today.  In those industries, it is hard to imagine that “it depends” would long work as an excuse for not knowing or not finding out.

But “it depends” has become part of the culture of the Bible translation industry.  It has helped produce a lack of transparency and accountability that should be a giant red flag to the tens of thousands of donors who give hundreds of millions of dollars to Bible translation organizations every year.

To understand just how big a red flag, we will have to do a little math.

Continue reading “Just How Broken Is the Bible Translation Industry?”

* Have you donated after receiving personalized emails or letters from a televangelist promising to pray for you?

* Has a telemarketer pressured you into donating to a ministry while  claiming that you would receive financial blessing or physical healing if you donate?

* Have you purchased products through a ministry website but never received your order?

Continue reading “Have You Been Defrauded by a Church or Ministry?”

The church and ministry conference business is back with a vengeance with guest speakers often collecting large speaking honorariums. Many religious organizations refuse to disclose the size of honorarium payments, leaving donors and attendees in the dark as to how the money is being spent.

Reciprocal speaking arrangements (you speak at my event and I speak at yours) abound as speakers seek the spotlight.

After hosting a virtual conference last year due to COVID, attendees flocked to televangelist Bill Winston’s International Faith Conference, which was held in September in Forest Park, Illinois.

Guest speakers included televangelists T.D. Jakes and Kenneth Copeland.  Copeland used his Cessna 750.  Eagle Mountain International Church, also known as Kenneth Copeland Ministries, owns two jets: a Cessna 750 and Gulfstream G-V.

In August, Copeland held his Southwest Believers Convention. Creflo Dollar and Bill Winston, guest speakers, flew to Fort Worth for the event on each of their Gulfstream G-IV jets. If the hosts reimburse travel costs, tens of thousands of dollars are spent on ministry jets.

Speaking Fees

How much do guest speakers cost? The Harvard Business Review provides “a rule of thumb for appropriate pricing”:

$500 – $2,500 for new speakers

$5,000 – $10,000 for a first-time author

$10,000 – $20,000 for authors with several books

$20,000 – $35,000 for authors of best sellers

Celebrities and politicians may cost significantly more. In June, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters’ annual convention. According to booking agency All American Entertainment, Pompeo’s speaking fee is between $100,000 to $200,000.

The National Organization of Professional Athletes and Celebrities reports that comedian Chonda Pierce, a popular speaker at Christian events, has a speaking fee range of $20,000 to $30,000 and Tim Tebow’s speaking fee is $50,000 to $100,000. Tebow was Liberty University’s 2021 commencement speaker. Continue reading “Paid to Speak: The Speaking Honorarium Business”

After we reported in December 2020, “Trinity Foundation Investigation: $78.6 Million in Government Guaranteed Loans Given to Televangelists“, more reporters did a lot more digging.  Earlier this year, AP investigators, REESE DUNKLIN and MICHAEL REZENDES, reported that Catholic dioceses around the US requested and received millions in taxpayer aid from COVID emergency Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) funds while maintaining billions in cash and reserves.

In one particular case, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, NC received over $8 million in relief funds while they had roughly $100 million in cash and short-term investments available.  It’s interesting to note in regards to Catholic’s share of PPP funds that, “Catholic entities amassed at least $3 billion — roughly the same as the combined total of recipients from the other faiths that rounded out the top five, AP found. Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Jewish faith-based recipients also totaled at least $3 billion.

Catholics account for about a fifth of the U.S. religious population while members of Protestant and Jewish denominations are nearly half, according to the Pew Research Center.”, according to the article. (Read more here)

Trinity Foundation also reported in May 2021 that, in 2020, Trinity Broadcasting of Texas received a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) forgivable loan of $3,308,005.  The Texas-based non-profit also reported $30 million in donations, $24 million in revenue from selling airtime, and $17 million of investment income. Their total revenue for the 2019 year was $933,330,134!

During an episode of Leah Remini’s TV series about Scientology, a chilling strategy from L. Ron Hubbard is displayed onscreen. “Dominance of others is a control system. We are not looking for pleasant control–we are looking for effective control.”

Sometimes, there is little difference between Scientology and churches that claim to be Christian. Pastors and televangelists have employed the same techniques, using legal threats to control victims. At the heart of this scandal is the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

However, more victims and whistleblowers are fighting back by exposing the abusive practices on social media with the hashtag #NDAfree. A group of whistleblowers have created the NDAfree website featuring their stories.

Christian journalists are also highlighting the problem. Christianity Today news editor Daniel Silliman reviewed at least 15 confidentiality agreements and concluded on Twitter, “Many are so broad that someone who signs one could be in violation at any time.”

Televangelists Kenneth Copeland and Paula White effectively used NDAs to prevent congressional hearings into financial practices among televangelists.

In 2007, Senator Charles Grassley’s office sent faxes to six TV ministries demanding financial records. Copeland responded defiantly to Grassley, “You can go get a subpoena, and I won’t give it to you.”

Three years later the inquiry came to an end when Grassley decided not to issue subpoenas to the televangelists or former employees of their churches.

A Senate Finance Committee report on Copeland’s ministry stated, “Former employees were sincerely afraid to provide statements for fear of being sued since they signed confidentiality agreements.”

Continue reading “NDAfree – Opposing the Practice of Churches and Ministries Silencing Victims”

 

Trinity Foundation has created an online questionnaire for informants to report religious financial fraud. If you have witnessed religious fraud, theft or financial excess, please let us know about it.

Tips play an important role in solving crimes and exposing bad behavior.

According to attorney Stephen Martin Kohn, author of The New Whistleblower’s Handbook, tipsters uncover more fraud than professional auditors and law enforcement combined.

Trinity Foundation specializes in open source investigations. We comb through public databases and government records for evidence of religious leaders living extravagant lifestyles. However, our investigations often result in unanswered questions.

Informants may help investigators understand the big picture by answering the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why.

We will keep your identity confidential unless you authorize us to contact investigative reporters or government investigators on your behalf. We’ve been protecting the identity of confidential informants successfully since we began investigating in 1989.

NDA INFORMANTS WANTED: If you would like to become an informant and have previously signed an NDA, fill out our online questionnaire.

(Photo: GFA World, formerly Gospel for Asia, at NRB’s 2021 Convention in Grapevine, Texas. Gospel for Asia has rebranded after facing a series of scandalous accusations and settling a $37 million lawsuit.)

Where have the televangelists gone?

The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) annual convention was held this year in Grapevine, Texas, which is coincidentally the home of Benny Hinn Ministries.

Some of America’s best known televangelists (James Robison, Robert Morris, Marcus Lamb and Matthew Crouch) have homes within 10 miles of the Gaylord Texan Convention Center, home of the 2021 NRB Convention.

Yet, unsurprisingly, most televangelists and “Christian” TV networks were no-shows at the convention. Daystar Television Network, Inspirational Network and The Word Network stopped being convention exhibitors years ago. The ability to network over the Internet has dramatically reduced the need for in-person communication and the lingering effects of Covid-19 discourage large networking events in 2021.

Continue reading “Televangelists, but not the Religious Right, Abandon Annual National Religious Broadcasters Convention”

If you thought televangelist shoes and watches are expensive, let us introduce you to the extravagant world of ministry aircraft. From the mundane to the exotic, we are tracking trips to ministry events and vacation destinations.

Trinity Foundation recently launched Pastor Planes, an investigative project, with the objective of bringing financial transparency to churches, ministries and Christian universities using privately owned aircraft.

Pastor Planes can be found on Instagram and Twitter.

Trinity Foundation is currently tracking 50 aircraft.

By our calculations, there are days when more than $100,000 is spent on private-jet and charter-jet travel by televangelists, ministry executives and Christian university personnel. In addition to the cost of purchasing or leasing aircraft, jet fuel, pilots’ salaries, inspections, repairs, insurance, landing fees, and hanger fees result in higher travel expenses.

Christian leaders are commanded to be good stewards of resources entrusted to them. 1 Corinthians 4:2 says, ”Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.”

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