Leaders of a Georgia-based church with congregations in 5 states have been charged by federal prosecutors with swindling hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in veterans advantages from parishioners serving within the navy.
An indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court docket in Savannah fees Home of Prayer Christian Church buildings of America founder Rony Denis and 7 different church leaders with conspiring to commit financial institution fraud and wire fraud, in addition to different federal crimes.
Authorities say church leaders exploited troopers and different congregation members by enrolling them in seminary packages that drained their G.I. Invoice training advantages. In addition they say church officers used parishioners’ names on fraudulent mortgage functions to purchase properties that the church then rented to congregation members.
“The defendants are accused of exploiting belief, religion, and even the service of our nation’s navy members to counterpoint themselves,” Paul Brown, the agent answerable for the FBI’s Atlanta workplace, stated in a information launch.
Prosecutors say they don’t even know the true title of Denis, alleging he assumed that title after stealing one other individual’s identification in 1983. He based Home of Prayer roughly twenty years in the past. The church is headquartered in Hinesville, a southeast Georgia metropolis that’s dwelling to 1000’s of veterans and Military troopers serving at neighboring Fort Stewart. The congregation there grew to as many as 300 members, the indictment says.
Home of Prayer branched out, opening as much as a dozen church buildings in 5 states, typically close to navy bases, in line with prosecutors. It additionally established affiliated Bible seminaries in Hinesville in addition to Fayetteville, North Carolina; Killeen, Texas; and Tacoma, Washington.
The indictment says the church targeted on recruiting navy service members to affix their congregations and pressured them to spend their G.I. Invoice training advantages on enrollment in its seminary packages.
The seminaries in all 4 states earned Home of Prayer leaders $23.5 million in G.I. Invoice funds for tuition, charges, books and housing prices from 2013 and 2021, in line with the indictment.
Fees in opposition to Denis and others stem from simply $3.2 million of these profit funds made to Home of Prayer’s two seminaries in Georgia. That’s as a result of the packages operated in Georgia beneath a spiritual exemption granted by state regulators. Prosecutors say that exemption prohibited the Georgia seminaries from receiving federal funding — together with G.I. Invoice advantages from the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs.
The indictment says church officers lied to Georgia regulators in annual kinds saying the seminaries acquired no federal cash.
Steven Sadow, listed in courtroom information as an legal professional for Denis, didn’t instantly return an electronic mail message searching for remark Thursday.
A gaggle referred to as Veterans Training Success wrote to the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs in 2020, saying former college students had complained that the Home of Prayer seminaries had drained their advantages whereas offering them with little training. FBI brokers served search warrants on a number of Home of Prayer church buildings in 2022, in line with native information shops.
Church Accused of Profiting Off Rental Houses Purchased With False Paperwork
The indictment says church officers additionally used its members as straw consumers to hide the leaders’ buy of rental properties. Prosecutors say church leaders falsified mortgage functions and shutting paperwork and cast powers of legal professional to purchase and switch properties that had been rented to congregation members.
The indictment says Home of Prayer acquired $5.2 million in lease funds between 2018 and 2020, with a few of that cash getting used to pay for Denis’ two properties in addition to church leaders’ bank card payments.
Denis was additionally charged with serving to falsify his federal revenue tax returns for 2018, 2019 and 2020. On Wednesday, FBI brokers and Columbia County sheriff’s deputies arrested the church founder at his mansion in Martinez west of Augusta, WRDW-TV reported.
In a separate case, federal prosecutors additionally indicted Bernadel Semexant, a pastor on the Home of Prayer church in Hinesville. The indictment unsealed Wednesday fees Semexant with intercourse abuse of a lady between the ages of 12 and 15. William Joseph Turner, listed in courtroom information because the pastor’s legal professional, didn’t instantly return an electronic mail message.
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