Leaders of a Georgia-based church with congregations in 5 states have been charged by federal prosecutors with swindling tens of millions of {dollars} in veterans advantages from parishioners serving within the army.
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 applications that drained their G.I. Invoice training advantages. In addition they say church officers used parishioners’ names on fraudulent mortgage purposes to purchase houses that the church then rented to congregation members.
“The defendants are accused of exploiting belief, religion, and even the service of our nation’s army members to complement themselves,” Paul Brown, the agent in command of the FBI’s Atlanta workplace, stated in a information launch.
Prosecutors say they don’t even know the true identify of Denis, alleging he assumed that identify after stealing one other individual’s id in 1983. He based Home of Prayer roughly 20 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 army bases, in response to 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 army service members to hitch their congregations and pressured them to spend their G.I. Invoice training advantages on enrollment in its seminary applications.
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 response to the indictment.
Fees towards 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 applications operated in Georgia underneath 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 obtained no federal cash.
Steven Sadow, listed in courtroom information as an legal professional for Denis, didn’t instantly return an e-mail message looking 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 response to native information retailers.
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 purposes and shutting paperwork and cast powers of legal professional to purchase and switch houses that have been rented to congregation members.
The indictment says Home of Prayer obtained $5.2 million in lease funds between 2018 and 2020, with a few of that cash getting used to pay for Denis’ two houses in addition to church leaders’ bank card payments.
Denis was additionally charged with serving to falsify his federal earnings 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 e-mail message.
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