Religious Gurus & Fraudsters (TruTV Crime Library)

[onager]

Quick, fun read covering some of our old favorites (Popoff, Bakkers) and some later crooks (Tod Coontz in North Carolina).

Way too short. But covering every religious con artist in detail would fill up the whole Internet.

The Baptist Foundation of Arizona is interesting, because the crooks didn't appear to personally profit from the scheme. They were more concerned with their images as God's Chosen Investors or somesuch.

The TV show "American Greed" covered that story in detail. It was amazing to see victims claiming that everything would have been OK if only those meddling cops hadn't stuck their noses in. "Eventually everyone would have gotten their money back plus a profit!"

Sweet Jebus. EVERYONE who runs a Ponzi scheme makes that claim after they get caught. Which I guess is sort of true, in the John Kenneth Galbraith sense of "eventually we'll all be dead."

http://www.crimelibrary.com/blog/gallery/a-guide-to-religious-gurus-and-fraudsters/index.html

[TxDemChem]

1. I love American Greed.

It seems that about 1 in 4 episodes somehow deals with a religious leader or a highly trusted member from a church, synagogue, etc. quite sad. If I were going to pull a con, is probably do the same thing. Luckily, I despise that sort of behavior.

[AlbertCat]

2. Arnold Potter..... the musical!

It could happen....