DOJ Seizes $150K In Assets From Vet-Scamming Church

Former parishioners say it's a cult.

The Department of Justice has seized $150,000 worth of property from a Georgia-based church alleged to have run a scam on veterans, bilking them out of their education benefits and other GI Bill entitlements and ultimately defrauding the United States government out of $22 million.

The House of Prayer Christian Churches of America Inc. (HOPCC), led by a man named Rony Denis, is accused of having purposely targeted veterans for enrollment in its 12 seminaries (11 of which were conveniently located right near military bases), which offered practically nothing in the way of education beyond sending the veterans back to military bases to recruit other soldiers and military spouses to join the seminary as well, and then kept them all perpetually enrolled in the seminary whether they were actually attending classes there or not. The veterans would exhaust their GI Bill without ever receiving so much as a certificate.

The church also conned the veterans and the US government out of GI Bill money intended for VA disability compensation, VA Caregiver Support and VA home loans, coaching them on how to lie to the VA to get 100 percent disability ratings and other benefits, which the House of Prayer would then take for itself.

The 2020 letter from advocacy group Veterans Education Success that first alerted the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Georgia State Approving Agency about the scam reads:

[A former member] explained that veterans are often required to make a variety of payments, such as “weekly offerings,” “monthly offerings,” “electric bill offerings,” and “soul-winning offerings.” Many veterans were even allegedly told that “God blessed you [with disability compensation] so you could give your time to him and not worry about working a regular job” and that their disability compensation and other veteran’s benefits were “for the church.” HOPCC officials even allegedly went as far as to convince VA employees to access information about its parishioners’ VA disability ratings. [...]

Former HOPCC members also allege that the church takes out mortgages in parishioners’ names and forges signatures. Former Member 3 (“FM 3”), a Marine veteran and former teacher at the HOPCC bible seminary, had multiple properties purchased in his name without his knowledge or consent. Former Member 8 (“FM 8”), a veteran and former HOPCC member, claims that he discovered five homes were purchased under his name after he returned from his deployment to Iraq. According to FM 10, a male minister once pretended to be a woman over the phone to get a loan in a female church member’s name. HOPCC is allegedly able to engage in mortgage fraud because it has access to its students’ social security numbers and personal information. In addition, a current member of the church claims that HOPCC has multiple in-house notaries that it uses to assist in mortgage fraud.

How very holy of them.

Five of the HOPCC churches were raided by the FBI this past June, likely based on these allegations as well as allegations from other former members who were scammed in different ways, many of whom say the church was a cult. One former member, Arlen Bradeen, even went so far as to write a memoir of his time in the HOPCC titled  House of Prayer/ Den of Thieves: A Memoir of My Escape from a Cult.   There's evena website. 

The VEC's letter noted that the organization was likely already being investigated by the FBI at the time they sent it.

“Basically, you leave the church and you’re excommunicated,” former parishioner Gladys Jordan told The Daily Beast in June. “That’s it, they separate you from your family. I haven’t had contact with my son since I left in September 2016. Every time I call him, he doesn’t even call me mom, he says, ‘Ma’am, how did you get this number?’”

“The cult leader, Rony Denis, is infatuated with Jim Jones. This is a modern-day Jim Jones cult. That’s my scare, that he’s gonna take my son to another country and do the same thing that Jim Jones did,” Jordan added.

“We were all obedient to the pastors because we were taught and trained to obey ‘them that have the rule over us,’” former member Elizabeth Biles told Savannah Now after the raid. “Pastors have complete control over every aspect of our lives – even our finances. They asked for everyone’s income, and they had to tithe 10 percent of everything or otherwise you were considered ‘stealing from God.’”

Biles said she was also required to give the church her $400,000 military life insurance plan, meaning that her family would have gotten nothing in the event of her death.

It would seem that $150,00 is nowhere near what this church has stolen from its members and the VA, so hopefully there is a better plan for some restitution.

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