Scamming the Faithful

Con artists like to set up their investment fraud operations amid groups of persons that are inclined to avoid rational inquiry and analysis. It is not surprising, therefore, that through the last few decades as religious fanaticism has garnered considerable public attention that there has been a virtual plague of such operations targeting those of faith. Cloaking an investment deal with religious enthusiasm provides a false sense of trustworthiness. Recent history has recorded many alarming examples.



Oil hustling and "biblical prophecy" may sound to be a combination that would make for improbable bedfellows, but they have carried on a tainted love match for several decades--and largely at evangelicals' expense. In the last few decades multimillions of dollars have been poured into penny-stock oil schemes lured by hustlers who utilized biblical passages that supposedly prophesized that great wealth lay beneath the sands of Israel. Add to this that a passage in the book of Ezekiel supposedly implies that Armageddon will be triggered when a confederacy of nations attack Israel to "take a great spoil"--interpreted to mean oil--and spiritual craving and greed for material wealth mated in frenzied fornication in the hearts of true believers.



Another biblical reference used by oil hustlers has been a verse in Deuteronomy 33 where it is related that Moses viewed the Holy Land from Mount Nebo and foretold the blessings that awaited Jacob's twelve sons. The blessings alluded to "treasures hid in the sand" and "precious things" locked beneath the earth.



In 1999 a fraudulent investment operation was found to have been conducted under the guise of "St. Clair, Inc." St. Clair falsely told investors, some 60 or so individuals from an Illinois church where he was deacon, that two oil wells had been drilled and were producing oil. In truth no well had ever been drilled. The deacon raked in over $8 million before he was exposed. This shepherd of the faithful was sentenced to only fifty-one months in jail for his effort.



Another example: Between 1993 and 1999 a Florida-based church, Greater Ministries, had nearly 28,000 investors nationwide, all having been promised that their divinely inspired investments would double. By 2000 Greater Ministries had taken in $578 MILLION while the trusting church goers mortgaged their homes, maxed out their credit cards, or cashed in their retirement funds to invest--only to discover that they had been hellishly swindled by the church leaders.



Not surprisingly, a number of the religiously inspired oil hustlers operated out of Texas. Among them was Harold Stephens, who drove up stock prices in his oil company--Ness--raking in a cool $3.5 million by associating his Holy Land oil venture with apocryphal prophecies. What his faith-inspired investors never understood was that the operating agreement that they all signed was through two of Stephens' front companies. The agreement stated that only the companies he owned would profit if oil was ever actually found: the investors would get nothing.



Unfortunately, self-centered religious groups are rarely reminded that the Creator gave them a brain and expected them to use it--at least occasionally.