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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

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Suranis
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#1

Post by Suranis »

This deserves its own thread

https://www.wonkette.com/doj-seizes-150 ... ing-church
DOJ Seizes $150K In Assets From Vet-Scamming Church
Robyn Pennacchia
January 16, 2023 03:11 PM

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 even a 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.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
This is a military dot com article going into a lot more detail on these guys.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/202 ... -vets.html
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#2

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

:shock: :mad:
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#3

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What surprises me about this is that the VA allowed it to happen. I served 27 years, and haven’t been able to use a dime of VA educational benefits.

Shortly after I retired I decided I didn’t want to practice law anymore, and thought maybe I’d become a teacher. Virginia has a “career switcher” program for people like me. But in order to qualify for the Masters’ in Education program I needed more English credits than I had (like, a lot more).

So I went to my local community college to knock out the lower division classes. I worked with the VA liaison there to apply for GI Bill benefits (you can’t get them directly from the VA - you have to apply through the school, then the VA pays part to the school and part to the student, depending on what you qualify for).

The VA said that since I was only “taking classes” and not enrolled in a degree program, they weren’t paying anything. I explained that in order to qualify for the graduate degree program I intended to enter, I needed to take these classes. I had a letter from the university saying so.

The VA was unmoved. One thing they said was, well, the GI Bill wasn’t really meant for people who already have advanced degrees. I was like, really? Where does it say that?

So I took a bunch of classes for one semester that I happily paid for out of my own pocket, but had no confidence that the VA would ever extend to me the benefit I earned through my service. So I decided against the M. Ed. because it was going to be expensive.

So it was my impression that the VA was really tight about this stuff. But apparently not.
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#4

Post by RTH10260 »

That HOPCC must have copied a lot Scientology scripts - get the first step, next you need this and that and you are enlightened, but maybe not sufficiently until you give us more of your $$$. :blackeye:
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#5

Post by MsDaisy »

That is totally fucked up but doesn't really surprise me in the least :evil: I understand there are billions of normal people who get great comfort from their religious beliefs and I respect that. But people who would knowingly do shit like this to innocent people just looking for help or answers are nothing but garbage and they deserve every punishment that can possibly befall them. Greed is a mighty beast, may they all get exactly what they deserve! :evil:
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#6

Post by chancery »

Maybenaut wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 10:03 am What surprises me about this is that the VA allowed it to happen. I served 27 years, and haven’t been able to use a dime of VA educational benefits.

Shortly after I retired I decided I didn’t want to practice law anymore, and thought maybe I’d become a teacher. Virginia has a “career switcher” program for people like me. But in order to qualify for the Masters’ in Education program I needed more English credits than I had (like, a lot more).

So I went to my local community college to knock out the lower division classes. I worked with the VA liaison there to apply for GI Bill benefits (you can’t get them directly from the VA - you have to apply through the school, then the VA pays part to the school and part to the student, depending on what you qualify for).

The VA said that since I was only “taking classes” and not enrolled in a degree program, they weren’t paying anything. I explained that in order to qualify for the graduate degree program I intended to enter, I needed to take these classes. I had a letter from the university saying so.

The VA was unmoved. One thing they said was, well, the GI Bill wasn’t really meant for people who already have advanced degrees. I was like, really? Where does it say that?

So I took a bunch of classes for one semester that I happily paid for out of my own pocket, but had no confidence that the VA would ever extend to me the benefit I earned through my service. So I decided against the M. Ed. because it was going to be expensive.

So it was my impression that the VA was really tight about this stuff. But apparently not.
That's messed up. My father, whose medical degree and much of his pre-med tuition were paid for by the U.S. Army, resigned from what was then the Army Public Health Service after he'd fulfilled his commitment (only a couple of years, I think). A life-long enthusiast of language study, he immediately used his VA benefits to take classes in French & German, at Berlitz, I believe, certainly not a degree program. They came in handy when he was recalled for a few more years service during the Korean War and sent to Germany.

No doubt the VA's benefit rules have undergone changes in the intervening 70 years, but I'm wondering if someone was just too lazy to figure out how to approve your request.

Note: I posted this a few hours ago, noticed a typo, managed to reply to my own post instead of editing it, then succeeded in deleting my original post instead of the reply, apologies to all, going to bed now.
:bag: :rolleye:
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Military focused Church scams Vets out of benefits

#7

Post by Maybenaut »

chancery wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 10:29 pm [

No doubt the VA's benefit rules have undergone changes in the intervening 70 years, but I'm wondering if someone was just too lazy to figure out how to approve your request.
I don’t doubt it - me included - But the only way to know for sure was to incur the cost and hope to get reimbursed.

I could’ve fought it but I wasn’t up to it and it didn’t matter that much to me. When I was on active duty the Coast Guard paid for 70% of my undergrad (I went at night), and 100% of law school (I went full time, had no other responsibilities, and a job when I graduated).

So I’m not really complaining. I got way more out of Uncle Sam than most people. I was more irked than anything.
"Hey! We left this England place because it was bogus, and if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, pronto, we'll just be bogus too!" -- Thomas Jefferson
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