Just when his remaining church followers thought it was safe to exhale, Bishop Eddie Long gets caught up in another explosive scandal.
Long, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta, has been accused in a civil lawsuit of encouraging church members to invest in a “Ponzi scheme” at his that promised 20 percent annual returns on safe investments but instead diverted their money to a failing company.
The plaintiffs are made up of 10 former members of the church accuse Long of hosting a “Wealth Tour Live” seminars, during which an entrepreneur and another firm recruited investors for the scheme, the media reports.
Long’s image plunged to subterranean levels when he was accused of, then reached an out of court settlement, with four young men who accused him of sexual coercion in May. The four, plus a fifth man who was later discovered to have played a major role in the negotiations, are now planning a tell-all book.
But this case involves an entirely different pattern of conduct. It’s one of the highest-profile accusations to date of so-called religious-affinity fraud, in which potential investors are targeted through a faith-based organization.
The embattled pastor and his church are accused of using their “confidential/fiduciary relationship” to “coerce” 10 church members into investing with Ephren Taylor Jr., the former chief executive of City Capital Corp. in Chicago.
“I’ve seen more money stolen in the name of God than any other way,” Joseph Borg, Alabama securities commissioner and a past president of the North American Securities Administrators Association. “Seven out of 10 of our cases involve affinity fraud, and in the South, probably 40 to 50 percent have a religious angle.”
It’s unclear just how much more the former bustling religious empire of Long can withstand. But it won’t be long before we get the answer.
–terry shropshire
