Reporting the Truth.
Restoring the Church
By Daniel Silliman
On Feb. 20, 2018, Terry Hall preached at Turning Point Church of God in McLeansboro, Illinois. (Video screengrab)
An Illinois pastor has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for taking $199,900 of pandemic relief funds from his church.
Terry L. Hall pleaded guilty in March 2024 to two counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements. He was sentenced Nov. 21 to federal prison and will also be required to pay back the money he stole.
Hall obtained the funds for his 250-member Pentecostal Turning Point Church of God in McLeansboro, Illinois. The church needed the money to get through COVID-19, according to a 15-page sentencing memo.
But Hall, who was ordained a bishop in the Cleveland, Tennessee-based Church of God in 2019, used the money to pay his mortgage and build a pole barn, according to federal prosecutors.
Hall pastored at Turning Point Church of God from 2008 to 2022. Church members told investigators he was “verbally aggressive” and a “bully.” An interim pastor who replaced Hall said the bishop was like the rulers of the Gentiles that Jesus condemned in Matthew 20:25 because he liked to “lord over” people.Turning Point Church of God in McLeansboro, Illinois. (Photo: Facebook)
The interim minister, whose identity is protected in public court documents, also described Hall as a manipulator “who would do anything to gain advantages over people.”
Investigators found Hall applied for a forgivable government loan on behalf of his church in April 2020. He didn’t tell church members, though. And when he received $92,900, he put it in his personal bank account.
Hall asked for additional pandemic-relief funds in April 2021, court records show. Officials told him a new government policy would require the money be sent to a church account. When the money arrived, Hall informed the congregation’s finance committee that money was a personal loan, approved by the denomination’s overseers.
That wasn’t true, according to prosecutors. But the church believed its pastor and transferred $107,000 to his personal account.
The congregation only learned of the fraud in 2022, when officials contacted Turning Point Church of God about its failure to apply for loan forgiveness. The congregation learned it was on the hook for nearly $200,000. That’s when church leaders went to police, according to court records, and reported the minister for fraud.Turning Point Church of God in McLeansboro, IL. (Photo: Google Maps)
“Conduct that far from the calling of ministry demands accountability,” Weinhoeft said in a statement. “The vast majority of pastors across southern Illinois answered the pandemic with selfless service. … Terry Hall chose a different path.”
Twenty church-related schemes among 3,000 prosecutions
Government experts estimate that between $230 and $520 billion of taxpayer money is lost to fraud every year. During the pandemic, people stole an estimated 10 to 17 percent of the $4.6 trillion that Congress designated for pandemic relief — around $700 billion.
The Department of Justice has prosecuted more than 3,000 people for that fraud. Less than 1 percent of the cases have involved Christian ministries. Hall is the 20th person found guilty or liable for pandemic-related fraud involving false claims that relief funds were going to a church.
Rudolph Brooks, a pastor at Kingdom Tabernacle of Restoration Ministries, in Cheltenham, Maryland, was sentenced to 18 months for stealing $3.5 million.
Investigators found he was the sole signature on the church bank account and a number of the documents he submitted were not truthful. He reportedly used some of the funds to buy his son a Tesla Model 3.
Terry Hall (Photo: LinkedIn)
Prosecutors said Terrence L. Pounds, in Holland, Ohio, used COVID-19 funds he stole to buy four vehicles: a 2021 Chevrolet Tahoe, a 2021 Kia Telluride, a 2020 Hyundai Elantra and a 2020 BMW X4.
Pounds worked with five men in Ohio and Tennessee to apply for multiple loans of up to $150,000, claiming each was for a “Faith-Based Organization” or “Church” with more than 15 employees. He got about $4.2 million through fraud. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
Frank Jacobs, in Charlotte, North Carolina, claimed Quest Church needed government help to pay five staff members through the pandemic. Investigators found the church had not reported any wages or employees to the IRS. Jacobs pleaded guilty to tax and wire fraud, for filing a false tax return and using fraudulent information to obtain a COVID-19 relief loan.
Elie Floradin, in Miami, Florida, also claimed to employ people he didn’t employ. Floradin, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church, told government officials that he ran an employment agency that paid dozens of employees about $960,000 annually. Investigators found the employment agency did not exist.
Floradin was sentenced to two years in prison.
Two women in Minnesota were charged with fraud for fake food ministries. Sharon Denise Ross claimed Minnesota House of Refuge Twin Cities used federal funds to feed thousands of children at dozens of locations across the metro area, including multiple churches.
Prosecutors found that wasn’t true. She took $2.4 million, gave a lot of it to family members, and used the rest to fund vacations to Las Vegas and Florida. She also splurged on a suite at a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball game.
Dorothy Jean Moore, similarly, claimed to run two sites that fed children during the pandemic. But bank records showed that she wasn’t spending relief funds on food and the 1,500 children she claimed she was feeding did not, in fact, exist.
“This fraud is outrageous, brazen, and seemingly never-ending,” U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson said when Moore was indicted earlier this year.
‘Fraudsters … came out of the woodwork’
Perhaps the wildest case of pandemic-relief funds fraud involving a church was in South Florida. Four men: Jonathan, Joseph, Jordon and Mark Grenon, sold a bleach solution as a “miracle” cure. The men had previously marketed the product they called “Miracle Mineral Solution” as a proven treatment for a dozen different diseases, including cancer, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. In 2020, the Grenons said it also cured COVID-19.
But the solution was actually chlorine dioxide, the type of bleach used for industrial water treatment, according to the Department of Justice. It is toxic to humans.
The product was sold through Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, which Mark Grenon told investigators was a “non-religious church” they founded to avoid legal liability and avoid going to prison.
Each of the four men received five to 13-year prison sentences. A federal jury found them guilty of distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug and conspiring to defraud the United States by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug.
Then there was a trio in College Station, Texas, that used a defunct ministry to perpetrate their fraud. Investigators found that so-called Jesus Survives Ministries hadn’t held services or ministered to anyone in a decade. Yet former pastor William Dexter Lucas, his wife Deborah Jean Lucas, and another man used the name to apply for funds.
Court records show William Lucas harassed bank employees when they didn’t disburse the money immediately. He wrote texts and emails saying, “This is war!!!!!” and “I curse you, your bank and you(r) whole family.”
After he received $50,000, the Lucases used the money to go on vacation in South Carolina. William Lucas pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and received an eight-year sentence.
Another couple received five years’ probation after they confessed to falsely claiming they were unemployed because of COVID-19. A church in Washington, West Virginia, laid off Robert Notgrass in 2020, but it was unrelated to the pandemic, prosecutors found.
Mack De’von Knight, of Stonecrest, Georgia, maintained a good enough relationship with two churches where he served as minister that more than two dozen people wrote a judge on his behalf. They called Knight “the people’s pastor” and described him as kind, generous, and upstanding, despite the fact he pleaded guilty to lying to receive $149,000.
The FBI disagreed.
“So many businesses needed federal emergency assistance to stay afloat during the pandemic,” said Special Agent Keri Farley. “This defendant misdirected hundreds of thousands of dollars of that money to his own pockets.”
Knight bought a Mercedes-Benz S-Class Sedan with COVID-19 relief funds, court records show. Investigators also found he had three prior convictions for fraud.
“Fraudsters like Mack Knight came out of the woodwork,” U.S. Attorney David H. Estes said. “We are identifying and holding accountable these scam artists.”
Federal courts have, to date, ordered people to pay back more than $60 million taken in fraud.
Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.
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