“Quakers make good victims,” says Steve Schroeder.He should know; as a federal prosecutor since 1974, he’s seen enough of them. Fraud victims, that is; Quakers were a relatively new experience. In particular, the ones who quoted the Gospel to him about staying out of court.
In the early 1950s, Billy Britt attended Peoples Bible College in High Point, North Carolina. In 1993, Peoples had become John Wesley College, and Britt’s wife Viola was a member of its board. Frank Scurry, the NCYM pastor who also headed the Houston extension program there, told John Wesley’s President, Brian Donley, about Deters and Productions Plus. Donley was interested. His school was in tenuous financial condition: in debt, unaccredited, and paying very low salaries to its faculty. Donley and his board could think of many uses for matching grants: retiring the debt, some new building, scholarships.
Continue reading The Scent of Fraud Reaches The Houston Graduate School of Theology
A plethora of lawsuits are likely to spring from Operation Islandscam, the feds’ code name for the Phil Harmon scandal. But that’s not all it is likely to produce.Last Halloween, when Phil Harmon formally entered his guilty plea, Steve Schroeder told reporters he expected there would be up to a half dozen more criminal indictments in the case. When I asked him if this was just grandstanding, he said flatly, “I don’t bluff.”He doesn’t hurry, either. Schroeder said in January of this year that the new round of indictments probably won’t be anounced until spring, maybe late spring. For that matter, Phil Harmon is not to be formally sentenced until May 4, six months after his plea. In the meantime, he remains somewhat at liberty, though subject to numerous restrictions.
Continue reading Quaker $$$ Scandal Update: Will An Ex-Superintendent be Indicted?
Courtroom theatrics is not what the Harmon case is about. Its “bottom line” is the theft from 230 people, mostly elderly, of their life savings, and of health coverage from several hundred more. That’s what it’s all about.Nevertheless, when Harmon comes back to court on May 4 of this year, there ought to be some drama in the courtroom.
There were a lot of nights like this by 1996.It’s Friday in Lincoln, Nebraska. June 26. There’s been an evening service at the First Church of the Nazarene, which is over now. A dozen people have remained behind, at first clustered in the sanctuary, then moving to a classroom. There they settle into chairs around a well-dressed middle aged woman, who talks to them earnestly for two hours.
Continue reading Deters: A Real-Life Nightmare, and a Possible Vision