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Jackson Bailey, the artist behind the largest painting of the largest Life of Christ in the world. “Priscilla always treated me all right. I can’t speak for the rest of the world.” |
February 25, 1998: Cherokee Quaker Church Money Used for “Ponzi” Fraud Scheme–Kansas Investigator
Update by Chuck Fager
Wichita, Kansas — Part of the more than $400,000 collected by the Cherokee Friends Church, intended for investment in a profitable business, was instead used to pay back a Quaker College in Kansas as part of a “Ponzi” fraud scheme, a Kansas jury was told today.
“Quakers Make Good Victims”
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“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.
The Scent of Fraud Reaches The Houston Graduate School of Theology
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.
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Quaker $$$ Scandal Update: Will An Ex-Superintendent be Indicted?
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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.
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