July 1, 2009

It seems like the fad of committing financial fraud is waning and the consequences are starting to pile up. Just ask Bernie Madoff.

Now Indiana authorities are looking for a former pastor and his two sons, who allegedly bilked millions of dollars from church members. The money supposedly was to help build churches, but authorities claim the men used the funds to buy planes and sports cars.

The tragic thing about this case is the way authorities say it mixed faith with fraud. More from the AP:

The secretary of state’s office said arrest warrants issued for Vaughn Reeves, 65, and three of his sons charged each with 10 felony counts. Each man could face two to eight years in prison on each count if convicted. Bond for each was set at $1.5 million cash.

None of the men was in custody as of Tuesday afternoon. The charges were filed in western Indiana’s Sullivan County, where Reeves formerly lived, but the men also have last known addresses in Ohio, Iowa and Kentucky. U.S. marshals were tracing their whereabouts, said Jim Gavin, a spokesman for Secretary of State Todd Rokita.

The men are accused of duping about 11,000 church members into buying bonds worth $120 million by urging them to fulfill their “Christian responsibility” to support church construction projects, according to a probable cause affidavit. The men said the bonds would be handled by their brokerage firm, Alanar Inc.

Prosecutors said the men pocketed about $6 million, bought two airplanes, sports cars and vacations. Reeves also bought Porsches for family members, Gavin said. Most of the men’s victims lived in Indiana.

Gavin said he didn’t know whether Reeves and his sons – Chip, 44; Chris, 40; and Josh, 32 – had defense attorneys, and telephone numbers for the men’s previous addresses in all four states were unlisted or disconnected. The men represented themselves in a related federal civil case filed in Indianapolis, according to court documents.

“This case goes far beyond simple theft,” Rokita said in a statement. “The Reeveses allegedly targeted their victims through their faith, and then exploited their religious convictions in order to hide their elaborate Ponzi scheme from potential investors.”

You can read the rest here. Thanks for the link, Holy Weblog!

The hits just keep coming for American Apparel and its founder, Jewish bad boy Dov Charney.

In May, American Apparel agreed to pay Woody Allen $5 million to settle a lawsuit the famously neurotic actor brought against Charney and Co. for misappropriating his image in this billboard ad. I think a handful of sexual harassment lawsuits are still pending against Charney, who infamously told aJewish Journal reporter in 2005, “I could pull my penis out right now, and I guarantee you no one would be offended.“

And then today America Apparel, which has been a prominent advocate for immigration reform, even using “Legalize L.A.” as a t-shirt and ad slogan, was fingered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for employing some 1,600 workers at its Los Angeles factories whose eligibility documentation is “suspect and not valid.” Another 200 workers had documentation that could not be verified. That spells trouble for about a third of American Apparel’s employees:

American Apparel said it could not accurately assess the impact on its operations from losing the employees, but said it did not believe any such loss would have a materially adverse impact on financial results.

“The company believes that its current surplus levels of inventory and manufacturing capacity would mitigate the adverse impact of any disruption to its manufacturing activities that may potentially result from the loss of these employees,” American Apparel said in the filing.

“ICE’s notification provided no indication that the company knowingly or intentionally hired unauthorized aliens and no criminal charges have been filed against the Company or any current employees,” it added.

More from Reuters here. A Legalize LA commercial is after the jump:

That’s a question you may be asking after seeing his name on this blog and far bigger news outlets in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death last week. Shmuley Boteach, the author of “Kosher Sex” who has said he wants to streamline Judaism into “the next Buddhism,” may be a rockstar rabbi but he’s not universally known.

Fortunately, Slate answer that question with a profile of the iconoclastic rabbi eight years ago. The article opens by showing just how important the King of Pop was to Boteach’s rise in that kingdom and finishes with his vision for God’s Kingdom.

In explaining where Boteach came from and how he fell out of favor with Chabad, Benjamin Soskis wrote:

Though he had been brought up in a modern Orthodox home in Miami and Los Angeles, as a teen-ager he became increasingly involved in the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitch, or Chabad, movement. Founded in 18th-century Russia as an offshoot of Hasidic Judaism, the Lubavitch are dedicated to making Jewish ritual accessible to even unlearned Jews. When Chabad moved its base to Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after World War II, its emphasis on outreach to secular Jews intensified; the group founded schools throughout the country and outposts around the world, all in the belief that when all Jews embraced their religion, the Messiah would arrive. (The guys with the beards and dark suits who stop you on the street and ask, “Are you Jewish?” and then hand you a pair of phylacteries are Lubavitchers.)

When Shmuley was 13, he met the movement’s charismatic leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whom some considered then to be the Messiah and still do today, even after his death seven years ago. The Rebbe, as Schneerson was called, bestowed upon Shmuley a generous blessing—friends joked that perhaps Shmuley was the Messiah—and later dispatched him, at age 22, to Oxford to serve as a religious emissary. There Shmuley founded the L’Chaim Society, which he quickly turned into the university’s second largest club by recruiting high-profile speakers to address topics often only tangentially related to Judaism. Boy George spoke about redemption after drug addiction, and Argentinian soccer star Diego Maradona told of praying at the Western Wall in preparation for the World Cup.

As Shmuley’s stature on campus grew, his relations with the Lubavitch leadership began to fray. The L’Chaim Society attracted as many non-Jews as Jews—its president one year was an African-American Baptist—and his peers felt Shmuley was spending too much time courting gentiles, thereby diluting outreach efforts and possibly even encouraging intermarriage. Shmuley replied with what would become his signature defense: that broadening the visibility of Judaism to the general public would inevitably, if circuitously, attract Jews. “To get Jews interested in the Jewish world,” he later said, “you have to get the non-Jews interested. The Jews will follow what the non-Jews are doing.”

You can read the entire article here. As you can imagine, not everyone agrees with Boteach—I’ve heard more than a few Jews call him a phony, though I guess some have said worse things about me.

Last week I reported on some building anticipation that the Ethiopian Orthodox church was going to reveal the Ark of the Covenant, which it church claims they have kept in hiding since the ark holding God’s law disappeared from Jerusalem around 700 BC.

Today we learn that the Ark is not going to be moved to a museum for public viewing. It will remain in its secret shrine, accessible to only a few of the highest priests.

“I am deeply disappointed that the Italian media misquoted me and disseminated false information about me unveiling the Ark of the Covenant to the world,” Patriarch Abune Paulos said at a news conference. “It is a fabrication, disinformation.”

Abune added: “I would like to confirm once again that the Ark of the Covenant and the sacred tablets containing the Ten Commandments that God delivered to Moses are in Ethiopia.”

Shocking development, I know.

This, obviously, only contributes to the mystery—myth?—surrounding Ethiopia’s claims to the Ark. But it’s probably for the best. We don’t need any scenes that those in the video above.