SAVANNAH, Ga. — Leaders of a Georgia-based church with congregations in five states have been charged by federal prosecutors with swindling millions of dollars in veterans benefits from parishioners serving in the military.
An indictment unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Savannah charges House of Prayer Christian Churches of America founder Rony Denis and seven other church leaders with conspiring to commit bank fraud and wire fraud, as well as other federal crimes.
Authorities say church leaders exploited soldiers and other congregation members by enrolling them in seminary programs that drained their G.I. Bill education benefits. They also say church officials used parishioners’ names on fraudulent mortgage applications to buy homes that the church then rented to congregation members.
“The defendants are accused of exploiting trust, faith, and even the service of our nation’s military members to enrich themselves,” Paul Brown, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta office, said in a news release.
Prosecutors say they don’t even know the real name of Denis, alleging he assumed that name after stealing another person’s identity in 1983. He founded House of Prayer roughly two decades ago. The church is headquartered in Hinesville, a southeast Georgia city that is home to thousands of veterans and Army soldiers serving at neighboring Fort Stewart. The congregation there grew to as many as 300 members, the indictment says.
House of Prayer branched out, opening up to a dozen churches in five states, often near military bases, according to prosecutors. It also established affiliated Bible seminaries in Hinesville as well as Fayetteville, North Carolina; Killeen, Texas; and Tacoma, Washington.
The indictment says the church focused on recruiting military service members to join their congregations and pressured them to spend their G.I. Bill education benefits on enrollment in its seminary programs.
The seminaries in all four states earned House of Prayer leaders $23.5 million in G.I. Bill payments for tuition, fees, books and housing costs from 2013 and 2021, according to the indictment.
Charges against Denis and others stem from just $3.2 million of those benefit payments made to House of Prayer’s two seminaries in Georgia. That is because the programs operated in Georgia under a religious exemption granted by state regulators. Prosecutors say that exemption prohibited the Georgia seminaries from receiving federal funding — including G.I. Bill benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
The indictment says church officials lied to Georgia regulators in annual forms saying the seminaries received no federal money.
Steven Sadow, listed in court records as an attorney for Denis, did not immediately return an email message seeking comment Thursday.
A group called Veterans Education Success wrote to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in 2020, saying former students had complained that the House of Prayer seminaries had drained their benefits while providing them with little education. FBI agents served search warrants on several House of Prayer churches in 2022, according to local news outlets.
The indictment says church officials also used its members as straw buyers to conceal the leaders’ purchase of rental properties. Prosecutors say church leaders falsified loan applications and closing documents and forged powers of attorney to buy and transfer homes that were rented to congregation members.
The indictment says House of Prayer received $5.2 million in rent payments between 2018 and 2020, with some of that money being used to pay for Denis’ two homes as well as church leaders’ credit card bills.
Denis was also charged with helping falsify his federal income tax returns for 2018, 2019 and 2020. On Wednesday, FBI agents and Columbia County sheriff’s deputies arrested the church founder at his mansion in Martinez west of Augusta, WRDW-TV reported.
In a separate case, federal prosecutors also indicted Bernadel Semexant, a pastor at the House of Prayer church in Hinesville. The indictment unsealed Wednesday charges Semexant with sex abuse of a girl between the ages of 12 and 15. William Joseph Turner, listed in court records as the pastor’s attorney, did not immediately return an email message.
