Filed under: News
Dr. Boyce Watkins recently outlined the latest controversy rocking Bishop Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Church: Long accused finacier Ephren Taylor of defrauding his members of $1 million in investments, which Taylor then denied via a public statement. It turns out that the terms of the opportunity that Taylor brought to New Birth members, which Long endorsed, involved investing in a company selling gambling machines that has been charged for operating
an illegal venture. The web site Goddiscussion.com has the details:
Atlanta's Fox 5 aired an extensive investigative report last week about the latest controversy swirling around Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, a mega-church based in Atlanta.
Earlier this month, Long posted a YouTube video asking that Ephren Taylor of Capital City Corporation reimburse Long's New Birth Missionary parishioners for $1 million in investments that they had made. Taylor shot back with a press release saying that parishioners had already been contacted regarding reimbursements and that Long was engaged in character assassination.
According to the Fox 5 investigation, Long allegedly told his congregation that everything Taylor said was based "on the word of God." Trusting churchgoers thought that their investments would be sound, based on their pastor's endorsement.
Taylor allegedly said that when he was in high school, he created a $3.5 million dollar company that was a website that sold job postings for high school kids. His new idea, which he sold as an investment opportunity to Long's congregation, was sweepstakes video game machines. While the paperwork stated that there was no guarantee about investment returns, investors from the church received certificates of guarantees that promised that they would receive revenue that was equal to or greater than the amount invested.
The company that sold the game machines was indicted for operating an illegal gambling enterprise. Last September, Fox 5 revealed that police in Virginia raided a number of sweepstakes store fronts and charged 11 owners and companies with illegal gambling.
Please read the rest regarding the latest twist in the Eddie Long-Ephren Taylor Investment controversy on Goddiscussion.com. The article goes on to detail that some parishioners "invested substantial sums of money, with some investments ranging from $10,000 to over $200,000, representing their lifetime savings." In the video above, we hear the sad story of an investor who was told he would receive proceed checks on a monthly basis based on revenue from the gambling machines of up to $1,500 a month. He only received a few checks for about $200 before the checks stopped coming, with no explanation, after investing about $14,000 dollars.
In addition to investing members' money in gambling machines, Taylor did use more traditional vehicles such as IRA accounts, but these apparently also declined substantially in value. As our resident black finance PhD, Dr. Boyce Watkins, pointed out in his previous piece, no matter what the financial vehicle may be, there is no way to guarantee that investors will receive positive returns. This is why saving is so important.
Money should only be invested -- which always implies risk -- if you can afford to lose 100% of the money invested. That's right -- 100%. Any ethically-minded investment professional would tell novice investors this, and make sure their clients included savings as part of their portfolios, plus a mix of investments they could afford to lose or hold until markets rebound allowing a partial recoup of losses.
The fact that both Eddie Long and Ephren Taylor assured the members of New Birth a positive rate of return is nothing short of criminal. City Capital, the firm owned by Ephren, promised people a 100% rate of return up front (while backtracking in the fine print), which is an almost impossible guarentee. Long should have been more responsible as a pastor and realized that anyone promising such a thing could not have been a wise steward of his flock's funds. It seems like an empty act for Long to try and get the money back after the fact. It would appear that both Long and Taylor are culpable in this case.