A Tennessee pastor and his associate are accused of stealing state grant money to run a ‘drug recovery program’ that served the dearly departed.
Prosecutors allege that Mount Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church pastor Clinton M. Lewis Sr. and associate Andre Trice took more than $60,000 in state grants over four years for a supposed substance abuse and recovery program. An audit of the program, however, found that some of those listed as clients never received counseling, while others turned out to be incarcerated or dead.
Lewis is a father of five and grandfather of two who was ordained more than 20 years ago. He’s been at Mount Hopewell since 2002. According to his pastor’s bio, he’s leading the church through “the first phase of a multi-phase, multi-million dollar building project.”
According to The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), Lewis and Trice started running their fraudulent drug program in 2011—and by 2015, they’d allegedly defrauded the state of $60,000. Some of the drug rehab ‘clients’ listed by Lewis and Trice told police they’d never received treatment from the organization. Others would have been hard to reach in prison. Still others were dead. The last publicly available tax form for the Mount Hopewell Community Development Corporation, the entity through which the addiction rehabilitation program was operated, dates from two years ago. (The form was marked as received by the IRS in 2015, despite covering the 2013 calendar year.)
Board members listed on other tax filings declined to comment to The Daily Beast. Attempts to call the church phone number were unsuccessful, and the voice mailbox was full. Numbers listed for Lewis were disconnected.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/24/pastor-ran-a-rehab-for-dead-people.html
Prosecutors allege that Mount Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church pastor Clinton M. Lewis Sr. and associate Andre Trice took more than $60,000 in state grants over four years for a supposed substance abuse and recovery program. An audit of the program, however, found that some of those listed as clients never received counseling, while others turned out to be incarcerated or dead.
Lewis is a father of five and grandfather of two who was ordained more than 20 years ago. He’s been at Mount Hopewell since 2002. According to his pastor’s bio, he’s leading the church through “the first phase of a multi-phase, multi-million dollar building project.”
According to The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), Lewis and Trice started running their fraudulent drug program in 2011—and by 2015, they’d allegedly defrauded the state of $60,000. Some of the drug rehab ‘clients’ listed by Lewis and Trice told police they’d never received treatment from the organization. Others would have been hard to reach in prison. Still others were dead. The last publicly available tax form for the Mount Hopewell Community Development Corporation, the entity through which the addiction rehabilitation program was operated, dates from two years ago. (The form was marked as received by the IRS in 2015, despite covering the 2013 calendar year.)
Board members listed on other tax filings declined to comment to The Daily Beast. Attempts to call the church phone number were unsuccessful, and the voice mailbox was full. Numbers listed for Lewis were disconnected.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/24/pastor-ran-a-rehab-for-dead-people.html
