Years after megachurch robbed of $600k, cash and checks found hidden in church's bathroom wall

boing
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It makes absolutely zero sense for Osteen to have his people take one week’s take and wall it up for years.

First, he already had control over the money! If he’s going to hide some of it, he can just siphon it off the top.

Second, what is his motivation to hide the money? He’s not avoiding taxes–it’s the church till. Insurance fraud might make sense, but frankly not a lot. At most this was 2% of his annual take. It’s also the kind of thing where if you try to do it more than once you’re going to get a lot of unpleasant questions.

I suppose he could have had some scheme to alter the individual checks, but that doesn’t make any sense for Osteen. He’d be risking his main business for relatively small amounts of money. I mean, he probably made at least twice that in the next two weeks.

Third, why the hell would he have them wall the money up for so many years? There is no possible scheme where that makes sense for Osteen. He can’t invest the money if it’s left in the wall. He’s certainly not earning interest on it. He can’t do anything with the checks. He’d be far better off, both financially and from a risk perspective, just going through his regular collection process and investing the damn money.

I also can’t see him just forgetting and leave the money in the wall for years. I mean, the man is a contemptible hypocrite and an evangelical grifter but he’s not stupid about money.

Finally, you’re underestimating the number of people who go in and out of a church that size. Osteen’s church seats over 16,000 people; it apparently used to be the Compaq Center where the NBA’s Houston Rockets used to play. The church has a staff of 368 people; they’re going to need audio-visual people and television people and a large maintenance crew. That doesn’t even get into church groups and volunteers and all the other people that might go into a church at various times.

However, none of this applies to someone on Osteen’s staff. Stealing the money makes much more sense for a staff member; they’re not going to get anything but their salary otherwise, it’s a significant amount of money relative to their salary and how much you want to bet he underpays them? Leaving it in the wall makes sense, too, if they don’t think they can get at it safely. Or they get fired or die or just chicken out.

Edited slightly because I didn’t verb real good.

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42

I can’t believe how many people were fooled by this.
It is a viral marketing campaign for HBO:

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Years after megachurch robbed of $600k, cash and checks found hidden in church’s bathroom wall

Nevertheless— Why is it implied these 2 occurrences are related. When that $600k was stolen, it was a known amount because they’d already opened the donation envelopes. In this most recent case, for whatever reason, unprocessed donations were simply stashed.

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43

How long are American cheques valid for? here in the UK - (not that personal cheques are a thing any more) - banks generally refuse to process one more than six months after the date on the cheque.

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44

Yea, and one of the servants took the master’s talents and hid them behind the wall in the toilet at the local mega-church.

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45

It’s not a small place. Is this one of the central washrooms, or one around the other side?

Formerly known as the Compac Center sports arena.

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Like the vatican bank [allegedly] did for many decades?

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47

…and come to think of it also Wayne Newton’s character in License to Kill.

Ok, its not an original idea, but it is obscure enough to work.

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It makes no sense for Osteen or his people to do this. They are already stealing the money legally, tax-free, from their parishioners and can put it to whatever use they want. Kenneth Copelands three private jets attests to that.

FBI Expert Profile Analysis:
A mid-level lone-wolf employee. Who stashed it for his own use (and then passed away, was locked up, or lost mental capacity). Or, is a sociopathic “vandal” akin to the mailmen who just never deliver their mail, and was stashing the envelopes simply to be contrary. But it can’t be someone very high up in the org, because they’d have created a much better hiding place. An analysis of the dates on the checks would give a great idea over what range and with what regularity this was done.

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Clearly the next step is to systematically knock out all the walls in the building to find what ELSE is hidden there.

I volunteer.

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50

I feel ya. But technically, it wasn’t lost. Just hidden.

What’s really annoying is that in Germany, you won’t get a decent finders fee when you find something expensive in a bus or train. Or can get if if the owner doesn’t show up.

You get on the loo, find a bag with 400k, boom, you get 6k. Admittedly, Deutsche Bahn didn’t keep it but donated it and quadrupled the finder’s fee, but sheesh, if I ever find a Stradivari on a train, I’ll be sorely tempted to find it on the street in front of the train station.

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It is a miracle!

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He must be so relieved it has been found.

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And he’s still asking for donations. He lives in a mansion, drives a Ferrari and has his own jet. And he’s still asking for donations. The suggested amount is $75 a month, presumably some of the people donating do not live in mansions, drive a Ferrari equivalent or own a jet. The fact that he doesn’t need the money is not a reason to suggest he might not try to unethically acquire it.

ETA: Logically, ethically, you’re completely right that he absolutely doesn’t need the money, and with the perfect grift going, it’d be a foolish risk. But, he might still want it.

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Yes, several years ago I had a $1,500. rent check fished out of a mail box in
Inwood, in northern Manhattan. It had been “endorsed” on the back, but the
recipient listed was a blue ink blur~
Like my fellow victims, I was eventually reimbursed, but it took months and
I had to cancel that account. I now drop it off directly into the P.O. lobby slot.
If it gets “Jacked” again, it’s likely an inside P.O. or landlord office employee.

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Oooh Ben Kingsley is in it. I will check it out.

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Even easier, set the landlord up as a payee in an online bank app. The bank will print and mail the check for you. This way you also have an online paper trail as to what happened to your payment.

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He’s a greedy bastard but for him this is penny ante shit. I couldn’t see him getting involved in an illegal scheme for less than a year’s annual take.

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I think it’s likely they were caught up in so much excuse making, so much lying, they just naturally thought they would get away with it. Religion and money fraud causes weird, divorced from reality blinders on its perpetrators

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60

It’s up to the check writer and the bank. I’ve seen commercial checks that have words like “not valid 90 days after the date” printed on them. But a personal check usually doesn’t have such a limit, and the banks can make a judgment call. You can always try presenting it and see what the bank does.

It also depends greatly on where you are and where you bank. At a small town bank you can bring it to Heidi the teller, and if the note says “Happy birthday Mikey” in your grandmother’s handwriting, and grandma is still alive, she’ll probably cash it.

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