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Perhaps the conditions were too ripe for him to pass on this kind of action.

Recently Michael Winans Jr., who’s related to the Winans family of gospel singers, was charged with wire fraud in connection with accusations that he operated an $8 million Ponzi scheme in which he promised people they’d make out big by investing in Saudi Arabian crude oil bonds.

Instead, they wound up losing big. More than 1,000 investors were defrauded of anywhere from $1,000 to $7,000 each from October of 2007 through September of 2008, according to the Detroit Free Press.

And just where did Winans find this gift of gullible investors who actually believed he was going to do what he said with their money?

In Detroit’s churches, of course.

As I said, the conditions of black people giving the church and whatever comes out of it an outsized amount of credibility and control in their lives were too ripe for him to pass up.

Just as they were too ripe for Ephren Taylor, who peddled his success story as a teenage entrepreneur in church pulpits around the country, inspiring the faithful to such heights of feel-goodery that many apparently failed to apply a healthy dose of skepticism before trusting him with their money.

As it turned out Taylor, like Winans, was peddling a Ponzi scheme; a scheme that the federal Securities and Exchange Commission said was geared to bilk more than $11 million from churchgoers – most of whom were black.

Sadly enough, churchgoers like Lillian Wells, who heard Taylor speak at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, let him talk her into investing her entire life savings in a North Carolina real estate venture.

Then he disappeared, along with her money.

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