It's Hard to Keep a Con Man Down

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

At the very time that attorneys general from three states - Missouri, Arkansas, and New York - were investigating and filing complaints against television preacher Jim Bakker for deceptive advertising, the shameless "man of God" was busy filling out forms in an effort to bilk the federal government out of funds through its pandemic-related Paycheck Protection Program. 

 In a process that did not involve any pre-approval by the Small Business Administration, Bakker, a convicted felon who served five years in a federal penitentiary for financial fraud, received approval on April 28th for government loans through the PPP program for an amount between $650,000 and $1.7 million.  

The government loans were eventually paid to Bakker and his company through Arvest Bank of Bentonville, Arkansas, an institution wholly owned by the Walton (Walmart) family of Northwest Arkansas.

At the time all of this was going down, Bakker was being investigated by three states for his television promotion of a  product called "Silver Solution," something that a guest on his program claimed would kill strains of coronavirus, though she admitted that it had not been tested on the COVID-19 strain.

As the attorneys general fought in court to obtain financial records for Bakker's church operations, one of his primary lawyers, former Missouri governor Jay Nixon,  framed the entire matter as a First Amendment and religious freedom fight.  It was Nixon's contention that the minister and his followers were being persecuted because of their religious beliefs.

It now appears as though the Small Business Administration, a government agency that rushed to get the paycheck bailout money into the hands of needy business and religious institutions, may do some after-the-fact investigation into the legitimacy of the applications that were submitted in order to obtain the funds.  If that happens, Reverend Bakker is likely to once again find himself in the crosshairs of a government inquiry into his business practices - but for televangelist that is just a standard cost of doing business in America.

Jim Bakker has spent the better part of his eighty years on earth living large off of the generosity of others - and he appears to be getting better at it.  Now he can fleece his sheep with one hand, while he snips the government's wool with the other.

The old television huckster is definitely evolving!