UNJUST MEANS

“Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay is the man who gains riches by unjust means. When his life is half gone, they will desert him, and in the end he will prove to be a fool.” - Jeremiah 17:11

 

In April 2020, Kent Whitney, 38, of Newport Beach, California pled guilty to mail fraud and filing a false income tax return. He could face up to 23 years in federal prison, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office.

Whitney was pastor of Church for the Healthy Self, run out of a strip mall in the Little Saigon area in Westminster until it was shut down last year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint and a judge froze the church's assets.

The nonprofit was a “virtual church" that provided religious offerings online but mainly served as an investment operation that targeted the Vietnamese community in Orange County, according to an SEC complaint.

In his plea agreement, Whitney said that from 2014 to 2019, he scammed investors in a church trust fund out of some $33 million by falsely claiming their money was safe and guaranteeing a high, tax-deductible return from investment in the reinsurance industry.

Whitney founded the church in 2014, three months after he finished serving a 44-month prison sentence for a commodities investment fraud, authorities said.

 

The Lord hates gain through unjust means. Today in prayer, praise Jesus that He is the giver of all things and seek to follow His will in all that you do. 

 

“Temporal prosperity is very unfavorable to spiritual development.” – Charles Simeon 

 

God’s Word: “Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.” – Proverbs 23:5