Fraud Friday: Saints & Scammers: The Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker Story w/ Sarah Marshall

In this week's Fraud Friday, Laci is joined by Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About Podcast) to discuss the scams of televangelists Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker from their start with a puppet ministry to a full-blown waterpark, Heritage USA, and so much more. Additionally, the discovery of money inside a bathroom wall at Joel Osteen’s megachurch has raised questions about potential fraud. Stay Schemin’! (Originally Released 01/24/2022) CW: Mention of sexual assault CONgregation, catch Laci's TV Show, Scam Goddess, now on Freeform and Hulu! Did you miss out on a custom signed Scam Goddess: Lessons from a Life of Cons, Grifts and Schemes book? Look no more, nab your copy here on PODSWAG Follow on Instagram: Scam Goddess Pod: @scamgoddesspod Laci Mosley: @divalaci Research by Kaelyn Brandt SOURCES: https://www.biography.com/news/tammy-faye-jim-bakker-relationship-scandals https://abcnews.go.com/US/scandals-brought-bakkers-uss-famous-televangelists/story?id=60389342 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/plumber-finds-cash-checks-loose-toilet-wall-joel-osteens-lakewood-chur-rcna7512 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-pop-culture/televangelist-tammy-faye-bakker-became-unlikely-ally-aids-crisis-rcna2059 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-30-mn-594-story.html

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 4:00Laci Mosley?

  Say how are you?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Hi, I'm so great. I feel like the people are really, I feel like I can see the people that are listening to this right now. I normally can't see them, but I can see them now. Hello.

• 4:11Laci Mosley?

  That probably scares them. They actually probably, they don't want to be found.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  You look great. You look great. Yeah.

• 4:17Laci Mosley?

  You all look so good. Like, I'm trying to be like the trash blues clues. Like, I want to be Tabitha Brown, but like, a criminal.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  That's what we need.

• 4:26Laci Mosley?

  I'll encourage you to be your worst self, sis, to be.

• 4:31Laci Mosley?

  But I always have to ask Sarah, what's your relationship with scams? Have you been scammed? Do you like them? Do you hate them? It could be anything.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  I love this question. If I have been significantly scammed, I don't know about it. I feel as if I assume from living on the internet, the way a lot of people do, that we're all getting just a little bit scammed a couple of times a year at this point. But that question made me think of how in the fall of 2016, I watched this ESPN documentary about this guy who fragrantly bought the New York Islanders. He like, made this fake paperwork that made it look like he had more money than he did.

• 5:05Laci Mosley?

  Love that.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  And so he illegally owned the Islanders, the hockey team, for like, a few months, I think. And then it caught up with him and he went to federal prison. But A, he did a better job of fake owning the Islanders than their recent actual owners had done. Like, he kind of saved the team.

• 5:23Laci Mosley?

  Right. Were the girls, was the merch sales up? Like, were they, is it, Islanders, is that hockey?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It's hockey, yeah.

• 5:30Laci Mosley?

  Okay, yeah. Were the pups going in the thing?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  They were struggling and he negotiated a good TV deal for them. And I remember at the time, you know, this is around when Trump is campaigning. And I was just like, hmm, I'm noticing that like, pretending to have money can achieve exactly the same results as actually having money. And that's very interesting. And I feel like I've, maybe that was when I realized, and I think a lot of people realize, that scams, like, to know scams is to know America. So like, I'm an American. I love scams. I want to know all about them.

• 6:04Laci Mosley?

  We were born into scams. This whole country. Manifest Destiny is literally them being like, God taught us to rob everybody. He, no, he actually did just, uh, I got a parchment paper from God and he said, manifest destiny. He said, let's rob everybody and steal the country.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  There you go. Forged paperwork. Classic. You can get the Islanders, you can get a continent, whatever you want.

• 6:23Laci Mosley?

  I also love Manifest Destiny because it's not like they were like, oh, America's gonna be heart shaped or like, oh, there's like a vision. It's like, what the fuck does America even look like? It's all janky. You got Florida's little penis hanging off. Like, it's not even cute. So it's like, they just lied and stole everything. It's not even like it, it, it made some beautiful circle or some kind of, you know, symbolic shape.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  No, it's like when you stay too long at the buffet and then you get back to the table and you're like, this, these things, they took too much stuff and none of it goes together.

• 6:52Laci Mosley?

  Right. We all gotta go to Golden Corral and manifest our destiny. I love that for us. You know, you know what's crazy about this hockey thing that you're telling me? I feel like, especially if the team was doing better, you know what I mean? Like the, the hockey's hockey and the pucks are pucking. I don't, I don't know hockey. Uh, the dudes are fighting, you know, it's a good fight happening, you know, they sliding around in their church shoes and beating each other with the sticks. If it's cute and they get ratings and they have a great TV deal, I feel like it's more embarrassing to come out and be like, okay, so we let this guy completely lie to us and own part of this hockey team. Like, I feel like you just gotta close the door and handle that one indoors.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Long Island style. Yes.

• 7:31Laci Mosley?

  Long Island style. I feel like, I don't know, y'all have a fisticuffs, you demote him, maybe he stays on in some kind of leadership position, give the man a check. Obviously, he was talented. He just had the resources.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I'm still waiting for the Scorsese movie about this. Yeah.

• 7:47Laci Mosley?

  Oh goodness, the Scorsese movie will have tons of cocaine and, and women naked for no reason. And I'm ready for that. Somehow there would just be naked women skating on ice. And it's like, this don't, this never happens.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  There you go, Marty. You haven't done that yet, as far as I know.

• 8:05Laci Mosley?

  Well, no, that's dope. I admire people who think of stuff like that. I mean, money's fake. It's all on paper. It's all, you know what I mean? It's rarely tangible. So why not? You know? Not mad at it at all. Well, let's get into our first segment here. What's hot in fraud? This is where we warn our listeners about popping scams on the street as always. Snitch on your friends and family. Just make sure your scam is retired and [email protected]. Uh, I just need a fake name for this person, Sarah. We don't care about gender.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Felicity Porter.

• 8:36Laci Mosley?

  Oh, Felicity, love that. Oh, poor Felicity. She got scammed out of an acting career. I wonder who that hairstylist was who cut her hair, because I feel like you gotta go back into great clips, Felicity, and fight them.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  We need an oral history of that, because yeah, I don't know where exactly the buck stops, but that, I mean, talk about money lost.

• 8:54Laci Mosley?

  You should do that on You're Wrong About, because I need to know what happened.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  And some people don't even know about that, and it was such a moment, nineteen ninety-nine.

• 9:03Laci Mosley?

  And like, she could have just got a weave. Like, why don't we just let Felicity get a weave? Everyone was like, no, bitch, we know.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Right, they could have said it was a dream, but they could, no, they kept going, yeah.

• 9:14Laci Mosley?

  I think they thought we would get over it, and we had just so little to focus on at that time.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Still not over it.

• 9:19Laci Mosley?

  We aren't. We actually are still kind of mad, like, Felicity, drop your barber's address, so we can fight them.

• 9:27Laci Mosley?

  We will fight them for you, girl, okay?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:29Laci Mosley?

  So Felicity says, I'm surprised no one has ever wrote in about this scheme, probably because they don't want to fuck up their bags, see? And I tell you not to fuck your bags up, but I'm not about that life anymore, so here goes. So you're just gonna ruin it for everybody because you're not about that life no more? Mm, Felicity, sound just like the show.

• 9:48Laci Mosley?

  I worked as a paralegal in a big law firm, this is in quotes, AKA pays well, but they work you to death and expect money will solve any issue you have, including them treating you like dog shit. Ooh. I was working twelve to fourteen hour days and on weekends and holidays for the last three years there. Wow, twelve to fourteen hour days at law, doing paralegal work? That just means you're just typing all day, right? Like emailing, typing?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're being a little brain in a car for like ninety-five percent of that, I bet.

• 10:21Laci Mosley?

  Filing, using sticky notes. That sounds terrible. So she's working these really long hours, twelve to fourteen hours a day, and on weekends and on holidays. Damn, sis, I'm so sorry. The ball was dropping and you was in your office like, oh, you lying, zine, and just typing away. That's so unfortunate.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Champagne into her own slipper.

• 10:41Laci Mosley?

  Tragic. So, the firm had a policy that if you worked past seven P M or before seven A M, they would reimburse the cost of a taxi. And by the way, the firm made like four billion dollars in one year. But they can't give.

• 10:56Laci Mosley?

  Okay, this person is definitely like, by the way, the firm made four billion dollars one year, but they can't give a hoe a firm credit card?

• 11:04Laci Mosley?

  So basically, she's like, y'all made all this money. Like, why do I have to write these invoices to get these cars? Like, this is disrespectful. So I worked past seven P M every day. So eventually, I came up with a way to get some extra coin. I would pay for the taxis in cash and ask for a paper receipt from the driver. The receipts were blank, so you could put in any fare or tip that you wanted. And sometimes the drivers would just give me a stack of the blank receipts. Oh, I know that's right. They better help you do crime.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Laci Mosley?

  This is making me feel better about New York taxi drivers because I used to be beefing with them. Like when Uber, you know, wiped them off the face of the earth practically. Everybody was like, this is so sad. These people have medallions. They spend millions of dollars. They work their whole life for these cabs. I was like, fuck them cabs. I'm black and I'd have been hit by so many cars and they were all cabs. I've been hit by several cabs.

• 11:57Laci Mosley?

  And then if I.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Now they're redeeming themselves maybe a tiny little bit.

• 12:01Laci Mosley?

  Right. This is making me feel better about them because I I was beefing with the whole cab industry for a long time because they didn't want to pick me up because I was black. They also didn't want to pick me up because I was going to Brooklyn. Probably more the Brooklyn thing than the black thing. I won't lie, you know?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  They just hate making money, I guess.

• 12:17Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, you said the trick cab driver. Sometimes I had my white friends held a cab and then I get in and be like, gotcha bitch.

• 12:26Laci Mosley?

  Taxis, okay, y'all are y'all are making a cuter name for yourselves. So it was pretty easy to get home on public transit. So I would leave at seven P M, take the train and pocket the money for the taxi home. Or when I needed more receipts, I would take a taxi and then when I submitted the receipt, I would add a few more dollars to the seat. I would say over three years, I probably pocketed around six thousand dollars. She said in that same amount of time, did probably three million dollars worth of work that that firm got paid for. Plus lawyers are a scam anyway, so I don't feel too bad. As a woman of color who faced constant microaggressions from a bunch of rich white men and the firm defends the corporations and exploit the environment. She was like, basically like, y'all evil, fuck y'all.

• 13:06Laci Mosley?

  And Felicity, you're right. Like, I'm glad that you got your little scam off. It was a scam that they were working you so damn hard in the first place. So I'm glad you got your coins one way or the other. Six grand, like an extra bonus. That's not bad. Three years though, Felicity, I feel like you should have ran the bag up a little more like, be like, oh yeah, this taxi was four hundred dollars. Where did you go? Connecticut.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Had to courier some paperwork over. Had to be done.

• 13:32Laci Mosley?

  Right. Where'd you tell them you lived? I feel like you told them you lived too close. I'd be like, yeah, y'all know I live in Coney Island.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Feels like you're, you're, you know, you're trying not to be too extravagant with it and get caught, but also you, you've got a nice, that's, I mean, that's, that's scam university. That's a whole, you know, that's long enough to get a degree in scam. And I, I mean, I think that if you are working for a company that's making this much money and that's exploiting you as a worker, then they are, pardon the expression, asking for it.

• 14:08Laci Mosley?

  Right. And I know, I absolutely agree with you. Also love scam university. Uh, I am stealing that from you. It is now my intellectual property. Everybody remember that different. Remember how I had said that?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:19Laci Mosley?

  Remember how I said it first? This, there, uh, Marina, when you edit this, make sure it's backwards so that

• 14:26Laci Mosley?

  I can steal that. Uh, no, but you're absolutely right. It's kind of like this system is a scam, you know, we gotta get over where we can. And also I gotta say you're a great scammer, Felicity, because you didn't get greedy, you didn't get caught, and then you left. Now, I would have gotten a little greedier. I definitely would have told him I live in Florida and I need to ride home. I need to ride home every night from New York to Florida.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Or just for Thanksgiving a couple times, just the three days in traffic. Yeah.

• 14:52Laci Mosley?

  I ain't tell y'all I live in West Palm Beach. Yeah, I be commuting every day.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  And also like this is, I mean, this makes me think of how in all the great scam movies, which again are, you know, a lot of them by Scorsese. Um, it's always this arc of like, we got good at what we were doing, but we got too greedy and we rose and then we fell. And I feel like there's all kinds of quieter scams being committed all over the world that are just gonna ride it out peacefully because nobody's thinking too big.

• 15:23Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Which is really beautiful.

• 15:24Laci Mosley?

  It's the same thing that I always think, this is kind of dark, which is not what we normally do on this podcast. But I always think like, when I see those aged up photos of missing people from like the seventies and stuff. And they're like, he would be ninety-two now and we drew, we drew his face. Actually, when do they stop drawing? Like, a lot of them are age old, like you go missing at five and they'll be like, oh, he would be thirty or something. But what are they like, okay, let's just give up.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Maybe they stop when they're like fifty. They're like, you know what, he's on his own.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  No, no handholding in this country. But yeah, you can't go to the bathroom at Walmart without seeing those.

• 16:01Laci Mosley?

  And damn, you can't even get like, back in the day, you used to be able to get some good press if you were missing. Like, we'll do retweets on Twitter, but back in the day, the girls would put you on the milk cartons. Like, you would be on border farms, like, you know. Nowadays, I can't imagine if I picked up like some oat milk and it was just like, a little girl on the back. I was like, oh. It sounds very bizarre.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  I heard, I think I remember that they stopped doing that because they were like, you know, the like positive outcomes didn't balance the fact that it was freaking out kids so much.

• 16:31Laci Mosley?

  You opened your fridge.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  The real result was everyone got to be scared, which is how things go a lot here.

• 16:38Laci Mosley?

  Right. Now we have the internet, so we can all be scared all the time.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Why outsource that to milk and we have a whole technology for it? Milk gets to be free from that.

• 16:48Laci Mosley?

  Right. Fear, right at your fingertips. It's called a phone.

• 16:56Speaker 02

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• 17:28Speaker 03

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• 19:59Laci Mosley?

  And it's time for my favorite part, historic hoodwinkings. I am gonna put a content warning on this episode, just to let you guys know, content warning, there is a mention of sexual assault in this story. We'll flag when that exactly comes up for everyone. All right. So from the mid-1970s until the late 1980s, televangelist, power couple, Tammy Fay and Jimmy Baker, ran an empire with a massive audience. Sarah, I already know you know about this. So together, they built their ministry, which grew from a puppet show to a satellite network. At one point, they even built the third-most-visited theme park in the United States. But with that much money involved, it couldn't last forever. So I love that they took a puppet show about Jesus.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And then naturally, I mean, what naturally follows from that? If not a theme park?

• 20:54Laci Mosley?

  A theme park!

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:56Laci Mosley?

  Like, I hope that they have like, Jesus themed rides. Like, I want to get on the burning bush. That sounds fun.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  That sounds, yeah, like an exciting ride, especially at the end. Yeah. And the, and the idea of recreating holy places that they're gonna, that it's both classic Americana and also a recreation of Jerusalem for people in the Carolinas.

• 21:21Laci Mosley?

  Mm hmm. Like a long ride where uh they part in the Red Sea.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  See, I have no idea if they did that, but they should have done that. They definitely had water park type features. Like, it just, I feel like there's a part of me that when I was younger and snobbier would have been like, oh, that's just so tacky and terrible. And part of me now is like, that's beautiful. That's probably one of the better things they did.

• 21:45Laci Mosley?

  Right? And look, I'm a voyeur, so I would go just to see what they're doing. It's like, can I play games in the arcade? It's like, who's Mary's baby daddy? Like, we don't know. It's like clues. I guess who, like, what, like, what are y'all doing over there? And I hope it's all Jesus related because that would be very fun for me.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  I was really sad, actually, because for years I really wanted to go to the Holy Land Experience, which is a more recent Bible themed theme park in Orlando. And I think they closed within the last couple of years. But they had guys playing Jesus and just walking around doing Jesus stuff. And I'm, so I guess you could still find these people and talk to them because they're, you know, any kind of good looking young actor in Orlando, there's a good chance he played Jesus for a while. But like, what effect does that have on you as a young performer?

• 22:32Laci Mosley?

  Hmm. Rippling abs. They made Jesus so sexy. Even, that was always something that weirded me out when, I'm not Catholic, I'm Baptist. So we have crosses, but we don't have like crucifixes. Like, we don't have in our churches, like, Jesus like laying up there with the lawn cloth with the rippling abs.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:50Laci Mosley?

  And I'm like, why'd he make him so sexy? I mean, I guess we wouldn't want to worship him if he was like ugly. But I just feel like he's a little too horny to, for us to be in church.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Really great question. And why is it also that he's sexy and in pain? And you could potentially spend thousands of hours of your young life being like, look at that sexy, in pain man who's saving me from sin.

• 23:15Laci Mosley?

  Right. It's like, why does he have a bulge?

• 23:20Laci Mosley?

  Why are all the nails like cutely placed?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Why is he always hot? Why does he always have a hot face?

• 23:27Laci Mosley?

  I'm gonna end this like the thickest hair. Anyway.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, anyway.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Moving on from the hotness of Jesus.

• 23:35Laci Mosley?

  They may know what I'm saying. Jesus didn't need to be sexy, but it's okay. Whatever works, guys. So about the bakers. Tammy Faye LaValle was born in International Falls, Minnesota in nineteen forty-two. Wow. Gee, oh, nineteen forty-two. To Pentecostal preacher parents. I think she was born in the forties. That just feels wild.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Right? I mean, so was Stevie Nicks while we're on the subject.

• 24:02Laci Mosley?

  Oh, and we got a picture of Tammy. Tammy LaValle up right now. Okay. Those eyebrows, they're giving early two thousands. Like, it's like five hairs in a line. And I love that for her.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  She was like maybe the big person who carried that look over between like the nineteen thirties and two thousand and three. She carried it in her hands.

• 24:25Laci Mosley?

  And and she also, she's got that um that short haircut. It's not quite a Karen. It's given I have a little more fun than a Karen, but it is like that. It's like.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  I have a name for that.

• 24:36Laci Mosley?

  Right. It's like, I don't call the manager. I just complain to you.

• 24:43Laci Mosley?

  I would take him a lot of your time. And I love that for her.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  The hair of like, I wanted a larger shrimp. I expected these shrimp to be bigger.

• 24:52Laci Mosley?

  Right. She's the one who leaves a Yelp review and is like, the food is good, but the portions are very small. Yes, she wants larger portions, but she's not gonna call the police on you. Okay, cute.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Good for her.

• 25:04Laci Mosley?

  So Jim Bakker was born in nineteen forty and grew up in Muskegon, Muskegon?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I think it's Muskegon.

• 25:13Laci Mosley?

  So Muskegon, Michigan. Tammy Faye and Jim met in nineteen sixty as students at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Oh, all right. Come on, Bible college. I can't pay to go to Bible college. Like, church is free.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And it's a lot of hours potentially. It's like, how many more hours do you need? It's a, yeah.

• 25:35Laci Mosley?

  And I just get a church, my ten percent, I don't ask them what they gonna do with it. The building fund for the building that never happens. Like, look, I'm, I'm out my business. I'm gonna start my own church. So I, I don't want, I don't wanna know what y'all doing with the money.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  You start with puppets and then you work your way up.

• 25:50Laci Mosley?

  I didn't know that's how you start a church. You start with puppets.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, day one, one puppet. Day two, two puppets. Day three, church.

• 25:58Laci Mosley?

  And do we think these are like Pinocchio style puppets? Like where you have on the string? Like, like a, what is that?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  They're little, they're little hand puppets.

• 26:08Laci Mosley?

  I don't know, like, like Sesame Street?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're like, yeah, it kind of like the very early Jim Henson, I guess, is, is what it's a little bit like. Just, you know, the Martians on Sesame Street? The Menomina guys, it's a little bit like that, yeah. They're, they're little, they're cute little hand puppets and they're just like, I, I, there's some good footage of them. I, I recommend these puppets. Puppets are hard sell these days, but I like them.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Elmo does wanna talk about God and the miracle of the rock that could eat the cookie.

• 26:40Laci Mosley?

  Right. Elmo says you're going to hell. Well, oh my God, I would love that. Oh my God, that whole rock discourse, listen, I'm about to start watching Sesame Street again because that shit was better than Girl Housewives. I was like, Elmo is out here dragging the girls. He was like, my Rocco. He was like, tell Elmo, how you gonna eat the cookie? He is alive. It's like, damn, Elmo's had it with us and our shit.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  This is like the moment Elmo lost it. Elmo decided to, to clean that, that a hard rain was gonna fall on Sesame Street.

• 27:10Laci Mosley?

  Zoe is gaslighting him. She should have let him have that cookie. I couldn't believe that shit. I was like, Zoe, let's fight. Let's fight. Okay, meet me at Great Clips, cuz I'm also gonna kill two birds with one Rocco and beat Felicity's fucking hair.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Hair stylist too. Meet me behind Maria's fix-it shop and we will see.

• 27:31Laci Mosley?

  Hands. Tell Oscar to get out that trash can. We all jumping.

• 27:37Laci Mosley?

  So for their first date, Jim invited Tammy Faye to attend church with him. And at the end of it, he told her, Tammy LaValle, I have loved you ever since the minute I saw you walk into school. Sweet thing. I added the sweet thing before asking her to marry him. How our first day gonna be church? That's so cheap.

• 28:02Laci Mosley?

  Bitch, at least it'll be on communion. Can I get a wafer and a sip of wine? Like, what is this? That's so ghetto. He better get your time for you. When they pass the collection plate, he better have paid twice, because I'll be damned.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Like, let's go duck on this collection plate, Tammy.

• 28:20Laci Mosley?

  Right. No, you give it for both of us today, okay? He gave his only sign, you giving our ours for both of us.

• 28:31Laci Mosley?

  Please, ghetto. So a year after their marriage, the couple dropped out of school to pursue their dreams of creating a ministry. From there, they began traveling and singing evangelists. That's such a wild, like, look, I'm an actor, you know, you work in entertainment as well, you're also a journalist, you write. Like, I guess these are careers that, I don't know, writing, that's, that seems like a career that a lot of people go after and it doesn't seem that weird. Uh, a lot of people have English degrees, even if they don't use them. But I feel like the acting and the podcasting side, like, that's just like, kind of weird shit that we were like, yeah, I'm gonna do this for money.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Right. Leave me alone, mom. You don't understand technology, yeah.

• 29:17Laci Mosley?

  I'm gonna talk into a microphone in a room by myself and people will pay me for it.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  It's like, okay, sweetie, I feel like we might have missed a shot somewhere back.

• 29:26Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 29:29Laci Mosley?

  I don't know about Sarah, y'all. She says she gonna talk into her computer by herself and that's how she gonna pay all her bills. I don't know, y'all.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Who, who, who foresaw that working out? Although I guess this is kind of similar because this is like the beginning of TV being an important medium. So for them to be like, we're going to talk to all of America at once. Everyone would just be like, what? No, you're not.

• 29:52Laci Mosley?

  Right. And I mean, I guess it's like doing stand up. They was like, we taking Jesus on the road.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  This is the Jesus farewell tour. Not coming back. Yeah. It is like, it's, I think it's funny. I mean, I guess it's a way to feel, if you, if you're a true believer, to feel like you're not being super ambitious. Or kind of doing something that calls on you doing a good job because you're like, it's the Holy Spirit flowing through me. I'm just a vessel for all of the holy stuff I'm bringing all around America. But in real, you know, if you, if you take that out of the equation, which I'm not gonna pass judgment on whether that was there or not.

• 30:33Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Then like, you're just going from down, from town to town, talking about God to people and trying to make a living that way. It's very ballsy.

• 30:42Laci Mosley?

  Extremely. It's like, y'all were like, Jesus, the world tour. You know?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And also it's selling a product that everyone already has.

• 30:52Laci Mosley?

  Right. We all do know. And the Bible is free. It's in most hotel rooms, suites. Like if you want a free Bible, you can get it. Like you could definitely get yourself, yourself a free Bible. And it's like, that's the part I feel like where they brought in the singing. Cause it's like, okay, but it's also gonna be a concert, y'all. Like it's, we got a percussionist. We got a gay musician leader that we won't tell that he's gay. And we're gonna.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  It's guys you've never seen before.

• 31:20Laci Mosley?

  Okay. Are y'all ready to throw it in the circle for Jesus? Okay. Throw that anointing in a circle. So, you know, they, they're basically like, let's take Jesus on the road. And they both thought, yeah, this is a good idea. By 1966, their ministry had expanded to puppet men, to a puppet ministry hosted on Pat Robinson's Christian Broadcast Network. So now they're on somebody's TV. Okay. You were right about the puppets. And we'll post this in the episode, you know, we'll post it on Scam Guys Pod's Instagram. So you guys can see the puppets as well. But you were right. They're the puppets where you stick the hand up the butt. And the puppets are kind of giving quality.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Right, I like that alligator.

• 32:02Laci Mosley?

  And like, it's an alligator, a dog, a- a- another dog, and, and a little white girl. These are the puppets. I'm trying to figure out what kind of stories they telling.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  I also love, this looks like an album and I love the idea. This just like really expresses how low a bar there was for entertainment at this point in America. It's an album where you hear puppets singing, which is obviously very meaningful. Because it's an album. So they couldn't, the, the puppet needs to be there in the studio. Right? It's not like you can just have someone singing in a voice.

• 32:40Laci Mosley?

  Well, they're on the broadcast network, so.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:43Laci Mosley?

  This is visual. Also, I love the naming of this. Man, I wish I'd been around for TV around this time. Cause this is just the laziest. They named the show Jim and Tammy and their friends. Songs and stories.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  They're not gonna overthink this one. Over, you lose half the battles in overthinking. Just what's my name? What's your name? All right, good.

• 33:05Laci Mosley?

  Now we have shows like Yellow Jacket. And I'm like, oh, Yellow Jacket, is that about bees? And like, nah, it's a bunch of girls go eat each other in the woods. What?

• 33:15Laci Mosley?

  Why is the name Yellow Jacket? Girl, I don't know. It's, it gets the people going. Okay? The show's called Euphoria. It's just a bunch of sad kids doing heroines. What? It's called Euphoria. What? Why? What a simpler time. Jim and Tammy and their friends. Songs and stories. We know what we gonna get. So they're on the Christian Broadcast Network. However, Jim had broader ambitions and was quoted saying, "It's not listed in the Bible, but my spiritual gift, my specific calling from God is to be a television talk show host." Amen.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  The problem with someone saying that God told them to do something is that you can't say that he didn't, right?

• 34:02Laci Mosley?

  It's giving manifest destiny.

• 34:06Laci Mosley?

  Jim was like, they told, God had told me, he texted me, he told me I'm supposed to be on TV.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the thing I most want in the world as a person, yeah, God's into it. I just heard, so, yep.

• 34:19Laci Mosley?

  God told me he wanted me to invent Tesla and use up all the world's resources and kind of go to space. Elon, nobody told you that. No, God told me that.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  I was surprised God was into it, but like, who am I to say no? So, yep, here we go, we're doing it.

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• 38:18Laci Mosley?

  So eventually Jim got his wish and went on to co-host the 700 Club with Pat. The beginning of PTL. In 1974, after two children, the Bakers moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Jim founded the Praise the Lord PTL Satellite Network. Now you gotta have cable to praise the Lord. Can't do that with an antenna?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  They gotta go into space.

• 38:42Laci Mosley?

  I gotta get Comcast to praise the Lord.

• 38:46Laci Mosley?

  So the program hosted prominent ministers, discussed current affairs, showcased popular Christian musicians, and featured guests such as the former US President Ronald Reagan and writer and early leader of the Black Panther Party Eldridge Cleaver. Wow, they was really covering the gamut, you know? Us blacks, we do love some Jesus, you know? Come on, representation.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  One thing we know about Jesus is that he needs a satellite dish to be able to hear you. Famously hard of hearing.

• 39:16Laci Mosley?

  Right, it's like, come on now. So, in order to fund the massive enterprise and buy airtime, the Bakers hosted telethons, asking viewers to sign up for monthly pledges to become PTL Club partners. Tammy and Jim showcased their flashy lifestyle as an example of what viewers may achieve if they bought enough into the PTL ministry, and preached that God rewards faith and heavy tithing with financial blessings. So give us all your money, and then God will make you rich like us. You following?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  It makes total sense, right? Like, give me this dollar to give to God, and then God will give you back $10.

• 39:54Laci Mosley?

  And God is all about, look, live by faith, not by sight that we stealing. Don't live by that, don't look at us, don't look at us. Give us the money and have faith, that you gonna get some. Wow, love this. The show's ratings soon vaulted higher and higher and yielded even greater financial returns, but by the mid 1980s, the Bakers had amassed a multimillion-dollar empire.

• 40:17Laci Mosley?

  Woo Heritage USA gonna keep plowing through. The incomes from their satellite network allowed the baker. Why I keep wanna say is they have two K's. It's B A K K E R S and I keep wanna say Barkers or like it just feels racist to have that many K's in this name.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I don't I'm like trying to figure out where that came from cuz I guess maybe I've seen that spelling somewhere.

• 40:44Laci Mosley?

  It feels like there was three K's and then the girls were like, okay, well, the K K K is out, y'all. Like, we should probably X the K's, the extra K's and they're like, okay, we'll take one out.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  One extra, yeah, let's keep the extra. It makes it a little special.

• 40:57Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Nobody'll notice.

• 40:59Laci Mosley?

  The Bakers with two K's. This is okay. So they use the money from their satellite Jesus network to purchase a total of twenty-three hundred acres of land for a new venture. A five hundred room hotel and water park complex they called Heritage USA. We have a video of a commercial. Oh. And this video comes with a side of racism. Wow, see that extra K? I wasn't wrong. And everybody knows on the show, I do not read these beforehand. I do like submit and you know, I work with Kayla and our researcher. But I try to be surprised like you guys. I wanna be along for the ride. So I think it's very fun that we just were like the K K K and Bakers and now we got to get a racism commercial. Oh, love a racism ad. Play it. Let's see.

• 41:46Laci Mosley?

  What is happening? Who is shaking this car?

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Very strong child in there.

• 41:53Laci Mosley?

  Pause for one second. I'm gonna, I just wanna describe a little bit of this to you guys. We'll like, uh, post this video.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Going on.

• 41:59Laci Mosley?

  On Instagram. There's so much going on. So the first scene was a station wagon that definitely four dudes were like shaking back and forth. I don't know to give it movement. Don't understand that. They were like, we can't afford to turn the car on or like.

• 42:15Laci Mosley?

  Like, I don't, maybe this is before Sam got really good and they did it bootlegged, but they were like, just shake the car. That'll make it look like it's on cuz you know how cars just be shaking like they in an earthquake. And then they said something about Heritage USA. What did they say? Did you hear that, Sarah?

• 42:29Speaker 01

  I think how far to Heritage USA? Which way to Heritage USA?

• 42:33Laci Mosley?

  Okay. All right, let's continue.

• 42:37Laci Mosley?

  It's also a lake.

• 42:40Laci Mosley?

  Okay, now there's a camel.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  That's so, it, it like, it, they had finished doing the ad and then they were like, oh, we, we forgot to put in the racism that we

• 42:56Laci Mosley?

  Just put the racism in post. Just, just add it in post. We don't got time. They got a car shaking, dudes went home. They was tired. So, the, at the end, there's just like, a man who appears to be like a shake, but he's on a camel. And he's got an accent and, and I don't know if it's his real accent or that is a white man in Tanner. I can't tell you.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  He looks like a guy who was like, in an earlier part of the ad and they just had him double up roles.

• 43:26Laci Mosley?

  Also, all the white people were in cars. And then they just had a man pull up on a camel.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  What was he gonna buy there, for that matter? I guess they have water. Got some water for his camel.

• 43:39Laci Mosley?

  I don't even understand, but you know, it was the eighties, so.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  We're like, we, we can't make an ad for a theme park without taking a generalized dig at the Middle East. It would be unpatriotic.

• 43:49Laci Mosley?

  Right. It was always necessary. At, at the end, for no reason. Oh, I love it. So, the park's attractions included a shop that replicated the experience of shopping in a Jerusalem marketplace.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Everyone's dream, doing chores in ancient Jerusalem.

• 44:05Laci Mosley?

  It was intended to be the world's largest Wendy's. What?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  That's pretty beautiful.

• 44:15Laci Mosley?

  A passion play depicting the life and death of Jesus Christ with the aid of a light show special effects.

• 44:24Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, I love that you're gonna go see the death of Jesus and you gotta sign a waiver making sure that you don't have epilepsy first. Like, what? A light show, what? So, in nineteen eighty-six, it added a twelve million dollar water park that included the world's largest wave pool with plans to also install a life-size replica of Jerusalem as it was in Jesus's day, which would have been about like, point seven square miles. Okay, were they baptizing this wave pool too? I feel like if I'm going to the water park, I should also be able to just throw in a free baptism, you know?

• 44:57Speaker 01

  I don't see why not. I mean.

• 44:59Laci Mosley?

  Like, if we pay a little, like, extra fifteen dollars, I should get a souvenir cup and a baptism. I just feel like that's fair. So.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And a coupon for a medium fries.

• 45:10Laci Mosley?

  This is a pretty big park, and this is like one of those fake beaches that you'll see at water parks, where you can walk in as shallow at first and then deep and, you know, usually body temperature and just fill up everyone's urine. That's what it's giving. Love that for them. So, one of their large missteps was that they sold PTO, Lifetime Partnerships, for a thousand dollars, which came with an annual three-night stay at the Heritage Grand Hotel. So many partnerships were sold. Uh, they amounted to more than a hundred percent capacity of the hotel at any time. So they were like, oh, if you gave us coins, remember, because you're in PTL, then

• 45:52Laci Mosley?

  we'll give you a thousand dollars stay that'll also have three nights at the Grand Heritage Hotel. So basically, they couldn't make money off of the water park because they had let their disciples book it up all the time. So many partnerships were sold that they couldn't actually have anybody else to come. So over three years, followers contributed a hundred and fifty-eight million dollars. This is the eighties, so almost a billion dollars today. In addition to the hotel, Heritage USA also included an expensive campground, RV park, time shares, mid-range luxury hotels, condominiums, all types of stuff. Park guests were also encouraged to spend part of their vacation time volunteering for the ministry.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Not quite a full Scientology, but they're, they're edging their way over there.

• 46:39Laci Mosley?

  At least, at least with them, they're like, you can, you can ride the, the log water slide, the Moses part of the Red Sea, but also we do need you to pick up some trash in his name.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, you like going to Disney World? Well, try working at Disney World. Can't have one without the other. Makes them fun.

• 46:57Laci Mosley?

  It's, it's godly. It's only godly. Y'all gotta plunge three toilets for every ride. Okay, it's only right. So this saved the ministry thousands of dollars, obviously, which will be spent on ventures in the future. So the riff, while the bakers were busy growing their massive lucrative empire in private, they were growing apart. Jim poured all of his energy into building the PTL network while Tammy Faye, though a powerhouse co-host herself, felt alone at home with no help for Jim to like, look after the kids. So now Jim is just like, I got Jesus business. And he's like, but, but it's little Timmy's softball game. He was like, he's still hitting it off a tee.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Water slides don't build themselves, you know?

• 47:42Laci Mosley?

  Who you think making all this Jesus juice? Me?

• 47:47Laci Mosley?

  He didn't wanna help. Lord. So in nineteen eighty-seven, the Charlotte Observer published an expose revealing Jim Bakker had sexually assaulted Jessica Hahn, a twenty-one-year-old church secretary from Long Island, more than six years earlier. So this finally comes out. Jim used like two hundred seventy-nine thousand dollars of PTL funds to buy Jessica's silence, but in the following years, never admitted, despite the evidence, um, and Jessica's account that the sex was non-consensual. So he's out here being a dirty bad man. Jim admitted to both the affair, it's not an affair, bro. Like, that's not how affairs work, and hush money, and reluctantly stepped down from his position at PTL, handing temporary control over to teller evangelist Jerry Falwell.

• 48:28Laci Mosley?

  Once at the helm, Falwell discovered that PTL was deeply in debt, bleeding two million a month, Jim. So Jim was out here being a nasty man, and you're not even running the business right. Like, and you're a bad father.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Think this was gonna go, giving someone temporary control of your business.

• 48:48Laci Mosley?

  Right. Like, of course they're gonna do some forensic accounting. Amen.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So take, take it over and don't look into it too closely.

• 48:58Laci Mosley?

  You are now the face of this. Don't open the file cabinet. Okay? Just, just, just say what we told you to say. Don't ask no questions. Amen.

• 49:10Laci Mosley?

  Gonna ask some questions, bro. So this guy is just a, like, he's just bad at life. Like Jim, you're a bad person. You're a bad father and you're a bad business person, which is the least important of the three things I listed, which is why it was last, but still like damn, you're not good at nothing.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Bad taste in sweaters too. I gotta say, this is a sweater era and

• 49:31Laci Mosley?

  No drip.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  What that was about.

• 49:33Laci Mosley?

  No drip. He had no drip. You're right about that. So working with other evangelists, Falwell proceeded to fan the flames of the controversy and open a broader inquiry into the growing list of moral and financial misdeeds within PTL. So he took it over, was like, yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll take it over. Falwell, what a, what a foreboding last name. I'm gonna make it fall good.

• 49:57Laci Mosley?

  He went in and he, he got to digging. At a press conference in May nineteen eighty seven, Falwell said that the Bakers were no longer fit to lead PTL and accused Jim Bakker of being secretly gay. Falwell was very homophobic. All right, Falwell, I was on your side until

• 50:13Laci Mosley?

  I guess none of you are gonna be good.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  These flashes of the Titans, they get confusing at times, don't they?

• 50:18Laci Mosley?

  Like Falwell has morals, but also he's homophobic. So not that many morals.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Sometimes nobody wins.

• 50:24Laci Mosley?

  Right. Everyone's bad. So the controversy put even more scrutiny on the couple and their expensive lifestyle, which included Heritage USA's excessive amenities, their mansions and their air-conditioned doghouse. Damn. Air-conditioned doghouse? So the dogs are living better?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  I will defend the air-conditioned doghouse. I want all humans to have air conditioning first, but if you're gonna have to live in a hot climate, fine, get an air-conditioned doghouse. If, if, if you, if you're scamming money from believers, then that's one of probably the least annoying things you can spend it on.

• 51:02Laci Mosley?

  Do they have Huskies? Like the Huskies not supposed to be in the heat.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Right. I don't know what they have, but like, if it's for the comfort of dogs, then, then I am for it.

• 51:11Laci Mosley?

  Y'all got sleigh dogs?

• 51:16Speaker 01

  That's the one thing Heritage USA is missing is to go get around by a dog sled like Jesus would have if he could.

• 51:23Laci Mosley?

  You know, Jesus had a bobsled team. Let me tell you that. He did.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  I didn't read that part of the Bible, but I finished early too.

• 51:32Laci Mosley?

  You finished early. Like no, there's so much Bible left. The pages are very thin.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  So much good stuff left.

• 51:38Laci Mosley?

  The pages are very thin. Like, why is the Bible not thicker? It's not the tires. Like, it's like see-through. If you like open it, it's like very thin. So Jerry Falwell, zooming down the Heritage USA water slide in a suit, celebrating the baker ousted. So we have a, uh, we have a photo.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  That's such an amazing picture.

• 51:58Laci Mosley?

  Um, so this is Jerry. Jerry came in. He's the homophobe who decided he was gonna be cleaning up the act of PTL. And for some reason, he's fully in a suit, like a full suit, sliding down a water slide. Is this a baptism?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Well, good question. I feel like this is the biggest depression mood I've ever seen, but that can't be what he's going for, because I don't think you're allowed to acknowledge the existence of depression if you're Jerry Falwell.

• 52:22Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  But sometimes I feel like going down a water slide in all my clothes. I'll, I'll say that. Take me to a dying water park and let me go down in my clothes. Thank you.

• 52:34Laci Mosley?

  I don't know what he thought he was giving, but it's very strange. So it was also revealed that the ministry had raised more than double the money needed for a new hotel called Heritage Towers. The hotel had not been completed and yet more money was being solicited as a building fund. Don't read money has also been diverted to other things, including high salaries and generous bonuses for the bakers and the PTL board members. In public, Tammy Faye stood by Jim. She stood beside him. She said, that's my man and I'm gonna stand beside him. But in 1988, he was indicted on eight counts of mail fraud. Woo, I told you all about mail fraud, guys. Don't do crime in the mail. It's the pettiest way for the government to catch you. Like Uncle Sam would be like, okay, you did do six murders, but we don't got enough DNA for that. But bitch, you licked the stamp. So you're going down.

• 53:18Laci Mosley?

  What?

• 53:22Laci Mosley?

  Don't do mail fraud, y'all. If you gonna do it, don't do it in the mail, cuz that's how they gonna get you.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  This is what mothers should tell their children. It's like, don't chew the gum you find under the tables, and don't do mail fraud, and don't pull a girl's hair.

• 53:36Laci Mosley?

  These are all just pillars of life, things we should all know, okay? If you need to deliver something, go door to door, get on foot, get a bike.

• 53:45Laci Mosley?

  Get a car, take a taxi from work, and charge your job fifteen hundred dollars.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:50Laci Mosley?

  But don't do mail fraud. So, he was indicted on eight counts of mail fraud, fifteen counts of wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy. He was sentenced to forty-five years in federal prison, which was later reduced to eight. Damn! That's a real reduction. Who did you pay off, Jim?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Oh, so many people, right?

• 54:09Laci Mosley?

  Tammy Faye was not indicted. They, they let her go. So here's the aftermath, guys, we're getting to the end of this. Three years later, Tammy Faye initiated her divorce, stating, "How cruel it would have been for me to have waited until he walked through those prison doors, happy and filled with dreams and plans for Jimmy and Tammy." Huh? So, that's her quote. I'm trying to read it one more time for y'all. She said, "How cruel it would have been for me to have waited until he walked through those prison doors, happy and filled with dreams and plans for Jimmy and Tammy." So...

• 54:46Laci Mosley?

  So he was already in jail, and she was like, "Okay, one more five for divorce." I don't get it, sis. Like, so he just waited till he was marinating in jail a little bit?

• 54:54Speaker 01

  That's an amazing way to try and put a positive spin on divorcing someone in the middle of their being in prison. Like, I think you have to do what you gotta do, and sometimes you gotta divorce your spouse who's in prison.

• 55:07Laci Mosley?

  So is she saying when he walked out of prison?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's saying like, "It would have been worse if I divorced him as soon as he got out, because then he would be thinking that a bright future was ahead, but I would be taking it away." And it's, I just think that probably divorcing someone mid-prison has to be the worst time to divorce them. And that's okay.

• 55:29Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, like definitely get your divorce on sis, like definitely do it. But you're you're trying to reframe it like, okay, but what if I had divorced him when he left prison? Then he would be sad because he would have been right, you know, like, um,

• 55:43Laci Mosley?

  he would have been carving the days into the wall, you know?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  So we can see that actually this was the best, this is the ideal time to get divorced.

• 55:53Laci Mosley?

  Yeah, like mid-prison sentence, three years in.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  You're most hopeless. That's the best.

• 55:59Laci Mosley?

  I was like, what? So a year after, Tammy Faye married Roe Messner, who helped build much of Heritage USA. So now she didn't marry somebody else that she was probably seeing around the church. You know, like they would be looking in each other's eyes as they like opened up all the offering envelopes.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  I imagine so, or just like from across the water park.

• 56:21Laci Mosley?

  He would hand her like a wafer when they would have a communion, he would hold on a little too long.

• 56:29Laci Mosley?

  Their fingertips would touch, you know, like sometimes you don't marry somebody to church. So however, in nineteen ninety-four, Roe was convicted of bankruptcy, fraud, and served twenty-seven months in prison. Damn, all your boo's going to jail, Tammy.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's got a type.

• 56:47Laci Mosley?

  And it's convicted criminal. And also like Tammy, you are very close to these crimes, sis. So are you making these men do the bid?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we all know who's who's passing down the orders and it's God.

• 57:06Laci Mosley?

  Tammy, it's giving drama always follows me. It's giving conventions just follow me. Like everybody I love goes to jail.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  They just love Jesus so much that they just go right to jail.

• 57:19Laci Mosley?

  Right.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  That's too much loving Jesus if that's how you're doing it.

• 57:24Laci Mosley?

  She's like, oh boo, when is your excitement? No, I got an outfit already. Like what? How often are you going to court in support? Curious. So Tammy Baker remained married to Messner until her death in two thousand seven at age sixty five, following an eleven year battle with colon cancer. Paroled in nineteen ninety four, Jim returned to Christian broadcasting in two thousand and three. Don't he didn't come back from jail? It was like first day out, like I'm going back to Christian broadcasting.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  I'm already divorced, so it's time to get back on TV. Don't have to worry about getting divorced. Worked out good.

• 57:57Laci Mosley?

  They tried to kill your favorite bitch. Everybody open to the book of John. What?

• 58:05Laci Mosley?

  They was like, remember when Jesus was in that tomb for three days? That's basically what they did to me. And now I'm out. Like, what?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  This is, okay, and they let you do this?

• 58:13Laci Mosley?

  Wow. So he had the Jim Bakker Show co-hosting alongside his second wife, Lori, who he married in nineteen ninety eight. Guys, that is the story of Jim and Tammy Baker. Um, they don't sound like gray people. It's, it's getting bad.

• 58:30Laci Mosley?

  Uh, but I do like the puppets aspect. That was.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  You gotta have puppets.

• 58:35Laci Mosley?

  You know, the natural involvement from puppets to, uh, fraud.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  I think what I always, what I found interesting about this, learning the facts about it, is that I always heard it when I was growing up secondhand as like, well, it was never reported as an assault. It was reported as an affair, but it was like Jim Bakker had an affair. And then she brought him down and it's like, no, actually he committed fraud. A lot of it and then happened to be unveiled for being accused of a sex crime at the same time. But it's like, no, like guys don't get taken down for that in America. Don't be silly. It was the fraud.

• 59:15Laci Mosley?

  To this day, they don't get taken down for it. Like, I will never defend Ghislaine Maxwell, and this is in no way a defense of her. But I find it very odd that she is the one who's going away for all of this. Obviously Jeffrey Epstein, the whole situation, like maybe murder, maybe suicide. We don't know. The girls will never know. It's giving B six thirteen though, but. Who did she traffic all of these women to? Y'all just gonna be like, oh, she going to jail for trafficking. Where did the, where did they stop? Where did they go?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:46Laci Mosley?

  Like, we're not gonna look into that? We're just like, nah.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Two-person conspiracy, or were there more people? It seems like it would take more people.

• 59:54Laci Mosley?

  Like, she took them to nowhere? She took them to no one? Like, she took them to someone, and that feels like also a part of the crime. Feels.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:03Laci Mosley?

  Feels like also crime? But no, we protect powerful men, and that's why, uh, you know, Tammy's gone, and, and, and Jim got back on TV and got a new wife. Like, that's trash.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  And I think we're selling fake COVID cures or fake COVID defense. I mean, that's like, who isn't at this point in time? But, yeah, it, that is really, there's something very telling about the fact that he just like bounced right back. He's just doing what he did before. It's fine.

• 1:00:33Laci Mosley?

  Can't keep a good man down. Or a bad one. Just can't keep a man down.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  You just cannot. Try as you might.

• 1:00:41Laci Mosley?

  Try as you might. He had a forty-five-year jail sentence, and somehow it became eight? Like, that, that just feels.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Became, I'm on TV again.

• 1:00:50Laci Mosley?

  Right, and then they just welcomed him back, and they're like, oh, he had an affair. No, that's not actually what happened. Like, that's a strong reban. That's a real pivot. That's not what happened. It's time for Scammer of the Week. This is where we highlight a show, and maybe we love them, maybe we hate them, like Jim and Tammy. Who knows? So today, we're talking about.

• 1:01:07Laci Mosley?

  We're keeping, we're keeping it on theme here. We're keeping it on brand. So the discovery of a, a plumber made this past December in a wall behind a toilet has people questioning if Joel Austin's megachurch, Lakewood Church, come on, Texas, has been involved in fraud. The plumber, Justin Colley, was removing a toilet at Austin's Texas church when he discovered about five hundred envelopes filled with money in the wall. No, the amount of money was not disclosed, so we still don't know how much money it was.

• 1:01:37Laci Mosley?

  And Joel Austin is also, you know, a TV pastor who's out here with the whips and the drips. You know, suits always tailored, cars always custom, for, for Jesus. And I'll never forget, and I've talked about this on the podcast before, there was a hurricane in Houston, and they were like, hey, Joel, can you, um, open the doors up to your church because the girls are, uh, in need? And he was like, ooh, no.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  No room at the end, so sorry. Bye bye.

• 1:02:12Laci Mosley?

  God actually had told me he don't want y'all to be up in here.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Laci Mosley?

  Nelly.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  That says so many conflicting things, it's interesting.

• 1:02:20Laci Mosley?

  He said, uh, help yourself, he said. God said, you gotta pick yourself up by your own bootstraps. I don't think God said that, Joel. No, he did.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  That's what goes a day's in by the airport and you're welcome to use it. Doesn't sound very godly to me, but that's what I heard.

• 1:02:35Laci Mosley?

  God said motel sis will leave the light out for you. So, I don't know what y'all want me to do, okay? Like trifling. Police believe these envelopes are related to a 2014 burglary where more than $600,000 in cash and checks were taken from the church's safe by an unknown person who's yet to be discovered since. So he, now him doing a fake robbery on himself and then hiding the money in the church?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, I'm not, like, what do I know? But boy, does that make sense if you have more money than you know what to do with and you don't want it to get taxed?

• 1:03:11Laci Mosley?

  Right, and look, this is all, this is just what the facts are from these articles, allegedly, allegedly. I don't know what actually happened. Maybe God wants us to put money in our plumbing systems. Uh, that's not for me to say. They're like, you know, Joel spends a lot of time in the bathroom after we do ties and I'm saying, like, he said he got IBS, but I don't know.

• 1:03:37Laci Mosley?

  His IBS only flare up when the cash come around, so I'm just confused. So, back in 2014, the church released a statement saying the funds were fully insured and were working with the insurance company to restore the stolen funds to the church. Oh, the funds were insured, cute. How convenient. The church was allowed to keep the discovered envelopes as they had been found on their property. The nonprofit organization Crime Stoppers gave Colleen a check for $20,000 for alerting the church to its discovery, part of the initial award for information relating to the 2014 burglary as well. So I will say, Colleen, I'm glad that Crime Stoppers gave you a coin because if I was in there working on the pipes and all of a sudden I just see a lot of cash. Um.

• 1:04:22Laci Mosley?

  That plumbing bag gonna get a little heavy. No, he left all of his tools in the bathroom, but his bag was full.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  You know, he can get new ones.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  You have the best tools in the world now.

• 1:04:36Laci Mosley?

  But also, Colleen, you probably did the right thing because anybody who's got money hidden behind a wall, that's not somebody you want to steal from. That's giving crime crime. It feels like there might be repercussions, like real repercussions to you stealing from them. Like, I'm not gonna do that.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  These churches, they don't play around. I feel like I, it feels not so different from mob movie world where everyone is dressed as flashy as possible and there's kind of rules of etiquette, but everyone kind of agrees what they're in it for.

• 1:05:10Laci Mosley?

  Right. And instead of doing mob hits, they smiting people. Like, God told me to smite you. I'm like, you have a forty-five. That's a nine millimeter with a laser pointer. Yeah, God told me how to smite you. No, this, this is murder.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a smite master deluxe. And yeah, there we go.

• 1:05:28Laci Mosley?

  No, God is just using me through this gun.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I am a vessel.

• 1:05:32Laci Mosley?

  I'm a vessel for your murder. No, I'm just, you gonna meet him, that's all.

• 1:05:39Laci Mosley?

  You're just about to do a little meet and greet with Jesus.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  They call me the angel maker.

• 1:05:46Laci Mosley?

  Look, God is up there signing autographs every day and you first in line.

• 1:05:51Laci Mosley?

  Like, no, oh, God.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  See, this is the gangster movie we need. This is what we need.

• 1:05:56Laci Mosley?

  We do. But Sarah, thank you so much for being on the show. We always ask on this podcast, where do you want people to find you? Anything you want them to see, any social medias, it could be whatever.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, please find me at You're Wrong About and at You Are Good. Those are on Twitter at YouAreGoodPod and at You're Wrong About. And that's definitely enough places. Enjoy those.

• 1:06:24Laci Mosley?

  I love it. That's definitely in them places. Guys, as always, if you want to see the photos and videos, Scam Goddess pod on all platforms. I'll post him on Instagram for sure. If you want to find me, D I V A L A C I, Diva Lacy on all platforms. All of the first season of My Carly is streaming right now. We're about to finish season two. I don't have an air date. I'll tell you when we do. All of the Black Lacy's got show season two is streaming right now. If you want to see that. Also, Keenan, I'm on Keenan, uh, fourth episode. And trust me, watch it, because the twist is fun. Uh, and it will be fun for you guys without me spoiling anything. Um, all right, congregation, stay Schemin. Scam Goddess. Scam Goddess stars and is hosted by me, Laci Mosley, AKA Scam Goddess. It's produced by Judith

• 1:07:06Laci Mosley?

  Cargbo, engineered by Marina Fais, and researched by Kaelyn Brandt. Stay Schemin.

• 1:07:14Speaker 08

  This has been a Team Coco production in association with Earwolf.

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