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- A Florida pastor and his son were arrested Wednesday on charges of fraudulently obtaining more than $8 million in federal Covid relief funds and attempting to use some of the money to buy a luxury home near Walt Disney World.
www.nbcnews.com/news/feds-arrest-florida-pastor-son-8-million-covid-scam-rcna38754Florida pastor and his son are arrested in alleged $8 million ...
Dec 14, 2022 · A Florida pastor and his son were arrested Wednesday on charges of fraudulently obtaining more than $8 million in federal Covid relief funds and attempting to use some of the money to buy a...
- 2 min
- Laura Strickler,Rich Schapiro,Stephanie Gosk
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Samuel now faces 25 charges — 13 counts of sexual assault, 11 counts of being in a position of authority and touching a person for a sexual purpose, and one count of sexual touching of a person...
- Overview
- A turbulent time in Turkey
- The feds move in
Federal agents in Florida had been seeking to question Evan Edwards, a pastor, and his family for days when their Mercedes SUV was spotted speeding on I-75 north of Gainesville.
The Edwardses were Christian missionaries from Canada who lived in Turkey for many years and moved to Florida in 2019. On paper they ran a faith-based charity with a high-minded mission: to “communicate Christian love in doctrine and service to the poor.”
But by the fall of 2020, the family of four — dad Evan; mom Mary Jane; daughter Joy, 36; and son Josh, 30 — were suspected of pulling off a multimillion-dollar fraud that targeted the government’s Covid relief program for small businesses and nonprofits.
The Edwardses received more than $8 million after Josh filed paperwork falsely claiming that their ministry, ASLAN International Ministry, had 486 employees and a monthly payroll of $2.7 million, according to a federal forfeiture complaint.
A federal investigation raised serious red flags. Among them: The accountant who purportedly signed off on the loan allegedly had dementia and hadn’t done any work for the organization since 2017.
Now, just after 8:49 p.m. on Sept. 17, 2020, the Edwardses’ beige Mercedes was being pulled over by three Florida Highway Patrol cars. All four family members were inside the vehicle.
The man now known as Evan Edwards grew up in Edmonton, one of three boys in a family that wasn’t religious, according to his cousin.
He was born Ian Heringa, but he changed his name after a turbulent period in Turkey, where his proselytizing made him a target of harassment.
His devotion to Christianity began in his late teens or early 20s when a girlfriend introduced him to a church in the area. It wasn’t long before Edwards’ father stopped sending him money because “he was giving all of it to the church,” his cousin said.
Edwards went on to marry Mary Jane, a Filipino immigrant. The couple moved to Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, in the late 1980s after the birth of their two children.
“We knew we wanted to preach the gospel where it was not preached,” Evan Edwards said in a 2008 radio interview.
He worked with a Christian mission group, Operation Mobilization, and later founded ASLAN International Ministry, which he has said was named after the Turkish word for lion.
It’s not clear when it began, but the federal investigation gained momentum in September 2020.
Agents visited ASLAN International’s office in Orlando and found that neighboring businesses did not recall seeing any employees there, the complaint says. A review of the website found that the donation links were inactive and sections of text were apparently lifted from other religious sites, according to the complaint.
And while the ministry’s pandemic loan application said it had a monthly payroll of $2.7 million, it had reported its monthly income as just $5,500 in charity filings to the Canadian government, according to a review of the documents.
Canadian authorities acting at the U.S.’s request tracked down Walter Gnida, who was listed on documents as the ministry’s accountant and who had allegedly signed off on the loans. Gnida remained silent and unresponsive as his son told investigators his father and Evan Edwards had known each other for years but Gnida now suffered from dementia and hadn’t done any work for ASLAN since at least 2017, the complaint says.
Gnida's son did not respond to a request for comment.
On Sept. 8, 2020, federal agents showed up at the Edwards home, but no one answered the door. That night, Evan and Josh Edwards stopped by some of their neighbors’ houses to ask if two men had come to ask them questions, the complaint says.
- 3 min
- Laura Strickler,Stephanie Gosk,Rich Schapiro
Jan 2, 2022 · A Calgary-based street pastor and his brother — both known for being pandemic-denying and anti-mask — have been released on bail following their arrest after a protest outside the health...
Sep 18, 2023 · A Calgary pastor was sentenced to 60 days in jail Monday for his role in protests against COVID-19 public health measures that blocked Alberta’s main Canada-U.S. border crossing for more than...
Jan 31, 2024 · Some seven months after Daniel Savala, an itinerant minister and convicted sex offender with ties to the Chi Alpha Campus Ministries sponsored by the Assemblies of God, was arrested for sexually abusing two boys, a Texas father has filed a lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination of negligence that allowed his 13-year ...
