Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Paying somebody else to pray that you win the lottery seems about as effective as praying yourself. From Seattle’s ABC affiliate:
A Seattle man accused of deceiving people with online Christian websites has agreed to pay consumers $7.8 million.
The Washington State Attorney General says the Christian Prayer Center website, where you had to pay to receive prayers, was one of three deceptive online schemes devised by Benjamin Rogovy.
“He used deceptive tactics to lure people in to pay their hard earned money for this, and that’s not right,” said state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
Just last month, we revealed how some people signing up to request prayers didn’t realize they were agreeing to repeat credit card charges with no refunds. It was a practice that outraged legitimate Pastor John Carlson, who says his name was linked to the website without his consent.
According to court records, Rogovy took in millions of dollars by routinely using fake testimonials, fake names and stock photos.
More from Raw Story:
Rogovy’s websites — christianprayercenter.com and oracioncristiana.org — offered to pray for desperate English and Spanish speakers if they paid between $9 and $35 for the service. He created fake ministers who would assist with religious ceremonies and were available for consultation. The CPC also used the name “Pastor Eric Johnson”; according to the attorney general’s office neither Pastor Johnson nor Pastor Carlson exist.
In addition, Rogovy locked his hapless victims into recurring monthly payments through a “deliberately confusing website”. “The AGO investigation found that once consumers submitted and paid for a prayer request, they were directed to a Web page that gave them the option to receive ‘continued blessings’,” Ferguson’s statement said. “Between 2011 and 2015, CPC collected more than $7 million from 125,000 consumers nationwide. Some of these consumers were charged repeatedly, resulting in a total of over 400,000 transactions.”
(Tipped by JMG reader Helen Damnation)