Two former employees of the world's largest
Christian television channel Trinity Broadcasting Network are accusing the
non-profit of spending $50 million of its funding on extravagant personal
expenses.

Among purchases, the network founded by
Televangelists Paul and Jan Crouch, is accused of misappropriating its
'charitable assets' toward a $50 million jet, 13 mansions and a $100,000-mobile
home for Mrs Crouch's dogs.

Their granddaughter, Brittany Koper, 26,
recently filed her allegations in court after a brief appointment as the
network's chief finance director in July.
She claims she was fired in September after
discovering the 'illegal financial schemes' according to the lawsuit obtained by
the Los Angeles Times, and consequently reporting them to Mr
Crouch.

Her lawsuit follows a second by another former
employee and Koper in-law, Joseph McVeigh, who detailed the opulent spending by the Christian
network.

According to Mr McVeigh's accounts filed in
his lawsuit, the network used their collections for side-by-side mansions in
Florida, as well as in Texas, Tennessee and California.
The network's $50 million luxury jet was purchased through a sham loan while Mrs
Crouch's personal jet, a Hawker, totalled $8 million, according to his
suit.
The 13 properties listed in the suit were also
referred to as 'guest homes' or 'church parsonages' while their directors also
received $300,000 to $500,000 in meal expenses, as well as the use of
chauffeurs.

The suit also accuses the network of using
funds to cover up sex scandals.Her suit doesn't list TBN as a defendant, but it alleges that Mrs Koper was fired and made to turn over her house, condominium, life insurance policy, car, furniture and jewelry as 'an act ofChristian contrition' when she complained about the financial misdeeds at TBN.

In the similar suit filed by Mr McVeigh, he alleges that TBN attorneys also targeted him as part of a campaign of retaliation for his reporting of their lavish spending.TBN attorney Colby May called the McVeigh's
lawsuit a 'tabloid filing' and said the allegations in both cases were 'utterly
and completely contrived.' TBN suspects McVeigh, who claims he received a
$65,000 loan from the family empire, was working with the Kopers to steal money
from the ministry, Mr May said.

The network's spending is in line with its
mission to spread the gospel throughout the world, Mr May said, and the Crouches
travel by private jet because they have had 'scores of death threats, more than
the president of the United States.'
The ministry keeps large amounts of cash in
reserve because incurring debt goes against the Biblical exhortation to 'owe no
man any thing,' he said.
'The answer is, there is no fire there,' Mr
May said. 'They pay as they go and every now and then one of the things that
they pay as they go on is the acquisition of a broadcast facility and that's a
multi-million dollar transaction.'
The outbreak of legal skirmish offers a rare
window into the secretive world of the sprawling religious non-profit and
exposes a family feud that could draw more outside scrutiny of TBN. Attorneys
from both sides say they have contacted police and the Internal Revenue
Service.The Crouches founded TBN in 1973 and grew it
into an international Christian empire that beams prosperity gospel programming
— which promises that if the faithful sacrifice for their belief, God will
reward them with material wealth — to every continent but Antarctica 24 hours a
day, seven days a week.
It has 78 satellites and more than 18,000
television and cable affiliates and owns seven other networks, as well as its
headquarters in Costa Mesa in Orange County, an estate outside Nashville called
Trinity Music City, USA and the Holy Land Experience, a Christian amusement park
in Orlando.
On any given day — or night — viewers from the
United States to India can watch Christian-inspired news updates, documentaries,
movies, talk shows and sermons by preachers such as Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes and
Dr. Creflo Dollar without leaving their armchairs.
The lawsuit attention comes at a bad time for
TBN, which has seen viewer donations drop steeply.
TBN raked in $92 million in donations in 2010
and cleared $175 million in tax-free revenue, but its net income plummeted from
nearly $60 million in 2006 to a loss of $18 million in 2010, the most recent
year available. Donations fell by nearly $30 million in the same period — a hit
the network blames on the bad economy.

At the same time, Mrs Koper's father — the
eldest Crouch son — resigned abruptly as vice president and chief-of-staff late
last year. The unexplained departure of Paul Crouch Jr. roughly coincided with
his daughter's legal battle and came just months after he launched iTBN, a
project to expand the network's online and mobile reach.


TBN places a premium on privacy and it's
almost impossible to divine what is going on behind the scenes. Yet
televangelist empires built largely on charisma often encounter choppy waters as
their founding personalities age.


'It's true that in these large ministries,
they do become family enterprises ... and in many ways that can be a most
precarious problem for them,' said David E. Harrell, a professor emeritus of
American religion at Auburn University, who has written about well-known
televangelists. 'Business squabbles, if they're complicated with family
squabbles, can get nasty indeed.'
Mr May dismissed the idea of family turmoil
and said the reason behind the legal fight was simple: Mrs Koper and her husband
stole from the network.

'They're attempting to create a diversion and
to create as much public spectacle as they can in the vain hope that this will
all get resolved and that's simply not going to happen,' he said.

TBN's reach and programming are expansive, but
what is more impressive is the amount of money it receives from viewers — even
in a downturn.
During TBN's Praise-A-Thon earlier this month,
a preacher exhorted viewers to bellow 'Fear not!' three times, count down from
10 and then rush to the phone with donations. In exchange, he said, they would
receive a miracle from God 'about this time tomorrow.' Within seconds, all 200
phone lines were busy.
Ministry watchdogs have long questioned how
TBN — which declared more than $800 million in net assets in 2010 — spends that
wealth.

TBN files reports with the IRS, but the
Crouches run nearly two dozen other organizations that are harder to track and
they operate extensively overseas, said Rusty Leonard, who founded Wall
Watchers, an organization that monitors the financial transparency of church
ministries to which its members donate.

Wall Watchers gives TBN an 'F' for financial
transparency and keeps them on its list of the 30 worst ministries.



'They could run a loss like the one they ran
last year for an awfully long time before they would run out of money,' Mr
Leonard said. 'They're basically taking money from old people and putting it in
their pocket and living the high life.'

TBN is no stranger to outside
scrutiny.

In 1998, the elder Crouch secretly paid an
accuser $425,000 to keep quiet about allegations of a homosexual encounter.
Crouch Sr. has consistently denied the allegations, which were first reported by
the Los Angeles Times, and has said he settled only to avoid a costly and
embarrassing trial.

In 2000, after a five-year battle, a federal
appeals court overturned a ruling by the FCC that found Mr Crouch had created a
'sham' minority company to get around limits on the number of TV stations he
could own.
With their termination from the network, both
Mr MacLeod and Mrs Koper plan to file a wrongful-termination suit according to
the Times.





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