Photo by: PHIL SHEFFIELD
Former Deeper Life pastor Keith Dixon, who was based in San Antonio, kept detailed records of his fundraising trips. Of the church's methods, he says, "It's fraud.''

in my pictures deeper_life_former...

TAMPA - The little boy wandered alone in the mall food court, offering to sell shoppers candy to support his church.
He looked to be about 7, Doris Currier thought.

Asked where his parents were, the boy pointed across the food court to a couple eating at a table. They didn't seem to be paying much attention to him.

All this troubled Currier. But the boy's appeal was so wholesome, his face so innocent, she couldn't resist.

She handed him $2 for a 50-cent bag of m&m's. The money goes to Deeper Life Christian Church, the boy told her.

``I'm a sucker,'' the Riverview resident said later of her experience, which occurred last month at Westfield Shoppingtown Brandon. ``It's hard to say no to a cute little kid who comes up to you.''

A three-month investigation by The Tampa Tribune, in a partnership with WFLA, News Channel 8, has found that Currier's encounter is a miniature of how Deeper Life operates. Teams of people from the church, based just north of downtown Tampa on Nebraska Avenue, fan out across the country seeking donations from strangers.

They carry white buckets with placards reading, ``Help feed needy women and children.'' Or, they sell candy at a tidy profit.

Children join the fundraising frequently, even when it involves standing at busy intersections. They sometimes solicit in the hot sun for 10 to 12 hours, say former church members.

The money comes to millions of dollars, former pastors say, and almost all of it is funneled to the Tampa headquarters of Deeper Life, which has the unusual distinction among churches of having a felony record. The church and five of its members each pleaded guilty to one count of food stamp fraud or dealing in stolen property in 1999.

Church leaders won't say exactly how much the sales and solicitations generate. The church's books are a closely guarded secret. Deeper Life has no outside directors, answers to no national denomination, has few written policies and no independent audits. And, as a church, it is not required to make financial disclosures and is not subject to regulatory oversight.

Even its founder, Bishop Melvin B. Jefferson, says he has no idea how much money comes in or how it is spent, although records suggest most or all of it is handled by members of his family.

But the church's size and wealth - land and other property holdings - indicate the amount is substantial. By Jefferson's account, Deeper Life has grown from a storefront Tampa ministry more than 20 years ago into a conglomerate of more than three dozen churches nationwide.

And public records suggest that Jefferson and his family live well, in sharp contrast to many of the people Deeper Life takes in.

`I Don't Ask Them For Nothing'

Jefferson and his wife, Pastor Brenda Jefferson, live in a sprawling house in Brandon hidden behind a 6-foot-high wall. They have at least five vehicles at their disposal, including a Bentley Arnage. They fly across the country in a private jet.

The river of money that pays for this lifestyle begins flowing in part at street corners and mall food courts, says former church pastor Keith Dixon, and is based on deception.

``It's fraud,'' Dixon says. ``If I have a bucket that says `Help feed needy women and children' and I take the money and go buy a Rolls-Royce, that's fraud. Is [Jefferson] a homeless, needy woman or child? That's what the bucket says, `Help feed needy women and children.' ''

The law grants nonprofit organizations such as churches an exemption from taxes. But that can be stripped if the Internal Revenue Service determines a nonprofit's funds excessively benefit the people in charge.

Jefferson doesn't benefit, he says.

``I don't ask them for nothing here. I don't take nobody's money,'' he said during an interview with The Tampa Tribune and WFLA, News Channel 8. ``I don't have nothing in my name. If I was trying to have something, the cars would be in my name. I don't have nothing in my name. I got one house in my name. I paid $160,000 for it'' in 1995.

But church members provided much of the labor to build additions to the house, he says.

And a second house bought by the church has since been deeded to Jefferson and his stepson, Calvin Lanier. The deed was assigned to them in 1998, records show. Lanier lived there with his wife, who is Jefferson's daughter, until the pair divorced last year.

Going `On Donations'

Jefferson runs an unusual ministry. Deeper Life recruits among the people no one else wants: the homeless, addicts, petty criminals just out of jail. They're pressured to tithe to the church and make additional offerings with whatever they have. In a number of cases, people give as much as 50 percent of such things as government assistance checks, records show.

They also undergo a rigorous 30-day indoctrination that requires them to memorize a list of 50 Bible verses. If they're ill, they're encouraged to throw away their medication and trust their health to God, a number of former members say.

When their indoctrination is finished, they're presumed to be rehabilitated. Many are then sent out to raise money for the church, for which they get paid $10 a day. It's called going ``on donations,'' and to judge from available evidence, the practice is enormously fruitful.

Dixon and another former midlevel church leader, Darrin Rich, say that over several years, they sent millions of dollars back to the mother church in Tampa from fundraising trips, usually addressing it to members of Jefferson's immediate family.

Public records show the church owns more than $4 million worth of real estate in at least five states including Florida. Jefferson and his immediate family appear to control all of it through the church. And, although the luxury cars are titled to the church, Jefferson and his family control them, too.

``This is an organization where nobody has a job,'' Dixon says. ``That's real hard to swallow. Where did [Jefferson] get this money from to buy a car? That money couldn't have come from tithes and offerings.''

Much of it came from donors who contributed to Deeper Life solicitors, Dixon says.

Money Goes To Tampa

From its birth in 1979, Deeper Life has grown from a small tent ministry in Tampa to one that, Jefferson says, has 38 churches and stretches from Virginia through Florida westward to Texas and north up to Michigan.

Figuring out how many members the church has is harder. Perhaps 500 to 600 live in church housing in Tampa, Jefferson says. The sanctuary of the mother church holds 1,200 to 1,500, Jefferson says, and frequently is full for services. Current and former members say the church keeps no record of its membership because of the transient nature of its congregation.

But Deeper Life held a national convention in Tampa over the Labor Day weekend that drew at least 1,000 followers. To accommodate everyone, the church booked the ballroom of the Tampa Convention Center.

The pastors all start at Deeper Life's Tampa headquarters and are assigned locations to begin new churches. Jefferson acknowledges that Deeper Life helps incorporate the new churches and buy the property to get them started. But once that happens, he says, he has no say over their operation.

Dixon and Rich say that's not true. Jefferson removed each from his respective church, Dixon in San Antonio and Rich in Indianapolis, after they encountered marital problems. But while they were in place, each says they had to send specified amounts of money back to Tampa.

As with the mother church, the pastors of the satellite missions take in the homeless and addicts, then assign them to fundraising crews.

``Once I raised $61,000,'' Rich says. ``Then he told me I needed $100,000; then I raised that up.''

He did it in a matter of months.

Dixon and Rich says they were among the church's most prolific fundraisers. They converted the daily cash take into postal money orders or wire transfers and sent it to Tampa or deposited it directly into a variety of church-controlled accounts.

``I know without a shadow of a doubt I raised $4 million to $5 million in all the time I was there,'' says Rich, who spent seven years with the church. ``I had to send it all back, all to Florida accounts. Lots of accounts, in different family members' names.''

Jefferson professes to be clueless about the fundraising.

``I'm not familiar with donations too much,'' he told the Tribune. ``I have people that handle things like that. I handle the Scripture part of the church-house. As far as donations, each church is self-supporting its ownself. We get tithes; we have people that donate to us. That's about it.''

Fostering Dependence

Although the fundraising trips can be grueling, Deeper Life's members have plenty of incentive to go. In Tampa, most live crowded into poorly maintained church-owned housing without heat or air conditioning.

They're also jammed into motel rooms on the road, but it beats how they live at home, former residents say. Dixon says he made it a policy to keep his crews well-fed and comfortable on the road.

``Going on donations gets you away from the grounds,'' Rich says, ``gets you $10 a day. Of course that's what I would want to do.''

Some former church members see Deeper Life as exploiting those who work on the donation crews. Although passing a bucket at a busy intersection might beat sleeping on the streets, it does not teach job skills or independence.

``They basically want you to depend on them. They cripple an individual,'' says former member Iree Bradley. ``There's no encouragement to get an outside job, because then you couldn't collect donations for the church.''

During his year at Deeper Life, Bradley traveled the country collecting money at intersections - a journey he says took him to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, Louisiana, Utah, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona. He usually worked about eight hours a day, six days a week.

Dixon kept detailed logs of his collections, with separate entries for coins and bills. The logs were reviewed by the Tribune. He subtracted his overhead - food, gas, hotels - and listed each day's net gain. He also kept receipts from postal money orders, Western Union wire transfers and cash deposits at bank branches.

He learned a lot from Rich, he says. The church schooled them in the art of street solicitation. They learned to hunt for intersections with long traffic lights and sympathetic drivers.

``If it's a quick light, you can't make no money,'' Dixon says. Intersections near banks, strip malls and shopping centers proved most profitable, he says.

On one of his last trips, Dixon took his crew of six church members up the East Coast through Georgia and the Carolinas to Connecticut and Massachusetts, his records show. They were gone for 13 days leading up to last Christmas, and raised $9,700, in addition to covering the $450 per week van rental costs.

He sent cash back to Tampa in installments that sometimes included multiple transfers in a single day, his records show. On Dec. 11, for example, he deposited $500 in a Bank of America account and wired $400 more to Brenda Jefferson's daughter, Ninkia Jefferson, through Western Union.

Donations increased as Christmas approached. Dixon's crew collected $2,212 in Massachusetts on Dec. 20. After paying for food, lodging and gas, he deposited $400 in a Bank of America account and bought two $450 money orders the same day. He sent Western Union money transfers worth $1,700 from North Dartmouth, Mass., during the next two days.

Sometimes, Dixon says, he would be told to divide the money.

``They would call us on the phone and say, `Listen, we're trying to do something special for Bishop,' '' he says.

At least some of the divided money was put toward such things as Jefferson's birthday, Rich says.

``Every birthday, we would raise $200,000 for the bishop.''

IRS Regulations

Whether Jefferson has ever reported such gifts on his income tax returns isn't known; he has refused through his attorney to answer personal questions.

But such directed use of donor money must be declared as taxable income, according to a 1991 federal tax court ruling called Banks v. Commissioner that involved a Colorado pastor. The pastor received money from parishioners on special days such as her birthday, Mother's Day, Christmas and the church's anniversary. Parishioners say they meant these as gifts to thank the minister for helping with their problems.

But the court determined that the structured nature of the payments made them compensation, not gifts.

There could be another problem. If Rich and Dixon are correct, then money donated by motorists and shoppers for one purpose - helping the needy - was redirected without the donors' knowledge. That also could violate Internal Revenue Service rules.

Although the church was incorporated 11 years ago, Deeper Life is just now developing compensation guidelines and a governing board composed of Jefferson's relatives, says the church's Texas-based attorney, Dennis G. Brewer Sr.

Experts say the church should be doing much more.

Everything about a church's payroll should be transparent and open to its congregation, says the Rev. Steve Clifford, an Ohio pastor and author of a book called ``How to Set Clergy Compensation.'' Compensation should be driven by the church's size and budget, Clifford says.

``I don't begrudge significant compensation to pastors who have succeeded,'' Clifford says. ``Most pastors are starving. But what's fair and balanced? It is best to set up a board of directors that is independent, not related to the pastor and not appointed by the pastor.''

Deeper Life doesn't have people capable of serving on a board of directors, Brewer says.

That's no excuse, Clifford says.

``Equip them,'' he says. ``Attract allies who share your vision and equip them.''

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an organization started by the Rev. Billy Graham, offers similar advice. It also reminds churches on its Web site that the IRS regards such things as Christmas or other gifts and church-owned vehicles as taxable compensation.

Buying Up Land

W ith no directors to advise him, Jefferson has invested much of what Deeper Life raises in real estate.

It has paid more than $2 million to buy 34 properties in Hillsborough County alone since Jefferson incorporated Deeper Life in 1992, records show.

The church also owns an empty Pinellas Park church building with small apartments that cost $795,000. It's buying the old Eastown Theater in Detroit, a building the size of a city block, for $1.8 million.

``There's one thing they ain't making no more,'' Jefferson told his congregation during a June 15 sermon available on videotape. ``They ain't making no more land. Hello somebody! So I buy up all I can get.''

Jefferson delivered that sermon one week after church member Solomon Bostick, 14, died in a van accident on Florida's Turnpike while returning from what the driver and others say was a fundraising trip to South Florida.

The death went unmentioned.

Another issue dominates the sermon.

Jefferson's departure point is good and evil. He urges the congregation to fight evil and distrust those who are not saved. Dark forces fight to control their lives, he tells them.

``Who's in you?'' Jefferson asks. ``Who are you? Some of you are evil, wicked, mean and nasty.''

Then he bores in.

``And besides, some of you are just so stingy you squeak when you walk.''

He squints, begins to shout and wipes sweat from his brow with a white hand towel.

You have to sow seeds if you want to turn your life around, he says. You have to act boldly, decisively. If you want friendship, sow a seed by smiling at somebody. If you want wealth, give money to God.

``When you give money, if you are sowing a seed you're going to get your money back 100-fold,'' Jefferson says.

``Everybody say, `Money!' '' Jefferson orders.

``Money!'' the congregation yells back.

``Mon-neeeeeee!!'' Jefferson calls.

``Mon-neeeeeee!'' the congregation calls back.

``Moolah!!'' he cries.

``Moolah!!'' the congregation replies.

``In other words,'' Jefferson says, ``don't be stingy.''

Researcher Angie Drobnic Holan and staff writer Will Rodgers contributed to this report. Reporters John W. Allman can be reached at (813) 259-7915; Michael Fechter at (813) 259-7621; and Michelle Bearden at (813) 259-7613.

http://tampatrib.com/nationworldnews/MGAM9GOXVKD.html (9.22.03)