This Religious Con Man is Leaving America To Start His Own Country - The Gerald Payne Story
Podcast:Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast Published On: Fri Jan 09 2026 Description: Gerald Payne was the pastor and director of Greater Ministries International, a Tampa-based religious organization that operated in the 1990s as a massive Ponzi-style fraud cloaked in faith-healing rhetoric, promising believers that if they “gifted” money to the ministry they would receive double their money back in about 17 months through supposed divinely blessed investments in foreign currency, mines, and other ventures. The scheme pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars from tens of thousands of devout investors across the United States.