FBI: Alamo's followers sell suspect goods

updated 4:04 p.m. ET July 12, 2009

DYER, Ark. - Evangelist Tony Alamo once said God never wanted his ministry to be poor, but money raised by his followers only seems to go his way.

As Alamo, 74, faces accusations he took five preteen girls across state lines for sex, he presides over a multimillion-dollar empire held in his followers' names. Trucking companies, residential property and a number of questionable ventures fund the work of his 100 to 200 acolytes.

"A substantial amount of income is generated that's utilized for the organization, all of which is controlled by Mr. Alamo," FBI agent Randall Harris testified at an October bond hearing. "However ... none of that property ever shows legally as being in his name."

Government agencies show Alamo built his fortune on the backs of his followers, setting them up in commercial operations rather than rely on donations like traditional ministries. By the 1980s, the Labor Department said Alamo had to pay his followers at least minimum wage; the IRS later laid claim to millions of dollars in taxes.

At the end of a four-year prison term for tax evasion in 1998 — after the government seized assets and courts rejected his charity status — Alamo paid $250,000 to cover a fine and penalties.

"How in the world could Mr. Alamo come up with a quarter of a million dollars ... when the entire time he hasn't been able to work, he hasn't held a job other than what he may have been employed in inside a federal penitentiary?" Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyra Jenner asked during Alamo's bond hearing last October.

'God wants his children to go first-class'
At its height, Alamo's ministry owned gas stations, a hog farm, grocery store, restaurant and concert venue in Alma, a town near Dyer. Alamo's Nashville, Tenn., clothing store catered to celebrities who bought elaborately decorated jean jackets. His line also carried sharkskin boots, leopard-skin jackets and sequined gowns popular with musicians at the Grand Ole Opry, which Alamo occasionally haunted in the 1980s.

His wife Susan once arrived for an interview wearing a floor-length red-and-white dress and lynx jacket. "God wants his children to go first-class," she once said.

But life at the Alamo compound could be paradise or hell, depending on who you ask. Alamo and his wife enjoyed a heart-shaped pool near a mansion in Dyer, but federal agents said they found followers' sleeping bags in a meeting room. Marshals said some workers earned $5 a day, with shifts lasting as long as 20 hours.

In the latest case, prosecutors allege girls under age 18 were taken across state lines from the current compound in Foulke and raped or sexually abused between 1994 and 2005. A trial starts this week.

If convicted, Alamo faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of 10 counts.

Whether all the business ventures linked to Alamo are legal isn't known.

Peter N. Georgiades, a Pittsburgh lawyer who sued Alamo on behalf of ex-followers in the 1990s, said ministry workers accepted donations of food near its expiration dates, wiped off the dates and resold items to grocers. "It's plain, flat-out fraud," the lawyer said.

Mary Coker, who helped ex-followers contact federal agents before a recent raid, said the ministry has been selling outdated government-donated food since it moved to Fouke in the 1990s.

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