Pastors say man swindled poor churches

ROME — Robert Armstrong, pastor of St. Mark’s Primitive Baptist Church in Springfield, Tenn., took $3,000 out of his savings to invest with Abraham Kennard.

He believed Kennard would make good on his promise that St. Mark’s and its 20 members would receive $200,000 to remodel their building.

He believed it because he saw Evander Holyfield’s brother on a tape saying Kennard was the real thing.

He believed it because hundreds of other pastors of churches all over the South had invested in Kennard.

He believed it because he wanted so badly for it to be true.

But instead, Armstrong and dozens of other preachers say they lost all the money they invested with Kennard. Armstrong testified in Kennard’s federal court trial Wednesday. A charismatic preacher acting as his own lawyer, Kennard is charged with flim-flamming 1,609 churches and pastors out of $8.7 million. The 132 counts Kennard faces range from money laundering to mail fraud to income tax evasion.

Lawyers from both sides say the trial could last up to five weeks.

Many of the witnesses have been pastors of poor African-American churches who claimed Kennard led them into an investment scheme he swore would yield fabulous returns for their flocks.

Kennard said earlier in the trial that the charges against him are false.

“This isn’t an indictment, but a theory they’re using to judge people,” he said. “They’ve mistaken a dream for a scheme.”

Persuasive videotape

Armstrong, a 47-year-old retired postal worker who has ministered to his church for 22 years, said he heard about Kennard’s Network International Investment Corp. through other struggling pastors. If Armstrong would put in $3,000, he was told, he could harvest a return of $200,000 from Kennard’s company, which claimed to have investors who had deposited up to $348 million to help poor churches with renovations or to purchase new or larger churches.

“My congregation was too small to ask them to come up with the money,” Armstrong said, “so I took it out of my savings.”

Like most of the pastors who had testified earlier in the week, Armstrong said he was partially persuaded by a videotape of Kennard presenting Bernard Holyfield, the brother of three-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, as an investor. Prosecutors have said Holyfield was paid $22,000 to make the tape and invested nothing.

Kennard “told me he had investors, movie stars, who used the investments for tax write-offs,” said Armstrong. “He showed the Holyfield tape and said Holyfield was an investor. That influenced me to join.”

Armstrong said he paid his money on Sept. 26, 2001, and was promised a disbursement of $200,000 on Oct. 20, 2001. He was told on that date that he’d receive the money Dec. 20, 2001.

After he attended meetings in Atlanta and Charlotte, the date was moved to February 2002, Armstrong said. Finally he said he went to another meeting in Orlando, where he was to receive his $200,000. Nothing came.

“I never received one dime,” Armstrong said. “I wasn’t much of an anybody to [Kennard]. He never took any time with me. He’d just blow by me when he’d see me.”

Kennard had claimed, according to several witnesses, that anyone who wanted out of the program would be refunded their money.

Armstrong said he tried verbally and once by letter to get his money back, but never received a reply.

Traveling entourage

Earlier, John Peyton, a minister from Manassas, Va., testified that his church sent Kennard a check for $18,000 and never recovered a cent.

“He came in with his entourage and his bodyguard and told us we needed to sign up that night because they were getting ready for a disbursement,” Peyton said. “He appealed to us, to struggling churches. Most of the pastors there worked full-time jobs and then tended to their churches’ business.”

Kennard spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renting private jets and limousines as he flew and drove across the country to give presentations to churches and their members, according to federal prosecutors.

The federal government has seized, among other things, 20 cars, including Cadillac Escalades, Cadillac Sevilles, Cadillac Devilles and Mercedes Benzes, plus a Harley Davidson motorcycle and four personal watercraft.

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