TULSA Okla.
A Beverly Hills house and country club membership. Vacations in Palm Springs and the South Seas. A closet as big as an apartment, stuffed with hundreds of pairs of shoes, suits, dresses and golf shoes.
People with close ties to TV evangelist Oral Roberts and his son, Richard, say they witnessed such extravagances years before a recent lawsuit accusing them of lavish spending engulfed the ministers and their debt-ridden university in scandal.
Harry McNevin said in a recent interview that he quit the Board of Regents at Oral Roberts University in disgust in 1987 after it became clear that the Robertses were dipping into the school’s endowment fund for their personal use.
“We were dealing in millions,” he said.
The luxurious ways of some of America’s top evangelists have come under scrutiny on various fronts recently. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley announced a Senate investigation this week into whether six celebrity preachers violated their organizations’ tax-exempt status by living lavishly on the backs of small donors.
The Robertses are not among the six. But those targeted include three members of the ORU Board of Regents: Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland and Benny Hinn.
