Living High on the Hog

The Popoffs were great party folks. Valet parking was supplied for guests at the Popoff mansion. These were neighbors and other “nonreligious” persons who lounged around the Popoffs’ 12-foot-long bar sipping $100-a-bottle champagne, according to McCorriston. Rod Sherrill and Volmer Thrane, two easygoing buddies of the Popoffs, were there frequently. As controller of the Peter Popoff Evangelical Association, McCorriston was shocked at the way money was wasted on these affairs. “It was terrible the way [Popoff] threw it around,” he lamented. Popoff established this lavish style early in his career. Only six months after he started the TV operation, at Christmastime in Atlanta, he suddenly announced one night that he was taking everyone in sight to dinner at the Hilton. Rod Sherrill, who was then in charge of trying to curb Popoff’s spending, could only groan at this generosity, which had been sparked by an exceptionally dramatic sum donated at that evening’s performance. In spite of the enormous amounts of money passing through their hands and into various accounts, most of the faith-healers get severely into debt simply because they don’t pay their bills. Popoff was thrown out of Channel 46 in southern California, where he did his TV editing, because he refused to pay his debts; by the time McCorriston left the organization, Popoff owed Channel 46 more than $40,000. He also owed IBM Corporation $150,000 for the rental of $1.5 million worth of computer equipment that was used to generate his high-powered mail solicitations. His total indebtedness came to about $2 million as his empire was collapsing in October of 1986. The Popoffs have abandoned their Uplands home and are now renting in Anaheim.

Religion, Texas-style

W. V. Grant is not far behind Popoff in financial excess. In 1979 he purchased a mansion next to that of his sidekick, the Reverend Glen Cole, at 1944 Mount Vernon Drive in Fort Wright, Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. The price was $153,000. That would make it worth roughly $250,000 at today’s real estate prices. The property was actually purchased by “Health and Healing, Inc.,” one of Grant’s many corporate names. That corporation is not registered in Kentucky. Nor are any of Grant’s Cadillacs, his Mercedes-Benz, or his wife’s Porsche registered in Kentucky, at least not under their names. The Grants had their own front-row reserved seats at the exclusive Columbia Auction Gallery in Cincinnati. In 1983 Peggy Palmer, a local woman who frequented the better auctions, watched the couple spend $20,000 in one day on oriental rugs, art objects, and furniture. They outbid everyone, Palmer says. Later that same month, Peggy came upon the Grants at the Cincinnati Convention Center, where they were buying gold jewelry in large quantities. In fact, said Peggy, the Grants were conspicuous wherever they went for the amount of gold they wore. “Not your ordinary $100 gold chains,” she says, “but really heavy stuff.” She was “really angry” to know that poor people with $20 they could not afford to give were nonetheless dropping that money into the collection baskets at the Cathedral of Compassion and the Grants were buying luxuries with it. She notes that other bidders at the auction were whispering, “Where are these people going to put all this stuff?” The furniture alone would have filled several houses.