Minister Says He First Received Money From Lyons Last Week
January 27, 1999LARGO, Fla. — A minister who was supposed to get $35,000 two years ago to rebuild his burned church says he never got a dime until last week, when the trial of the man accused of stealing the money began to heat up.
The Rev. Willie Coleman said his church secretary received a $10,000 check from the National Baptist Convention USA last week, days before testimony was scheduled in the trial of the Rev. Henry Lyons.
Lyons, president of the powerful black church organization, is accused of stealing $250,000 from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith intended to rebuild burned black churches in the South.
Coleman's Rising Star Baptist Church in Greensboro, Ala., had burned to the ground in June 1996, but since has been rebuilt "bigger and better'' with insurance money and other donations, he testified Tuesday.
"If we could have got (the missing money), we could have used it. But we didn't get it,'' said another minister, the Rev. Arthur Coleman.
Arthur Coleman, pastor of Mount Zora Baptist Church in Eutaw, Ala., said his church already had been rebuilt when he attended a 1996 ADL meeting in New York where Lyons accepted a $225,000 check to rebuild burned churches.
"We immediately determined where these funds should go and the wheels that are squeaking the loudest at this point in time, we will give the funds to those churches,'' Lyons said in a videotape of the meeting shown to jurors Tuesday.
Prosecutors say Lyons instead deposited $60,000 into a personal savings account, gave $12,000 to his wife, sent money to love interests in Tennessee and Indiana and spent part of the money to redecorate his house and pay off credit card bills.
Lyons later sent a letter to the ADL saying he'd given $35,000 each to six churches, including the two headed by the Colemans, testified Mark Medin, the ADL's director of national leadership.
In the letter, Lyons asked for more funds to help other churches. The ADL forwarded him another check for $19,500, Medin said.
At the time, prosecutors say Lyons actually had distributed less than $40,000 to burned churches — $10,000 each to three churches and $3,000 each to their pastors.
Under cross-examination, Medin admitted the ADL had given Lyons no timeline or instructions for distributing the money and Lyons did return the funds when the ADL asked him to do so.
Lyons also is charged with codefendant Bernice Edwards of racketeering, accused of diverting more than $4 million from corporations seeking to do business with the convention to finance their own lavish lifestyles.
He faces a similar trial this spring on 54 federal charges of bank fraud, wire fraud, extortion and money laundering.
January 27, 1999
Source: Newswire
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