Pastor Pleads Guilty To $33 Million Investment Scheme

Four months after 38-year-old Kent Whitney finished serving a 44-month prison sentence for a commodities investment fraud, he started a church. Whitney was pastor of Church for the Healthy Self, run out of a strip mall in the Little Saigon area in Westminster, California, until it was shut down last year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint and a judge froze the church's assets. The nonprofit was a "virtual church" that provided religious offerings online but mainly served as an investment operation that targeted the Vietnamese community in Orange County. Well, Pastor Whitney has now pleaded guilty of scamming investors in a church fund out of some $33 million by falsely claiming their money was safe and guaranteeing a high, tax-deductible return from investment in the reinsurance industry. Prosecutors said that from 2014 to 2019 much of the money went to fund Whitney's lavish lifestyle. He now faces up to 23 years in prison.