Goldberg: Jim Bakker and his wife, Tammy Faye Bakker,
were the first superstars of televangelism.
Jim made a fortune fleecing his flock over the airwaves.
It was a con that knew no earthly limits.
♪
Mosley: They’re buying cars. They’re buying boats, Jet Skis.
Imagine what a rapper would purchase.
He had the best grift ever.
Dowdy: When he would walk around the compound,
it was like Jesus was walking around.
Ethridge: I wake up every morning
with the thought of what happened here.
[ Sobbing ]
[ Sobbing ] Why are you doing all this to me?
Goldberg: And if you thought you heard
the last of the reverend...
think again.
Jim Bakker is a snake-oil salesman.
It’s a Jim Bakker reboot.
Like, I don’t want to watch it.
Dowdy: Even after he got in trouble,
I think the temptation of money is just too much for him.
He’s figured out the cure for COVID.
Mosely: Don’t do this at home.
I cannot believe this.
Ethridge: Jim Bakker was probably
one of the greatest con men that ever has lived.
[ Ethereal music plays ]
I’m Whoopi Goldberg, and this is "The Con."
-- Captions by VITAC --
♪
Goldberg: Scam Goddess Laci Mosley has made a career
out of dissecting the world’s most infamous con artists.
So she’s well-versed in the gospel,
according to Jim Bakker.
This story is exceptional
because we’re talking about a man who, at one point,
was a household name -- Jim Bakker.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Goldberg: Jim and Tammy Faye were such well-known icons
that they were lampooned on "SNL" in the ’80s.
What drove Tammy to take those Valium?
Oh, it was Jimmy and his little girlfriend.
[ Laughter ]
And their story remains the subject
of true fascination
since Jim and Tammy Faye were immortalized
by Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain
in the big-budget biopic, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye."
We’re not doing anything wrong, though.
Is that a question?
He worshiped the Lord and preached about God,
but, in my opinion, I think he thought he was God.
♪
Goldberg: So let’s just go back to the beginning.
[ Rewinding ]
The year is 1965,
and newly married Jim and Tammy Faye
are humble traveling preachers.
A puppet show they used in their sermons to draw in children
caught the eye of Pat Robertson
who had just started a tiny TV operation
called the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Jim and Tammy’s puppet show became their first TV hit,
quickly becoming the most popular show on CBN.
That star turn paved the way for the creation
of their very own television station, PTL.
Mosley: Jim Bakker kind of saw himself
as a Johnny Carson.
Like, "What if I could be a talk show host?"
So, after touring and doing this puppet show
and appearing on television,
a light bulb goes off in Jim Bakker’s head,
"This could be incredibly lucrative."
Goldberg: As Jim’s celebrity grew,
he looked less like a man of faith
and more like a rock star,
complete with an entourage and personal security.
Hardister: I was the security director
and executive protection specialist.
I was with Jim from the time he got up
till the time he went to bed.
There was a huge difference
between him being on TV and off TV.
Off television, he was a very shy individual.
But when the red light on the camera came on,
he was bigger than life.
[ Applause ]
Goldberg: Bakker had a knack for knowing
just what his audience wanted to hear,
and he had the ticket for the "greed is good" 1980s,
the prosperity gospel.
Jim: Go out and claim the home that your faith allows you.
Goldberg: Well, he sure did.
Jim is still a household name,
so his faith allowed him to claim quite a few assets.
Prosperity gospel comes from certain verses in the Bible
that suggest if you believe in God,
if you follow God, you will be prosperous.
And it’s fairly easy to slip into.
Because if you have money and if you believe in God,
of course you want to say,
"Well, God gave all these things to me,
and I deserve them because God says that he loves me,
and he’s given these things to me."
"If you get me rich, you will also in turn be rich."
Now that math doesn’t quite math for me,
but people believed it, and they donated a lot.
♪
Hardister: We didn’t have paid advertising.
We simply made appeals directly to the people
that were watching our program
and said, "Hey, this is what we’re doing,
and if you’d like to be a part of it, help us."
Cheney: He did so well because he used
both positive and negative emotions
to get people to donate to him.
Jim: If you don’t give, you’ll not receive.
It’s God’s fixed law.
Cheney: So you have
fear, guilt, anger tactics
where it’s like, "We’re almost out of money.
If these people don’t donate,
we’ll have to turn off the lights of the studio."
Or, "Oh, well, everyone in America is a sinner,
and you’re a sinner.
And if you want to repent for your sins
and you want to help us, donate money."
And then you have the really positive side of things.
Listen to Tammy Faye sing this incredible,
riotous, stomp-your-feet song.
Look at the love of Jesus in her heart.
♪ Oooh, how the Savior came ♪
Of course you’re gonna send in money to support them.
[ Choir vocalizing ]
Goldberg: Bakker had already conquered American television
with his Christian talk show.
Now he looked to the heavens
to create the first Christian satellite network
to beam the good news to every corner of the Earth.
♪
Ethridge: The whole reason that The Charlotte Observer
started covering PTL
wasn’t because we were particularly interested
in religion or Jim Bakker.
We were covering it because it was a big local business.
It was a money machine.
♪
The checks would come in, bags and bags of mail.
I saw the counting room one time, and it was phenomenal.
It looked like the post office.
Hardister: We were sent all types of things.
People sent jewelry, fur coats,
and, you know, anything that they had
that they thought, at different times, that could help us,
they’d send it to us.
Sometimes, they would just put a photo of Jim on the envelope.
Or they would just write "PTL Club" and it got to us.
Ethridge: And there were Brinks armored cars
who came to collect.
I mean, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars a day,
in some cases.
Mosley: They had a whole room dedicated
to counting money.
Like Scrooge McDuck, essentially.
Just a room full of money.
Ethridge: Here was massive construction going on,
TV people, networks,
all sorts of folks coming in from all over the country
to star on the show.
It became an industry.
Goldberg: Behind all that charisma,
PTL grew into one of the biggest television networks
in the country.
ABC had "Three’s Company",
CBS had "The Jeffersons",
NBC had "The Waltons",
and then there was Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker --
the Ken and Barbie of TV evangelism,
complete with a dream house, famously living the high life.
Mosley: Jim and Tammy Bakker are riding high on Big Bible.
And with that fame and notoriety
also comes...a scandal.
[ Reporters shouting ] Reporter: Are you planning on coming back?
[ Applause ]
Goldberg: Jim and Tammy Faye were ascending
to the top of televangelism world.
Jim had a vision,
and he knew how to put the fundraising together on PTL.
I just -- I never saw him miss.
Most of it was on the backs
of people that gave us $10, $15 a month.
Goldberg: PTL broadcast has received 14 million potential donors.
Oh, I’m sorry. I mean viewers.
Its growth was shocking and rapid.
PTL was this global machine.
Goldberg: But Jim wasn’t content to stop there.
No, he had a much bigger prize on his mind --
a heaven on earth.
Hardister: I remember the morning that we were coming in
to do the program,
and he pointed to this field and said,
"Turn down in that field."
And so I’m coming through this field,
and he stops and gets out, takes a stick,
and he starts drawing on the ground.
And I just went over and said, "Boss, what are you doing?"
And he said, "Don, I’m gonna build a hotel out here."
♪
Reporter: We stood on what will soon be something akin
to Frontierland at Disney World,
as Reverend Bakker unveiled the drawings and blueprints
for his newest project --
Heritage Grand Hotel and Grand Street.
They decided to make a theme park.
Hardister: It was a huge construction project,
one of the largest family attractions in this country.
Reporter: Bakker says he doesn’t mind the label
"Christian Disney World" as a description of his plans
to create a place where PTL members
can vacation with inspiration.
Hardister: It was expensive. We had to raise money.
♪
Goldberg: Bakker didn’t want to take out a loan
to pay for Heritage USA,
well, at least not from the bank.
He starts selling timeshares.
He gets on TV and tells his people,
"You give me $1,000,
I’ll give you vacations for the rest of your life
at Heritage USA."
The initial cost estimates for the hotel were $25 million.
So, if they got 25,000 lifetime partners,
that would pay for the entire construction debt-free.
The problem was that once they reached 25,000,
the money was just too easy,
so Bakker just kept going on his show.
It was a brilliant concept.
People loved it.
In fact, that was the problem.
Goldberg: Turns out, the deal was so popular,
it wasn’t long before Bakker had sold the hotel to capacity.
And then he did it again...
and again.
[ Cash register dings ]
And that lack of restraint,
well, that’s what will come to define
Jim Bakker’s story.
He’s got 500 hotel rooms
to accommodate 66,000 people every year.
I mean, you do the math on that.
He had no intention of accommodating
all these people for the rest of their lives.
He just wanted their 1,000 bucks.
Wigger: Big money started rolling in.
From 1984 to 1987, he raised about $160 million.
♪
It had a water park.
Jim: You know, we’re the first Christians
to ever have a wave pool.
Goldberg: Where else can you get baptized
and hang ten in the pool?
It had homes that people could buy and live on the campus.
It had the home for unwed mothers.
There was, of course, the auditorium
where Jim Bakker recorded his show.
Jim and Tammy Faye lived on the premises.
It basically became the epicenter of Jim Bakker’s world.
Goldberg: And what vacation is complete
without a trip to the gift shop?
Visitors could take home Tammy Faye’s religious albums,
books by Jim, and, come on,
G.I. JOE is no match for the Bible’s action figures.
All of these things for Christians were huge
because they just really hadn’t been done before at all.
Goldberg: In 1986,
6 million people visited Heritage USA.
That made it the third most visited attraction
in the United States.
It seemed like this small corner of the Carolinas
had paid off big,
but it was this Christian theme park
that turned the Bakker’s life into a roller coaster.
Wigger: A lot of the money raised was diverted
to pay for this extravagant lifestyle.
It was a little bit of a shell game --
raising money for this but using it for that.
Goldberg: Using church funds to live large
didn’t seem to be a problem for Jim,
as long as it was all out in the open.
But what about his private life?
Can a man of God recover from a sex scandal?
And as disgraceful as that sounds,
it’s just a sneak preview for what was to come.
♪
Goldberg: Jim Bakker has made it.
He’s a TV star with a faithful flock
that has afforded him and Tammy Faye the good life.
He seems unstoppable as he flies closer and closer to the sun.
♪
At this point, money is being hurled at them.
They have more money than they know what to do with.
They’re buying cars. They’re buying boats, Jet Skis.
Imagine what a rapper would purchase.
Well, I have to do what I feel is right before the Lord.
And, you know, I really don’t care.
[ Laughter ]
Mosley: After a few years of doing this,
there are rumors and rumblings about Jim and Tammy Faye
misappropriating PTL funds.
Goldberg: PTL was supposed to be a code
that evangelicals would recognize as "Praise the Lord."
But to many, it stood for something else.
PTL was widely known as "Pass the Loot" Club,
not "Praise the Lord."
[ Applause ]
Eventually, the media starts breaking stories
about what they’re been spending their money on,
and it’s not giving Godly.
Goldberg: It seems that the excesses of Bakker’s lifestyle
in the wake of his timeshare scam
had diminished his good graces in the media,
which left him especially vulnerable
to the bombshell news report
that would cost him his ministry.
Donaldson: Famous evangelist Jim Bakker
caught up in a sex scandal.
Reporter: Bakker, who hosts the show with his wife, Tammy,
admitted he paid over $100,000 in hush money
to cover up an illicit love affair.
He said he was being blackmailed because of a sexual encounter.
Wigger: Hush money was paid to a church secretary in New York
after a sexual encounter with Jim Bakker.
Jim Bakker does and everyone else does,
but I have not talked about it.
Jim Bakker got on TV and discussed it.
Not me.
Well, it had a very negative impact on us.
It was devastating on Tammy.
♪
So, once the sex scandal broke in March 1987,
PTL’s fundraising was in shambles.
Bakker realized that he couldn’t stay at PTL.
He knew that he needed to find someone to take his place.
Goldberg: And what trusted man of God did he choose to mind the flock?
We are here to do what we were charged to do
and that is to maintain the stability of the ministry,
rebuild its credibility,
and guarantee the ongoing testimony of Christ therefrom.
When Bakker agreed to turn PTL over to Jerry Falwell,
they did this in a hotel room
where they were the only two people in the room.
Bakker later said that Falwell agreed simply
to run the ministry for six months
while Jim tried to rehabilitate himself,
and then allow Jim to come back and take control of PTL again.
Falwell came in and quickly discovered more malfeasance,
like money that had been diverted
and other allegations of sexual impropriety.
At that point, Jerry Falwell made clear
that Bakker was not going to come back.
I would be doing a disservice to God
to allow you to come back here now or ever.
Goldberg: It wasn’t long before their power struggle
was dragged into the muck and onto TV.
Well, the thing about Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell
was that they were both really media savvy.
So, when Falwell held press conferences...
He needs to return the millions of dollars
that have been taken from the coffers of this ministry
at the cost of widows and supporters.
...Bakker also responded by going on television.
It’s already been called a civil war and a holy war.
Many fellow televangelists were telling them to stay quiet
and not respond to the other camp.
But, you know, having them stay quiet was a pretty tough order.
Jim Bakker thought it would be a good idea to go on "Nightline"
and talk to Ted Koppel.
This, in fact, was a bad idea.
Just relax.
There’s no need to get uptight.
Hardister: I knew it wasn’t gonna go well.
I knew it was gonna be a win for Ted Koppel and "Nightline."
I knew he would know
how to drill in on some of these questions,
and I knew the answers were not gonna be there.
The continuing saga of the PTL Club
have taken on the irresistible dimensions
of a national soap opera.
We’d go back to PTL and work for nothing [chuckles]
if God wants that.
Yeah, well, maybe you would, but you didn’t.
And the fact of the matter is,
not only did you not work for nothing,
you worked for a great deal.
And if I was someone who worked for Jim Bakker,
at some point, I would have just jumped in front of the cameras.
I would have unplugged everything,
turned off the lights, shut it down.
This was a terrible decision.
I mean, you know, money is so trivial, so irrelevant to them.
Right?
Jerry Falwell,
at a press conference earlier that day,
had brought out this little note handwritten from Tammy Faye.
From the desk of Tammy Bakker.
Koppel: There was just this shopping list
in which she’s sort of laying out the,
"All right, you want us to go quietly?
Here’s what we want."
Jim’s salary for a lifetime at $300,000 per year.
Tammy’s salary for a lifetime, $100,000 annually.
I don’t see any concern for the welfare of this ministry
in that kind of request.
Imagine doing an interview where you just tell on yourself
in so many ways -- implicate yourself.
Ted, what Jerry did was he asked us
what he -- what we felt that,
after all these years of ministry
and leaving the ministry, what we should have.
And, you know, when you’re negotiating...
You start out at the top.
Wow.
Here they were, these poor babes in the wood.
Lambs who had been sheared.
God loves you.
But when it came right down to it,
they were tough negotiators.
God loves you.
He really does. He really, really, does.
Bye-bye.
All right, thank you both very much
for being with us.
Good night.
Goldberg: The interview was a train wreck
and a television sensation.
If it were me, I think I’d wanna go hide
for the rest of my life.
Uh, that -- I --
Goldberg: Jim Bakker had been caught
in a sex and financial scandal...
exiled from his cash cow ministry,
and embarrassed on his home turf -- national television.
[ Sobbing ]
But after all of that,
his reckoning had only just begun.
Remember that construction project
with limitless fundraising?
A federal grand jury today handed down indictments
against Bakker and three church associates,
charging them with fraud and conspiracy.
Goldberg: Well, it was about to hit him like a ton of bricks.
We will appeal.
Goldberg: You’d think he’d learn his lesson,
but wait...there’s more.
Goldberg: After losing the holy war
and cast out of his own church,
Jim Bakker has seemingly lost the glow
of the media spotlight.
But Jim does not hit rock bottom
until he feels the heat from the federal prosecutors.
A federal grand jury today handed down indictments
against Bakker and three church associates,
charging them with fraud and conspiracy.
At this point, it’s not just an issue of them
destroying their reputation and the public goodwill,
Jim Bakker was in serious trouble.
Goldberg: Serious trouble with the law.
Those 66 timeshares Jim oversold at Heritage USA
might book him a stay at Club Fed.
Jim decided to sell fake timeshares.
So the government gets involved,
and Jim is charged with 24 counts,
some of which include conspiracy, mail fraud,
and misappropriation of construction funds.
Goldberg: Sunny Hostin doesn’t just play a lawyer on TV,
she was actually a federal prosecutor.
So, legally speaking,
she knows when there’s blood in the water.
There are a lot of paper receipts for things like that.
And prosecutors, especially federal ones,
we love that kind of thing.
So, essentially they’ve become righteous robbers.
I went into the courtroom
innocent of the charges against me,
and I come out today still innocent
of the charges against me.
It was just a real-life telenovela.
Everyone was tuned in.
What was going to happen?
I’ll never forget the picture of him in handcuffs,
I mean, looking terribly distraught.
[ Sobbing ] Why are you doing all this to me?
The federal prosecutors spent two years laying out
a really meticulous case against Bakker,
and, in the end, the trial was a disaster for Jim.
Today in Charlotte, North Carolina,
a judge sentenced Jim Bakker to 45 years in prison
and fined him $500,000
for defrauding his television congregation.
♪
Wigger: Bakker’s trial was presided over by Robert Potter.
He was a devout Catholic
and not sympathetic to Bakker’s style
of religious shenanigans.
At Bakker’s sentencing,
Judge Potter actually made a statement saying that
he felt that Bakker had made other sincerely religious people
look like dupes and saps.
Cheney: Everything that he had worked for,
everything that he had devoted his life to was gone.
Spending 45 years, really the rest of his life, in prison,
it’s akin to a death sentence.
We will appeal.
There is a court that we can go to
where I think we’ll get justice.
Bakker had two appeals and they used Potter’s statements
to basically say that Bakker had been unfairly sentenced
because of his religious beliefs.
Goldberg: While Bakker’s conviction was affirmed in the appeal,
his 45-year sentence was reduced to 8 years.
And because of parole, he only served five.
They argue that judges are supposed to be fair.
They’re not supposed to be personally involved
when they mete out these sentences.
And this was an abuse of discretion --
enormous sentence -- and you got to let him out.
And Jim Bakker was out in five years.
♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah ♪
It’s not over till it’s over.
I have a great faith in the God I serve,
and he promised he will not let us down.
Goldberg: No one knows for sure why she was never charged,
but prosecutors clearly did not have eyes for Tammy Faye.
She instead served Jim with a divorce
while he was serving his sentence.
She quickly remarried and eventually passed away in 2007
after a long battle with cancer.
♪
[ Bell tolls ]
So, after Jim Bakker is released from prison,
he decides it’s a good idea to do another television interview.
He says, "I am retired from TV Jesus."
Jim: I don’t have the need to be on television.
I don’t have the need to succeed at something big.
Jim Bakker finally says the prosperity gospel is wrong.
Christ really had very little good to say about money,
and yet I was teaching people how to get rich.
And so as I began to study in-depth,
I realized that, uh, I was wrong.
Goldberg: Has Jim seen the error of his ways?
He comes out of retirement.
♪
Goldberg: Oh, yeah, that’s really him.
He looks different, but his behavior feels familiar.
I like to think about Jim Bakker and his cons like the Bible.
The Bible is very thick, and the pages are very thin.
And there is a lot of story there.
And just like the Bible,
Jim’s got some chapters left in him.
A friend of his gave him a loan to upstart PTL again.
So he started off preaching in Branson, Missouri,
and then shortly after moved to Morningside
in the Ozark Mountains.
Wigger: Television was really all Jim knew,
and eventually, he launched a television ministry
that looks a lot like PTL.
He said that he had been called by God
to become a preacher again.
Enemies tried to destroy our ministry, destroy every--
And yet, God brings us back.
Probably the most impressive feature about it
is the 15-foot-tall statue of Jesus
that stands in the center of everything,
very close to where he does his broadcast.
I never had a doubt that he’d be back.
What do you do when that’s what you do?
You don’t become a brain surgeon or a store clerk.
You go back to what you know, and that’s what he knows best.
[ Applause ]
Jim Bakker married his current wife, Lori, in 1998.
There is a similarity there to Tammy Faye
that’s just a little uncanny.
Goldberg: In television, we call this typecasting.
Dowdy: My name is Mark Dowdy.
I was the band director for "The Jim Bakker Show."
I’m the most kick-ass piano player
you’ll ever meet in your life.
Even after he got in trouble, got out of jail,
and had this second opportunity,
the temptation of money, I think, is just too much for him.
Basically built a Heritage USA Midwest. [ Laughs ]
Dowdy: When he would walk around the compound,
he gives off a prophet feel,
he gives off this "I’ve been anointed" feel.
Part of Christian broadcasting is that, you know,
you can’t have advertisers.
You have to sell a product or get a donation.
[ Chuckles ] I guess it’s like a QVC show.
People are looking for something more in their lives,
and Jim has the talent
to give them just enough of that fairy dust
where that they buy in
and, some of them, they buy in whole hog.
There are just these certain different tiers
of donations that you can make
that you can receive a gift for in return.
Jim Bakker Home Shopping Club Network --
that’s what I would call it.
The whole game plan is to sell, sell, sell.
Goldberg: Wait a minute.
Didn’t he say he was done with this?
If he publicly dissed the prosperity gospel,
what is he peddling now?
Dowdy: He talks over and over and over
about the end times.
I saw the future, and I know what’s coming,
and we’re in the midst of the end times.
And all he’s doing is selling fear.
He was back at it.
This time raising money
by creating a doomsday theory
that the world was going to have an apocalypse.
♪
Now he’s selling end times protection.
Ethridge: It’s like a car salesman
who just moved on to a different model.
Goldberg: Jim Bakker’s second coming as an apocalypse preacher
was perfectly timed to cash in
on the chaos and fear of a global pandemic.
Walton: Early 2020, when COVID first hit
and we’re all, like, sequestered at home,
terrified about this virus that’s spreading,
and we were desperate for any kind of reprieve,
any kind of protection.
Jim Bakker seizes on this.
He’s figured out the cure for COVID.
Goldberg: After making a living
peddling post-apocalyptic survivor products...
Jim Bakker makes a sudden pivot
to capitalize on the rising COVID-19 pandemic.
When the pandemic first began,
none of us knew what was going on.
There was a lot of confusion
as to what kept us safe from the virus
and what could actually cure or treat us.
And because of that confusion,
Jim Bakker was able to take advantage.
Jim Bakker has never been accused of being dumb.
I believe when he sniffed that there was
a potential pandemic on the way,
the only thing that Jim saw were dollar signs in his eyes.
[ Cash register dings ]
So Jim decided to enter the market
with his own miracle cure.
Jim: You’re saying that
Silver Solution would be effective.
Well, let’s say it hasn’t been tested
on this strain of the coronavirus,
but it’s been tested on other strains of the coronavirus... Yeah.
...and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours.
I love that they’re saying,
"It hasn’t been tested on this virus,
but on the other viruses, the virus’ cousins,
it essentially will kill it in 12 hours."
That is patently false.
Silver cannot cure COVID.
If it’s too good to be true, it usually is.
My name is Lydia Kang.
I am a doctor of internal medicine.
I have been in practice for over 20 years now.
We keep seeing snake oil all over the place.
And it’s because people are still trying to make a buck
off of people who are suffering and have a lot of hope.
This influenza that is now circling the globe,
Silver Solution would be effective.
So what we’re watching is basically a telemarketing show.
Any time someone is touting a medical product
and selling it at the same time,
that’s a huge conflict of interest,
and it’s a gigantic red flag.
But the public doesn’t see it that way.
They see a famous name, and they see a product,
and they see trust.
So they just go for it.
Goldberg: They’re going through all this trouble
to make it seem like this is a medical miracle,
but doesn’t it make you wonder
what’s actually in that blue bottle?
[ Gasps ] Oh, my gosh.
This is colloidal silver solution.
It’s basically tiny particles of silver
suspended in a solution that you drink.
Let’s have a sip of the Silver.
Don’t do this at home.
It just tastes like water.
Mm-mm! Silver Solution.
Put it in your mouth. No, don’t.
Walton: They say on his show,
it’s supposed to not only kill COVID,
it can kill AIDS,
it can kill any kind of virus or bacteria you got in you.
Woman: It has been proven
by the government
that it has the ability
to kill every pathogen it has ever been tested on,
including SARS and HIV.
Kang: Obviously, that’s not true.
But there’s a little bit of science behind this.
You know, there are silver that is used in wound care today.
Every con, especially the big ones,
are based on a kernel of truth.
Kang: Silver does have antimicrobial effects,
but just because it has antimicrobial effects
in a petri dish or in very specific scenarios
doesn’t mean that you can drink gallons of this
and assume it’s going to just degerm your whole body.
It just doesn’t work that way.
It’s a really dangerous thought to put into people’s minds
that they might be able to help themselves this way
because it could actually put them in danger.
Silver is dangerous.
Silver has major toxicities
to the liver, the kidneys,
and to the skin.
Goldberg: So the real question is,
why are people still willing to trust Jim Bakker
after all of his scandals and cons?
Dowdy: These people have been with him
since the days of Heritage USA.
They believe what comes out of the mouth of Jim Bakker.
And if Jim Bakker tells these people
Silver Solution can cure it,
they’re gonna buy it.
Goldberg: Unfortunately, Jim’s emotional manipulation
could leave his audience blue.
I’m not talking about the metaphorical sadness.
This man’s medication cure can literally turn people blue.
Kang: Argyria is a condition
that is basically a sign of silver toxicity.
If you drink enough colloidal silver,
your skin can turn blue
and, in many cases, if you drink enough of it, it’s permanent.
You’re sort of permanently blue for the rest of your life.
Goldberg: How did he make $160,000 selling a fake cure?
Mm. You won’t be surprised by the answer.
The guy’s good at getting people to part with their money.
He’s good at convincing them
that mysterious things are good for them.
When a huge global pandemic hits,
that essentially fits right in line
with the end times and the tribulation
that he and other prophets are talking about.
Once again, he is taking advantage of people
that are panicked,
people that are afraid during a pandemic,
and he’s again abusing their trust
that they have placed in him and hiding again behind God.
This is his schtick. This is how he makes money.
And unfortunately,
there are probably blue people out there today
that bought into it.
Cheney: Rightfully, the reaction from the government
and from rational people was just one of outrage
and the need to shut him down completely.
Goldberg: Is Bakker finally nearing his end times?
Jim: God showed me this COVID-19.
Goldberg: Jim Bakker is back
and preaching about a phony COVID cure
that might turn your skin blue.
That will draw the attention of the law.
Even if you say, "God made me do it."
Ruthledge: I describe myself as a Christian, pro-life,
gun-carrying, conservative mama.
You cannot lie. You cannot deceive people.
And when you do, I will come after you.
I’m Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Ruthledge.
As a child, I remember hearing about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
If you had told me then I would be going after
the infamous Jim Bakker as Attorney General,
I would have laughed at you.
We look at facts, and the facts were very clear
when we saw the advertisements that Jim Bakker was airing.
This is a liquid with little tiny silver pieces in it
that people would drink.
And he brought on this alleged doctor
to peddle these products,
to talk about the effectiveness of it.
Would you recommend, as a doctor,
people to have silver in their house for a pandemic? You never want to be --
You never want to be without silver.
Ruthledge: She had no doctorate degree.
She is not recognized as a physician,
and he kept referring to her as "Well, Doctor -- Doctor."
And said, you know, "Is this a cure?"
And she said, "This is safe to give to anyone."
There was no truth, whatsoever, that it was effective,
and, quite honestly, it’s quite dangerous.
And unfortunately, many Arkansans fell prey to it.
♪
Under the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices,
he essentially made a false claim that something would
cure and stop a disease when, in fact, it could not.
And he brought someone on, this alleged doctor.
We don’t know where she got her evidence
because there is no evidence.
And there is no doctoral degree in front of or behind her name.
Goldberg: But that did not stop Jim
from using this non-doctor to hock medicine
for his own personal enrichment.
The time had come for Jim Bakker to face, yet again,
another day of reckoning.
Ruthledge: We filed a complaint against Bakker
and Morningside Ministries
to stop them from peddling this colloidal silver,
and we were able to get that injunction.
Sadly, Bakker and Morningside Ministries
filed suit against me as the Attorney General
claiming I was violating their First Amendment rights.
Goldberg: So, listen to this --
Bakker claims in court that anyone who watched his show,
even by accident, just for a second,
was a member of his church.
Come on, Jim!
Come on!
He goes back to the same con which is,
"My religion shields me."
Goldberg: Therefore, any government action
to stop him from selling his bogus silver solution
as a COVID cure was a violation of his religious freedom.
Well, that’s just nonsense.
I am deep in my faith, and I will not tolerate
someone such as Jim Bakker
using his church and using the pulpit
to take advantage of those folks.
Hostin: He’s, again, abusing their trust
that they have placed in him and hiding, again, behind God.
It is so offensive, but this is how he makes money.
He wanted his members to believe that he was a victim,
and that they were being victimized
by government encroaching into their religious liberty.
He knew that he had taken advantage of people.
Jim Bakker and Morningside Ministries
agreed to reimburse and to pay restitution
in the amount of $60,000
or a little bit over to those 385 Arkansans
to give them their money back,
to pay the $190,000 in civil penalties
to the State of Arkansas,
as well as $10,000 in legal fees.
Goldberg: And it wasn’t just Arkansas and Missouri.
California and New York were among the many states
that took action against Bakker.
In the settlement, Bakker and his ministry team
continued to deny any wrongdoing,
but nevertheless, he paid the penalties
and agreed to stop selling colloidal silver.
Ruthledge: They can call it whatever they want to.
Jim Bakker was simply using the pulpit
and the trust that he had of his church members
in order to make profit.
Hostin: Prison certainly changes some.
I don’t think prison changed Jim Bakker at all.
Goldberg: Jim Bakker spent five years in jail,
but he also spent four decades on television.
So has Jim Bakker changed,
or is it just another lazy reboot
trying to squeeze every last dollar out of his fans?
Jim Bakker was probably one of the greatest con men
that ever has lived.
When you look at the size of the take,
it was in the millions.
I wake up every morning
with the thought of what happened here.
And I think about the errors that we committed
and what we let get away from us.
It’s a hard burden to carry, and I’ve had people,
"Well, you just need to get over it and move on."
No, I don’t ever want to get over it and move on.
I want to remember because I’ve tried to be a better human
than I was, you know, back in those days.
♪
Jim Bakker is a snake-oil salesman --
whether that’s Silver Solution or fake timeshares.
Jim Bakker is a con artist for the ages,
and the worst kind of con artist
because he is trying to hide behind
the shield of religion and God.
The worst kind of con artist.
♪