A Very Private Matter

Controller McCorriston averred that he never saw or counted any of the Popoff crusade proceeds. He was only concerned with the mailed-in money, along with the donations ($100 each) that especially generous people sent in to become members of the Popoff Inner Circle Club. “[Popoff] doesn’t bring any of the field [crusade] money back [to the office],” he said. The plastic trash bags of cash and checks went backstage to Popoff’s wife, Elizabeth, where the loot vanished. At the end of the service, Liz would emerge with a large locked suitcase which went directly to the limousine and thence home with the Popoffs. Popoff’s former assistant, Mike Delaney, says that at those crusades: [Rod Sherrill] collected [the money], took it in the room, and counted it up ... Peter would take the money home. I’d see him the following Monday. He’d come back and bring the suitcase [containing] the [checks], the donations.

The Mail Operation

According to McCorriston, the average mail income alone was about $1.25 million a month. But after the fateful Carson show, the two full bags of mail they received daily dropped to a quarter of a bag. Within a few months, the monthly mail income had dropped to less than $300,000, and by the time McCorriston left in the last week of October 1986, it was down to a mere $200,000. Expenses at the Popoff organization were rather substantial. There were 50 to 60 employees, varying according to how much mail had to be opened. Payroll alone was about $80,000 a month. Then there were office expenses of some $9,000 a month. A special “house allowance” for the Popoffs to pay for maids, mortgage, and utilities amounted to $11,000 a month. A check for $16,000 was sent each month to Upland Management as rental for the 19,000 square feet of office space occupied by the Popoff mail operation. (Interestingly enough, Peter Popoff also owned Upland Management.) Elizabeth Popoff received a salary check separate from Peter’s. According to former director Rod Sherrill, the monthly budget for TV production was $40,000, but McCorriston says that TV plus radio production and distribution ate up $200,000 to $300,000 monthly, the difference perhaps being due to travel and advertising costs. Postage alone amounted to $100,000 a month, and the special four-letter mail campaigns to bring the faithful out to the crusades in any area cost another $100,000 a month. Peter Popoff’s personal expenses included a monthly payment of $5,000 to one of L.A.’s most expensive interior decorators, to apply to his $300,000 bill for redesigning the Popoff residence. But that amount didn’t come out of the Popoff pocket; the Peter Popoff Evangelical Association paid the bill every month, McCorriston says. But that’s not too difficult to understand when you know who constitute the entire board of directors of the association. Let’s see, we have Peter Popoff, his father, Peter George Popoff, his wife, Elizabeth Ann Popoff ... A neighbor of the Popoffs told me: When they moved into the $400,000 house down the hill we all thought he was a Cadillac dealer. There were always three or four custom Caddies parked outside. Then he moved up the hill to the $800,000 home, and started building the extension on the house and bought some more property out the back. Then we found out who he really was.

The Reverend and Mrs. Popoff were accustomed to living well. They shopped on exclusive Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and every now and then they traveled by rented limousine into Los Angeles at $145 a trip (including on-board champagne, which is what he drinks exclusively) to enjoy a $200 dinner. Invited occasionally to share that dinner with the Popoffs, McCorriston told me he would sadly reflect that it was being purchased with a number of $5 and $10 checks from older folks surviving on Social Security payments. But the champagne was, after all, the very best that their money could buy.