Backs to the Wall

Ira McCorriston told me that the Popoff camp was at last forced to face facts:We finally had a meeting, and sat down and said, “We gotta say something. We should have said something the first week. We’ve waited too long now.” But Peter kept thinking it was all just gonna go away.

Mike Delaney, Popoff’s former assistant, echoed this observation:[There was] no reaction at the office [though many phone calls were coming in] and the employees didn’t think much about it. Most of them weren’t very educated.

At this point, Popoff fired a number of people. He moved into a storefront location in an Upland shopping center, went off TV completely, and changed the name of his organization, dropping his name from it. The Peter Popoff Evangelical Association, as of January 6, 1987, vanished. The new operation which filled that void, People United for Christ, included, as directors, Peter Popoff; his father, George Popoff; and his sister, Ruth Ferguson. Elizabeth Popoff, who had been a director of the PPEA, was not listed as a director of PUC. Attendance at his crusades dropped precipitously, but those who know the religion business well feel that by radio campaigns alone, Popoff could still continue to bring in $100,000 to $200,000 a month as long as his face was not seen and recognized. Some months later more personnel were fired, including one of the most important—controller Ira McCorriston. McCorriston was very close to the top. Before joining the Popoff entourage, he had been living in Tampa, Florida, working as a used-car salesman, and first came into contact with Popoff when his crusade came to that town. He told Popoff of his eight years of experience working for evangelist Leroy Jenkins, and as a result, in January 1986, he was engaged as the controller. of the Popoff empire. He moved his family to Upland, where he bought a $500,000 house on the assumption that he would continue to receive a handsome $80,000 a year for his services, plus a percentage of the gross mail contributions. He is now back in Tampa, selling used cars once more. Ira had known Popoff’s TV director, Rod Sherrill, for more than 20 years at the time he made the move, and he did it, he says, largely because Sherrill assured him of Popoff’s integrity. Then Popoff fired Rod Sherrill. Both firings were enormous errors in judgment. Before he was equipped with the electronic gimmick in September 1985, Popoff used a variety of means to obtain people’s names. One trick was to examine the checks they handed in, which bore their names and addresses. This is a technique also used by W. V. Grant and others. But nothing any other faith-healer ever had beat the radio device for dramatic effect. Said Ira McCorriston:He didn’t have much until he got the earpiece, and then that “made” him. When he lost that, well, he just didn’t have anything.

Then, too, Peter Popoff still had four presses going in his private printing shop, churning out his carefully constructed begging letters to some 100,000 people, twice a month, by using the mailing list he still has. Even operating out of his garage, McCorriston says, Popoff could keep three or four employees busy and bring in $50,000 to $100,000 a month with his mailing list alone.