An elaborate and lucrative scam is afoot that is targeting African-American churches throughout the country. The doings are so dastardly that the District of Columbia sued the alleged perpetrators of this scam in April, and the California attorney general has scheduled a news conference Friday at Bryant Temple AME Church to announce action the state is undertaking to stop this crime against Black religious congregations.

The scam, reportedly spread through a labyrinthine network of agents out of Wisconsin, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Irvine, involves the placement of computer kiosks on church property that are supposed to provide congregants with public and commercial resource information, including discounts at local businesses.

According to the D.C lawsuit, the churches are told the kiosks would be paid for by corporate sponsors and would, therefore, cost them nothing. Furthermore, the churches are told they would make money off the kiosks because the businesses will pay to appear and advertise on them.

The churches then are hooked into believing they have been handed a win-win proposition, when in fact, they end up with a lose-lose take-me-to-my-lawyer mess. In the first place, the computer kiosks seldom function properly.

Secondly, and more importantly, instead of receiving money, the churches suddenly begin receiving bills for the kiosks from heretofore unknown leasing companies. Some churches pay the bills; most churches ignore the bills and are ultimately sued by leasing companies — such as what happened when Irvine’s Balboa Capital Corp. sued Lincoln Memorial Congregational Church on Arlington Avenue for $31,000 last year.

According to the D.C. lawsuit against Balboa and six other entities: “The scam was designed to illegally obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars from congregations across the country by fraudulently inducing them to accept computer equipment on the representation that it was ‘free of charge.’ In fact, the congregations unwittingly were induced to sign leases that obligated them to pay tens of thousands of dollars for equipment that did not work, and the value of which was a small fraction of what the defendants sought to compel the congregations to pay.

“The scheme is ongoing and in many cases is causing the congregations to hemorrhage thousands of dollars a month in lease payments and late fees, as well as negatively impacting their credit ratings,” the suit states.

Only African-American churches are known to have been hit by this scam. About 35 such churches have reportedly been hit in California, of which more than 20 are in Southern California.

According to Martin L. Pitha, his client, Lincoln Memorial, has been hit by two lawsuits — the one from Balboa and another one from United Leasing Association of America in Brookfield, Wisc. — because the congregation refused to pay the bills. “Even though the lawsuits are only for $31,000, that’s a lot of money for a church,” Pitha said. “It’s a real burden to them, especially for a debt they were tricked into incurring and for money they never intended to spend.”

Pitha said he has a status conference scheduled on his case early next month and he plans to take his case to court.

True Way Missionary Baptist Church in South L.A. is also a victim of this scam and its 75-member congregation has been sued for $28,000 in unpaid lease bills by the Urban Interfaith Network in Washington D.C. True Way’s attorney, Brandon Fernald, said the church was told it would get a cut of the advertising dollars the kiosk generated of at least $250 every three months.

According to a report in the Daily Journal, the scam took Fernald and True Way through quite a legal maze. Unbeknownst to the church, the Urban Interfaith Network sold the dysfunctional computer kiosk equipment to United Leasing, which began debiting funds directly from True Way’s bank account and took out $3,000 before the church closed the account. Then United sued the church and the judge ordered it to pay more than $30,000 in unpaid lease payments and interest on the inoperative computer equipment.

The leasing company also debited $3,000 from the bank account of the Tower of Faith Baptist Church in Compton, and Mary Edwards, executive director of the church’s community development corporation, told the Daily Journal that her church’s computer kiosk system was paid for by a sponsor more than two years ago, yet the leasing company is asking her congregation for about $30,000 in lease payments.

The New Testament Church of Christ Holiness in Los Angeles has also been scammed and has made about $10,000 in lease payments to protect its credit, but who knows where it will stop for them.

The moral of this story is this: Churches, stay away from these people!