Carva Lee White, the music director at Sunflower Missionary Baptist Church in Leavenworth, stands accused of trying to burn his church down and profit from the repairs.
White is accused of setting fire to the church twice, on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 last year. He had planned to persuade the pastor to file an insurance claim, collect the money, help inflate the repair bill and then embezzle the money, according to the indictment.
Later on Oct. 31, the church’s pastor left a phone message at the Church Mutual Insurance Co. in Merrill, Wis., in order to make a claim. The insurance company paid out about $109,000, according to the indictment.
Carva White has a history of exploiting his position as a pastor. He’s a scammer of the worst sort.
Carva Lee White used to preach at a church at 1300 Bennington. But the church was not touched by fire. White's ministry was interrupted instead by his prison sentence on a bank-fraud charge.
And then there was his other church that burned.
In 2005, White relocated to Aurora, Missouri. His church convened in a barn, which was destroyed in a fire while White and his followers ate dinner at a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
White had this to say at the time.
White suspects arson. "I was a black man in a white town, bottom line," he says.
Christians are a strange breed. Who would follow this man?