Last month, federal prosecutors accused Wilkerson; his wife, Joyce; and two others of conspiring in a $6.3 million mortgage fraud and Ponzi scheme that left a handful of lower-middle-class congregants on the hook for inflated home loans worth far more than the properties purchased in their names.
Each was promised an easy profit if they pitched in to buy suburban houses valued at more than $1 million apiece. But instead of a cash payout, investors found themselves chasing nonexistent profits.
"He put himself out as a pastor - a man who purports to speak the word of the Lord - but his actions have shown him to be a man that's just out there for himself," said Jeremy Lupo, an assistant Montgomery County district attorney who recently prosecuted Wilkerson on a separate fraud charge.
Wilkerson, who declined a request for an interview, has denied he knowingly broke the law in the federal case.
The alleged crimes are only the latest example of what investigators have identified as a troubling stream of hard-luck tales emerging from the 2008 economic downturn.
Amid the rush of easy home loans and get-rich-quick schemes that preceded the subprime mortgage collapse, there are similar stories of people encouraged to make risky financial decisions by church leaders.
A 2006 study by the North American Securities Administrators Association estimated that losses from religion-based affinity fraud had reached $2 billion. Those rip-offs have only become more common since, said Ole Anthony, who helms the Dallas-based Trinity Foundation, a watchdog group that investigates the financial misdeeds of religious figures.
"In the past several years, I've seen more and more fraud in the name of God," he said. "It remains a serious problem."
