Hello and welcome to the corporate casket, a semi-weekly series where bad businesses go to die.

We will discuss any and everything from bad charities, terrible CEOs, and businesses that have a lot to hide.

Now a while back when COVID was in a full swing last year, I made an episode on Televangelis where the practice came from and how

COVID was you know kind of something that they were just ignoring in general.

One man in particular that I brought up was a man known as Jim Bakker who ran an extremely well known and profitable church and scam from the 60s all the way up until 1988

So today's episode is a deeper dive into him, his scam, his controversies, and his incredibly

sinful behavior. Is that a bad pun? Absolutely it is. Now, just as an advanced trigger

warning, there will be mentions of sexual assault in today's episode

so if you are sensitive to that I'm more than understand clicking away now but with that being said

let's get right into it. Jim Backer was born in Muskegon, Michigan in January 1940.

According to an old Herald journal article from 1989, he was very close with his grandmother who, as he later put it, believed in him, something his own parents rarely did.

His grandmother, Armilda Erwin, gave him apple pie and unconditional love.

He would later dedicate his first major building project to her.

But by 1940 when Jim was born, a directory of Muskegon residence listed Emmett Erwin, her husband as a huckster.

Emmett peddled whatever turned a buck, as the newspaper puts it.

Apples, Christmas trees, tomatoes, mops, blankets, books.

He was seen as a manipulative man. Some called him

Kingfish, both for his love of fishing and for his similarities to another manipulative

character on the radio's Amos and Andy show at that time.

One incident even describes Emmett painting the side of his rowboat, the side facing the street,

and trying to sell it with the other side still unpainted. In the paper Jim Bakker also describes being

embarrassed of the poor house he grew up in both because it was just a cement block

...