A Plumber Found Cash and Checks Stashed Inside a Wall at Joel Osteen's Megachurch Seven Years After a $600K Robbery
KPRC — You may remember hundreds of thousands of dollars that were stolen from a safe at Lakewood Church. It was a big headline back in 2014.
Now, all these years later, another bombshell has dropped.
A plumber says he found money in a wall while he was doing work at the church on Nov. 10, 2021. The news came to light during the radio morning show at 100.3 The Bull.
“It was just unbelievable!” morning show host for the “Morning Bullpen” George Lindsey said. “The things he was telling us that they found in the walls.”
Lindsey was shocked when he listened to viewers Thursday morning, but says this one caller really took the segment over the edge.
“There was a loose toilet in the wall, and we removed the tile,” the caller said. “We went to go remove the toilet, and I moved some insulation away and about 500 envelopes fell out of the wall, and I was like ‘Oh wow!’”
The caller said the envelopes were full of cash and checks.
“I went ahead and contacted the maintenance supervisor that was there, and I turned it all in,” he added.
Lindsey couldn’t believe what he had just heard.
“We were like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Lindsey said. “So, then he relayed to us that in 2014 there was a big story about money being stolen from Lakewood Church that they never recovered.”
In fact, the Houston Police Department is still investigating the seven-year-old case involving the disappearance of $600,000. It’s unclear how much money the plumber discovered, but the case raises a lot of questions.
You might not believe this, but it appears Joel Osteen may be involved in some shady shit again. This time, it's the miraculous discovery of 500 envelopes filled with cash and checks at Osteen's Lakewood Church seven years after $600,000 was reportedly stolen and never recovered from the megachurch.
I'm assuming I'm not alone in having several questions here.
No. 1, what am I missing about the motivation here? If this was someone on the inside faking a robbery, I'm assuming they recovered some insurance money, but then they at best broke even if the money that was "stolen" has just been sitting inside a wall for seven years. Granted, this analysis is coming from someone who has never submitted an insurance claim before, so I'm actually not entirely sure how that works at all, honestly. But I'm fairly sure this could not have necessarily been a very profitable endeavor if the original $600K has just been sitting in a wall.
Secondly, who thought the place to hide this stash was inside the church? I suppose it's better to have it be in a place where no one individual is culpable — at least right now — when someone finds it, but this takes hiding in plain sight to a new level. Then you take into account that it was behind a damn toilet and I don't even know what to say. This is dumbassery of the highest order.
I know this isn't what you're *supposed* to do, but that plumber should have skimmed just a little bit off the top. What is the church gonna do, call the cops and explain that someone took some of their money they had hiding in a wall behind the toilet? Taking half a million would have probably raised some red flags, but this guy could have walked out of there with $50K no problem.
I suppose we'll just have to wait to find out where those 500 envelopes full of cash came from. I can't even venture a guess.