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Desperate and worn down from helping her son through a years-long struggle with cancer, Carmen Dewan turned to a tight-knit church in the heart of Miami for spiritual guidance.
As her young son grappled with a cancer diagnosis that required more than a dozen operations, Dewan sought prayers from Asociacion Ministerio Espiritu Santo Poder y Gloria, a Magic City church with roughly 70 members, in hopes that her son’s condition would improve and doctors would not have to amputate his leg.
What happened next has spawned claims of spiritual fraud and triggered an exodus from the ministry’s small congregation.
In a lawsuit filed against the church and its pastor, Dewan says the defendants claimed “that God was telling” her to hand over her money to the pastor. She obliged, loaning the pastor a large chunk of her family’s funds – approximately $46,150 – between May 2022 and February 2023. According to Dewan, she continued lending money to the pastor because the defendants had convinced her that they could pray the teenager’s illness away.
“The plaintiff relied on the defendants’ messages, as she relied on the defendants’ prayers, due to the condition of her child and concerns that the doctors wanted to amputate the child’s leg,” the lawsuit claims. “The defendants used this as an opportunity to defraud the plaintiff into paying over $45,000.”
A representative for the pastor denies the allegations, insisting that the arrangement was a personal loan that had nothing to do with the church and was not contingent upon prayers for the child. She tells New Times that Dewan and a member of her family became impatient with the repayment process and tried to change the terms of their agreement with the pastor.
The pastor referred New Times to her attorney, Sheldon Rosenthal, who says his client dutifully made loan installments to Dewan.
“The plaintiff wanted to accelerate the payments, and my client did not,” Rosenthal tells New Times by phone. “There was no cheating. It’s all nonsense.”
Rosenthal has not responded to a follow-up request for a statement on the claims.
The conflict led to a heated, public confrontation with the pastor and a letter sent on behalf of Dewan to high-ranking religious figures in the community, laying out the damning allegations. The controversy culminated in a rift in the church and an exodus of members, reducing the size of the congregation from roughly 70 to 30, according to the church.
Dewan’s lawsuit in Miami-Dade County seeks damages on counts of unjust enrichment, negligent and fraudulent misrepresentation, and violations of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Dewan says that in April 2023, she and the church leaders agreed to a repayment plan, though Dewan is denying that it’s a binding contract. Attached to the court filing, the document makes a brief reference to inheritance money that would be used to pay off the debt.
“We will make a full balance repayment as soon as we get our inheritance money,” the document, purportedly signed by the pastor and another church leader, reads. “If not before the end of the year, then we will be making monthly payments of $1,500 until we can resolve to pay in full.”
The lawsuit could hinge on how closely, if at all, alleged representations of imminent healing of Dewan’s son were tied to the solicitation of money.
Claims of spiritual fraud run rampant in Florida, where self-styled religious leaders and soothsayers often obtain funds from residents by telling them they must pay large sums of money to secure good fortune or rid themselves of evil spirits. In recent years, some spiritual guides have induced clients to hand over money by claiming it needs to be ritually cleansed.
In 2020, a Broward County mother-daughter pair received federal prison time for a $1.4 million scheme where they claimed they were “white squaw Cherokee Indian” healers who used snake eggs in their rituals. Among other schemes, a Miami spiritual consultant of Romani descent convinced a client to pay nearly $3.2 million based on promises to lift a supposed family curse and open the gates of heaven for the client’s deceased father.
The claims against the defendants in Dewan’s lawsuit differ insofar as the church appears to have an established Christian congregation, the arrangement was framed as a loan, and a repayment plan was in place. The case is in the earliest stage of litigation, and none of the church’s pastors or leaders have been accused of any crime in the matter.
Dewan’s attorney, Ray Garcia, tells New Times her son is faring better, but he declined to comment on the details of the boy’s medical condition.
Asociacion Ministerio Espiritu Santo Poder y Gloria still hosts events and maintains a tight congregation. The church slogan reads, “We continue to extend the kingdom of God to reach the entire world for the recognition of Jesus.”
