He’s Convicted for Using Church to Launder Drug Money : The Scam Was a ‘Preacher Guise’

Joe Davis was a street preacher with a fast rap and a scam for all seasons.

In East St. Louis, one of the most depressed cities in America, Davis often could be seen wearing a large diamond-encrusted cross around his neck. He drove a black Jaguar and wore $700 Italian suits.

He made his money, Davis said, by buying and reselling car phones and beepers and by steering customers to car dealers who paid him commissions. The profits, he said this week in U.S. District Court, went to his church and ministry.

Federal prosecutors contended, though, that Davis was a drug kingpin who used his church to launder drug money. They said the preacher guise the 41-year-old Davis has worn for at least the last six years was merely one of a series of cons that also included bank fraud.

Says He Only Sells Jesus

“I’m a lot of things but I’m not a drug dealer,” Davis told a jury this week. “I did not conspire with anybody to sell anything but Jesus.”

On Friday, after a two-week trial in which witnesses testified that Davis operated three crack houses and even gave cocaine to youngsters to get them to come to church, the jury found him guilty of running a criminal enterprise and distributing cocaine.

A few dozen of his supporters who have attended each day of the trial wept silently when the verdict was read. Some of them held hands in prayer.

One of Mayor Carl Officer’s closest friends and confidants, Davis shuttled easily between the worlds of religion, politics and drugs. Although he lived in a suburb, he ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for East St. Louis’ Board of Aldermen earlier this year.

According to witnesses, Davis often bragged of his influence with certain city police officers. One witness, Dwayne Scruggs, who pleaded guilty to conspiring with Davis to sell cocaine, said the preacher even collected $1,500 from him and other drug dealers to buy uniforms for members of the city’s narcotics squad.

Scruggs said he worked at a drug house where $10,000 to $15,000 in cocaine was sold daily. “It was like McDonald’s,” he told the jury.

Still Backs Davis

Although the mayor recently has declined to comment on Davis and was not called as a character witness, he defended Davis in April and said he would testify in support of the minister if asked. Shortly after his arrest in April by agents of the Illinois Division of Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Davis told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the authorities had offered him immunity for information on whether Officer or members of the East St. Louis police narcotics unit were involved with drug sales.

Members of the narcotics unit serve as bodyguards for the mayor.

The newspaper quoted unnamed official sources, though, who denied Davis’ claims.

On Friday, Assistant U.S. Atty. James L. Porter said that the federal cocaine investigation is continuing and that additional indictments are expected to be issued in East St. Louis and Chicago “in a couple of months.” He declined to comment further on the investigation.

Court documents show that the investigation began after Illinois state police officers were approached by confidential sources who told them Davis was dealing in cocaine.

Later, the state police learned that not only had Davis long been the target of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation but that he also had aided the East St. Louis police as an informant in exchange for a dismissal of drug charges there.

Davis said from the witness stand Wednesday that he was on a mission to save the city’s youth from drugs.

He hosted two weekly radio broadcasts in the St. Louis area. One, broadcast on Sunday afternoons, was of his weekly church service. The other was a talk show titled “Street Preacher’s Rap” that dealt with political subjects and often carried an anti-drug message.

Asked by his attorney, David M. Fahrenkamp, why he was pastor of his small church, Davis said: “I’m there because I’ve got a bunch of--I can’t call them brats--but I got a bunch of young folks there who look to me for leadership.

‘Have a Chance to Make It’

“I let them know East St. Louis is really not as bad as folks say it is and they have a chance to make it if they apply themselves.”

He said he gave money to drug dealers to pay for utilities and to repair their dilapidated homes because he loves them. They trusted him and allowed him inside the crack houses because he brought them food and because they knew he wouldn’t call the police, he said.

“I understand the drug problem in East St. Louis,” he said.

Before Davis’ arrest, he gave a Post-Dispatch reporter a series of tours of city crack houses, including those that he was accused in court of operating.

Calling himself a reformed drug addict and pusher, he told the newspaper: “I smoked a million dollars worth of cocaine.” He admitted that after he became a minister he would sometimes leave the pulpit and immediately get high.

He insisted, though, that he hadn’t used drugs for at least six years and had never seen Officer use drugs.

His testimony about himself contrasted sharply with that of other witnesses.

One man who had worked at City Hall on an ill-fated $500-million riverfront development project testified that he went to work for Davis as a “runner” because the city missed too many payrolls and he needed money.

He said Davis supplied him with a beeper, a .357-caliber pistol and an automobile to use in the drug business.

Davis broke down and cried at the defense table at one point last week while his attorney, Fahrenkamp, cross-examined a prostitute about inconsistencies in her claims that Davis had paid her for her services with cocaine.

“David, don’t do that to her, please,” he told the startled attorney.

Davis also acknowledged his role in a number of money-making ventures that even his attorney admitted made him look like a charlatan.

Testimony in the trial revealed that a federal grand jury in St. Louis is investigating whether Davis defrauded Jefferson Bank & Trust Co. in St. Louis in his alleged arrangement with one loan officer at the bank to make unsound car loans.

When Fahrenkamp asked him how he felt about making money on deals that some people may consider improper, Davis said: “If I hadn’t made money off of it there wouldn’t have been a church on 15th Street and there wouldn’t have been any kids to counsel.”

In his closing arguments, Fahrenkamp told the jury: “You’ll have a copy of the indictment in front of you, and nowhere does it say that Joe Davis is being charged with being a bad man; nowhere does it say he is being charged with being a charlatan. . . . Nowhere does it say he is being charged with not being the kind of preacher we would like.”

Sentencing was set for Sept. 29. He faces a maximum charge of two life sentences and 60 years in prison and fines of up to $7 million.