Accusations Against General Assembly Ministers Not Yet Resolved

By Tom Abate/Patch — Accusations against two ministers involving the sale of real estate investments to church members remain in limbo after a state commissioner rejected an administrative law judge’s decision because the ruling addressed certain complaints made against both men when only one of them had filed a timely request for a hearing.

This is a civil case that alleges the unlawful sale of securities, and the latest development occurred on Monday June 3 when Jan Lynn Owen, California’s Commissioner of Corporations, rejected the judge’s decision — setting off a 30-day period for new arguments leading up to her final decision by Sept. 11.

According to filings in the case, the matter revolves around Michael Parker, an ordained minister of the General Assembly Church, who led the solicitation of more than $17 million in investments from members of the congregation through two companies, Stellar Enterprise Associates and DayStar Investments, Inc., both of which he controlled.

The General Assembly, founded in 1974 by Pastor Lacy Hawkins, holds congregations in Berkeley, Union City and Vallejo, as well as in Southern California, Texas and Louisiana, and has between 2,500 and 3,000 members, according to legal records. The church itself is not a party to these proceedings.

The Department of Corporations, which polices the sale of investment instruments in California, began looking into the activities of Parker and Hawkins after disgruntled investors from the church complained about not getting their money back from investments made between 2002 and 2006, according to a department spokesman.

Last July, a Department official ordered both ministers to “desist and refrain” from such investment sales, an admonition that carried no fine or penalty.

Among other things, that July 2012 order said members of the congregation were told that if they “did not invest with Daystar and Stellar they would no longer be a member of the church and would not have eternal life.”

Parker and the other parties subsequently filed for a hearing on the matter and had that July order reviewed by Administrative Law Judge Michael Cohn of Oakland.

In a ruling made public in late March, Cohn upheld the desist and refrain order while rejecting certain allegations.

The judge found that some of Parker’s investors were unable to get their money back and were never told that DayStar was losing money.

At the same time, however, Cohn debunked other accusations.

“It was not established that respondents represented that if members of the church did not invest with DayStar or Stellar they would no longer be members of the church and would not have eternal life,” Cohn wrote.

In his 16-page proposed decision, Judge Cohn also considered allegations that Hawkins had provided “substantial assistance” to Parker and said that this was “not established.”

In response to the Judge’s finding, Michael Quinn, an attorney representing Parker, Hawkins and the two companies, told Patch in a statement:

“We were pleased that after a thorough hearing on the merits, Judge Cohn . . .  made clear that many of the most troubling allegations in the Department of Corporations' July 2012 Desist and Refrain Order . . . were found to have no evidentiary basis whatsoever.  It was precisely these rather salacious allegations that caused our clients to incur the time and expense associated with demanding a full hearing on the merits of the Order.”

But Owen, exercising her decision-making authority as commissioner of the Department of Corporations, threw the matter back up in the air on Monday when she rejected the judge’s decision based on what she said was a legal inconsistency.

As Department spokesman Mark Leyes explained, Judge Cohn found that Hawkins had not challenged the July order in time to be a party to the hearing and therefore “no order will be made as to him (Hawkins).”

The June 3 order gave the attorney for Parker and the other parties, and the attorney arguing the state’s case, 30 days to present new written arguments to guide Owen in making a final decision, which she must do by Sept. 11.

Parker’s attorney told Patch via email that “we are considering the order, evaluating our options, and will respond to the order if and to the extent we ultimately deem necessary.”

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