The Megachurch Scam & Nonprofit Loophole: How Celebrity Pastors Exploit the Bible to Get Filthy Rich

Nathan Ablfeld, a filmmaker who calls himself an "auditor" of Christian institutions, came to Tucker Carlson's show with documents that reveal something startling: the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been running what it calls "the largest geofencing and Christian targeting campaign in U.S. history." The documents, filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), show an LLC called "Show Faith by Works" registered in San Diego that lists the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs as its foreign principal. The campaign spent millions to geofence hundreds of megachurches on the West Coast — meaning if you walk into one of those churches with your phone, the geofence is triggered, your IP address is captured, and you start receiving pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian advertising.

Ablfeld discovered that the two churches he attended from birth to age 21 were on the list. "Had I walked into those churches," he said, "I could have potentially been geofenced, and then they would have tracked my phone and they could ping me pro-nation state Israel material." The campaign's stated goal, according to the documents: "combat low American Evangelical Christian approval of the nation state of Israel." The messaging was explicitly "pro Israel and anti-Palestinian state."