A plumber named Justin Cauley was working on a renovation of Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church back on November 10, 2021. During the project, Cauley opened up a wall and found about five hundred envelopes containing cash and checks that had been hidden from plain sight by someone, possibly within Osteen’s circle, who did not want anyone to find the hidden money.
A few weeks after his amazing discovery, Cauley broke from Osteen and spoke about the find to the radio DJs on 100.3 The Bull, a country music radio station. During his address on the air, Cauley explained what it felt like to discover so much money hidden behind a loose toilet.
“There was a loose toilet in the wall, and we removed the tile,” Justin Cauley told the country music radio station. “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!’”
A representative of Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church released a statement about the plumber’s discovery, stating that “Recently, while repair work was being done at Lakewood Church, an undisclosed amount of cash and checks were found. Lakewood immediately notified the Houston Police Department and is assisting them with their investigation.”
Lakewood Church has been in the news several times over the last few years – and not for good news. First, Osteen’s church is being forced to repay $4.4 million in COVID-19 relief loans that were meant for small businesses, not the national operation that Osteen has with his prosperity ministry. The disaster relief funds were intended for businesses that were struggling – not a church with a huge endowment that earns enough money each year to allow Joel Osteen to live in a $15 million mega-mansion in his home state of Texas.
As for the money found in Joel Osteen’s church’s walls, it was part of a robbery from 2014. According to a report from Crimestoppers, the plumber, Justin Cauley, will receive an award of $20,000 from the nonprofit organization Crimestoppers because the money found in the wall of the Lakewood Church was from a robbery that occurred nearly a decade ago. The money will do wonders for the plumber, who is delighted to have been graced by God long enough to find the envelopes of cash hidden within the walls of Osteen’s church.
Although the money was from a 2014 robbery that CrimeStoppers wanted to solve, no one yet knows who installed the money in the wall behind the loose toilet. However, people are beginning to suspect that Osteen himself was probably involved in the major theft because whoever put the money in the wall would have had to have had unprecedented access to Osteen’s property for long enough to stuff hundreds upon hundreds of envelopes into the wall to hide the robbery windfall.
What do you think about the stolen money found in Osteen’s Lakewood Church?
