Plumber Finds 'Bags And Bags' Of Stolen Money In Bathroom Wall Of Televangelist's Megachurch

A plumber may have just solved a years-old crime—and the call is coming from inside the house.

A Texas plumber was going about his daily business when he was called out to look at a plumbing issue at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas.

Lakewood Church is a well-known megachurch run by Evangelical Christian televangelist Joel Osteen.

Back in 2014, Osteen announced his church had been robbed with over $600,000 taken.

Osteen, along with crime-fighting organization Crimestoppers, announced an enticing $25,000 reward for anyone who could help solve the robbery.

Almost eight years later, a plumber would be called to Lakewood to fix a plumbing issue with one of the church's toilets.

It's here the plumber would make a startling discovery.

As the man was attempting to fix the toilet, he happened to find envelopes stashed in the wall behind the toilet—envelopes containing hoards of cash and checks.

He said:

"There was a loose toilet in the wall, and we removed the tile."

“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!’”

“I went ahead and contacted the maintenance supervisor that was there, and I turned it all in."

However, despite the plumber's altruistic action of recovering and turning over the money he found, both Osteen and the Crimestoppers organization aren't as responsive as you'd think.

In fact, according to the plumber, Crimestoppers has refused to give him the $25,000 reward, citing their reward was only valid for information leading to the culprit's arrest rather than recovering the money. On top of that, Osteen hasn't even given the plumber so much as a "thank you."

Twitter users are outraged—and unsurprised—over the stashed money.

Despite being a pastor, Osteen is far from generous.

In fact, Osteen runs his church under the "prosperity gospel," meaning he pushes his parishioners to donate as much money as possible, promising them better heavenly "rewards" in the afterlife the more money they give to his church.

If that wasn't bad enough, Osteen faced nationwide outrage in 2017 after refusing to open Lakewood's doors for people fleeing from the mass flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey.

It was only after all of the bad publicity that Osteen begrudgingly agreed to open his church doors to the people in need.

Osteen, being an evangelist, is also violently opposed to LGBTQ+ rights and has expressed homophobic views more than once.

In an interview with CNN in 2011, he said:

“Homosexuality is a sin—I believed it before, and I still believe it now."

As of this writing, Osteen has not responded to questions about the stashed money.