I was one of his biggest followers and when my church was foolish enough to let me teach a class, I based it on Lea's book, "Could You Not Tarry One Hour".
It's true that Lea said some good things and had some good teachings in his ministry, but he was also heavily involved in WoF teaching and, because of this, taught some things that were Unbiblical.
In the late 80's, the Trinity Foundation, a Christian watchdog group that keeps tabs on televangelism and also published the bi-monthy religious satire magazine, The Wittenberg Door, carried out an expose that was televised on ABC as an hour long special report and focused on Lea, W.V. Grant, and Robert Tilton.
The show led to federal charges against Grant and Tilton, and charges of mail and insurance fraud against Lea.
Among Lea's claims was that his house burned to the ground and that his family was destitute. He pleaded with his followers to send money to rebuild his house, but the investigation showed that the house in question was not Lea's place of residence, but a vancant investment property that was up for sale.
When ABC showed evidence of this, and showed video of the Lea family at their still intact, multi-million dollar mansion, that's what led to his downfall.
Lea stood to profit three ways from this: from collecting on the insurance policy, income from the sale of the home, and from the money his followers would send, believing they were helping a homeless family get back on their feet.
Aside from the fact that it was illegal and immoral, it was also the dumbest and most sloppily put together fraud scheme in history.
There were also dozens of lesser charges of mismanagement and misdirection of funds.
And then, there was the relationship between him and Eric Pryor, rumored by many to be a homosexual affair, but I'm not going to get into that because it would be bordering on gossip.