Controversial pastor David Jang‘s disciples are pursuing accreditation for a new college as the sect’s flagship school, Olivet University—accused in lawsuits of racketeering and trafficking foreign students—faces the prospect of losing its degree-granting status.
Great Commission University, an Indiana-based institution run by members of Jang’s sect, has achieved candidate status with the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS), the association said. It is the fifth step in an eight-stage process that would give Great Commission a long-term license to grant degrees, a status currently held by Olivet University, which was founded by Jang in 2000.
According to separate lawsuits, Olivet University is part of a web of churches, companies and colleges run by members of Jang’s World Olivet Assembly, who are accused of using the college to bring in foreign students, forcing them to work for little or no pay and funneling the proceeds in racketeering schemes into real estate and other projects run by the sect.
Newsweek spoke to two former Chinese students who alleged that they were exploited as part of a scheme like those outlined in the lawsuits. Olivet has denied all allegations made against it in the lawsuits as well as previous allegations by former students.
Olivet University and Great Commission University did not respond to Newsweek‘srequests for comment on this article.
Olivet University sits at the center of the legal troubles that have dogged Jang’s disciples for the past decade.
The college pled guilty to conspiracy in a money laundering probe by the Manhattan district attorney in 2020, and it lost its license to operate in New York in 2022 and its home state of California in 2024 for violating education regulations. Olivet has said it will appeal the ruling and continues to operate under a religious exemption. In 2021, agents from the Department of Homeland Security raided Olivet’s main campus in Anza, California, looking for evidence of visa fraud, labor trafficking and money laundering, according to federal and local officials. That investigation is still ongoing, according to a court filing in July in the lawsuit brought by former students.
Newsweek is owned by two former members of David Jang’s church, the World Olivet Assembly. Their departure from the sect in 2022 and 2023 triggered a series of lawsuits, some of which are still playing out in court. Olivet has previously accused Newsweek‘s owners of weaponizing the newsroom in these legal disputes, an allegation the company and editorial leaders have denied.
In June, Olivet University’s accreditor, the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE), issued a “show cause” notice, warning that Jang’s flagship college could lose its degree-granting status in the next 12 months. The announcement adds to the questions over the status of the university’s foreign students amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration that has rocked colleges across the United States. Olivet has not made a public statement on the notice, but has posted it on its website as required.
Great Commission University presented itself to the new accreditor as a college that had little to do with Olivet University, TRACS President Timothy Eaton told Newsweek in an interview.
“The corporate board presents itself as independent,” Eaton said. “The Board has to demonstrate that it is in control of the institution,” he said, declining to comment on any specific people with Olivet links who were running the Great Commission.
‘The Community’
Great Commission University appears to hold longstanding ties to Jang’s network, described as “The Community” in the two separate racketeering lawsuits brought by creditors. As recently as 2020, Olivet University was seeking to make Great Commission’s campus in Howe, Indiana, an extension campus approved by ABHE, the accreditor’s website shows. Great Commission was also set up and is being run by some of David Jang’s most prominent disciples, including those within Olivet University leadership and some of those entangled in the sect’s legal problems.
Great Commission’s current Assessment and Publications Coordinator and former chairman is Nicholas Haman, a senior Jang disciple who was previously facilities manager at Olivet University’s Anza campus. Haman, who served as Great Commission’s executive director from 2020 to 2022, is named as a defendant in a racketeering suit brought in California by Cornerstone Payment Systems Inc. The suit accuses Haman of running an online retailer, Quba Pro Inc, that allegedly defrauded Cornerstone by raising money in a financing agreement and diverting the funds. Haman’s lawyer did not respond to a prior request for comment. Several other Jang disciples are named as defendants in the suit alongside Olivet University and Great Commission University. A lawyer representing Olivet, Great Commission, and other named companies said they planned to contest the allegations. Some of the online retailers named in the suit have countersued Cornerstone. Quba Pro Inc has not. Haman did not respond to a request for comment to his Olivet University email.
Anthony Chiu, a former trustee and secretary of Olivet University, was listed as Chairman of Great Commission’s board of directors in a 2023 tax filing and a member of its board in prior years. Chiu is general secretary of Olivet Assembly USA, the American branch of the Korean-born cleric’s global denomination.
Chiu’s wife, Naomi Haiyan Qu, set up a church in North Carolina that was allegedly involved in the state’s biggest seizure of counterfeit goods. The church’s Chinese pastor, a former Olivet University student named Frank Lan, was arrested and charged in the counterfeit goods case, but skipped bail and fled to China, Newsweek has reported. Olivet University confirmed at the time that the man had been a former student, but said it knew nothing of the case and was not related in any way. Chiu did not respond to a request for comment.
Trafficking Allegations
The current Chairman of Great Commission’s board, according to the school’s academic catalog, is Matthias Gebhardt, who also serves as Global Coordinator at Olivet University. Gebhardt was president of Olivet when California’s education inspectors visited its Anza campus unannounced in 2022 and found evidence of 14 violations. A court ordered Olivet to close after finding against the university on all the violations. Gephardt did not respond to a request for comment.
Gebhardt is named as a defendant in a suit brought by four former Olivet students who say Jang and his disciples trafficked them to the United States with the lure of full scholarships and then forced them to work for little or no pay, with some having their passports withheld. One of the students, Rebecca Singh, called 911 from the campus, saying she had not been allowed to leave the campus for months, according to the lawsuit brought by former students, triggering the investigation that led to the 2021 raid in Anza by Homeland Security Investigations, Newsweek has previously reported.
Olivet has denied the allegations. The civil trafficking lawsuit is on hold until a federal criminal investigation of the same allegations is concluded, according to a court filing in April 2024. Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Kiss told the lawyer for the plaintiffs that the federal investigation was still underway, a court filing in July showed.
A Newsweek analysis found that 16 of 27 academic staff listed in a course catalog published by Great Commission had studied at Olivet University. Education regulators in New York State and California found the university had broken many of the regulations requiring proper academic instruction.
Great Commission’s president, Paul Ludwig Forster, is listed in the school’s academic catalog as a Ph.D. candidate at Olivet University and was photographed at the school’s 20th anniversary celebration alongside Olivet University leadership. The chancellor of Great Commission, Mark Wagner, previously served as director of the Ph.D. program at Olivet University where the school states he also served as a member of the doctoral council in its doctoral program for five plus years. Great Commission faculty member William Wagner served as the Olivet University president from 2009 to 2012, having started there as a professor in 2004, and Great Commission’s library is named after him. Ludwig, Mark Wagner and William Wagner did not respond to requests for comment submitted through Olivet University and Great Commission.
‘Raise Money for the Cult’
Former Olivet students, including two from China, say they were given little academic instruction and forced to work for little or no pay or risk being sent back home.
“My wife and I were recruited by the Olivet cult in China to come to the United States to Olivet University as students, but when we arrived, they said we were forced to work full-time to raise money for the cult or we’d be sent back to China.” Tingbo Cao, a former Olivet student, told Newsweek. Tingbo, 41, the husband of former student Qilian Zhou, 35, arrived in the United States from China in 2011. Both were interviewed by the Los Angeles Times last year and made similar allegations.
“We took less than the normal amount of credits expected of a student and instead worked six days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.—and sometimes late into the night—for Olivet’s e-commerce team, selling products on Amazon,” Tingbo said.
Rebecca Singh, who is from India, and the other plaintiffs in the civil trafficking case, who are from Spain and Venezuela, made similar allegations about forced labor. They, however, were not involved in the e-commerce business, which former students say was largely run by students from Asia.
Tingbo said Olivet brought in Chinese citizens on student visas primarily for the purpose of working on e-commerce businesses which were a key source of fundraising by Jang’s sect. The students were devoted followers of the sect and vulnerable to exploitation, he said.
“I made about $5 an hour, and the company used me and my wife’s passports to operate online stores illegally. Instead of giving us the money, it went to the school and other Olivet charities as donations,” Tingbo said
Another Olivet student from China recounted similar details in a series of conversations with Newsweek, although they declined to be identified because of legal disputes with the Olivet sect. The e-commerce work involved importing cheap products such as cosmetics from China and promoting them with fake reviews to game Amazon’s algorithm, that student said. Tingbo also said products, such as the refurbished mobile phones he sold, were promoted on Amazon using fake reviews.
Tingbo said students had schedules that required them to work the equivalent of full-time hours during the week and slightly reduced hours on Saturdays, showing a document in Chinese that appeared to support his claim. Overtime was encouraged, he said.
E-commerce has been at the center of some of the Olivet sect’s legal problems. Cornerstone was the second creditor to accuse Jang and his disciples of racketeering involving e-commerce businesses. The first, a Texas-based company called 8Fig, filed a similar lawsuit in 2023. It was settled in September that year on terms that were not disclosed in public. Both Olivet University and Great Commission University were named as defendants by 8Fig. Both 8Fig and Cornerstone described Jang’s sect as “The Community”—a network of churches, colleges, companies operated by his disciples and acting in concert to defraud creditors even though they were legally separate entities.
‘Student Harm’
Eaton did not respond to questions on specific accusations made against Olivet. He said accreditors were not equipped like state or federal investigating agencies to probe serious allegations and that accreditors would normally follow the lead of government agencies.
“If there’s student harm, then that obviously takes priority for an accreditor,” he said, acknowledging that his agency had been in touch with Olivet’s accreditor, ABHE.
Olivet’s foreign student visas were a key issue for ABHE, which warned the college to comply strictly with immigration rules when it issued a show cause notice.
“A Show Cause Order is a negative, public action indicating that an institution’s accredited or candidate status will be withdrawn unless it can provide persuasive evidence that such action should not be taken,” Lisa L. Beatty, Executive Director, Commission on Accreditation at ABHE, said in the letter to Olivet University President Jonathan Park. The letter, an excerpt of which was posted on Olivet University’s website, said ABHE would decide on the college’s status in February 2026, with any extensions running out in June next year.
ABHE requires Olivet to provide written confirmation from the Homeland Security Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) on the status of all current and future students on F-1 visas at all accredited sites operated by the university, she said.
F-1 visas, issued to more than 400,000 foreign students by the U.S. government in each of the past three years, are at the heart of the Trump administration’s efforts to toughen restrictions on education-related immigration. Since January, the federal government has canceled F-1 visas, slowed down processing and wielded visa restrictions in legal disputes with colleges such as Harvard University.
Editorial Note: Newsweek, several of its officers and the article authors have been sued by Olivet University for defamation on articles related to the criminal investigations into its activities.
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