Peter Popoff

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Peter Popoff is a televangelist who has spent most of his career claiming to treat physical ailments with faith healing. He has claimed that the power of God works through him to cure various ailments, and many of his stage performances have involved him working alleged miracles by laying his hands upon members of the audience. Popoff is also known for sending packets of Miracle Spring Water to his viewers. The water is claimed to be a solution to physical and financial problems.

Popoff's "cures" included the "wheelchair trick" and the "lengthening of the shortened leg". The wheelchair trick was simple: before the show, Popoff's aides offered wheelchairs to audience members who seemed to have trouble walking. During the show, Popoff would command these people to rise from their wheelchairs and walk. The lengthening of the shortened leg was a bit of sleight-of-hand in which Popoff would seem to cure a deformity by stretching an audience member's leg. It was a simple stage magic trick involving forced perspective, but Popoff let his followers believe that it was due to divine healing powers.

At his appearances in the 1980s, Popoff routinely and accurately stated the home addresses and specific illnesses of his audience members, a feat he allowed them to believe was due to divine revelation. His actual methods were discovered in 1987 when noted skeptic James Randi visited a show and discovered radio transmissions of Popoff's off-stage wife reading information which she and aides had gathered from earlier conversation with members of the audience.Template:Ref Popoff would simply listen to these promptings with his in-ear receiver and repeat what he heard to the crowd. After tapes of these transmissions were played on the United States TV program The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Popoff's popularity and viewing audiences declined sharply, and his ministry declared bankruptcy later that year.

Despite his past embarrassment, he has recently reappeared on late-night U.S. television as a preacher and also in an infomercial. In his more recent television appearances he has promoted a form of prosperity theology under the slogan "Go into business with God", claiming that God will make "divine transfers" into a viewer's "divine account". His infomercial states that "A divine transfer is supernatural. This is not money you're going to make from your job. ... God is going to supernaturally put money into your account."

Popoff can now be seen on late night BET.

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