I think that the church can and must be forced by legal action to pay back that money. It was constructive fraud and they are not entitled to the sums involved. There are many legal precedents for such cases, and just because they didn’t know it was stolen money when they received the money does not mean they are entitled to keep it.
Can the church name people that it helped during that time and ask them to return the money? Why stop with the church in following the funds?
So if he bought a car the car dealer must “pay back” the money?
What about a restaurant he ate vat? Does it have to “pay back” the money?
Etc...
If the feds/courts thought they had the “right” to the money for the victims, they would have sued the church rather than asked for it.
It's too bad that so many people fell prey to a get-rich quick scheme, but that is not the fault of the church.
Meanwhile, not sure if it applicable, probably not, the statue of limitations on a debt in Michigan is 6 years.
http://credit.about.com/od/statuteoflimitations/g/misol.htm
But thanks to our outstanding Congress, there is no statue of limitations on a debt to the Federal Government:
“Buried deep inside a massive piece of legislation passed by Congress sits a little-noticed passage that, with few exceptions, wipes out any statute of limitation for a debt owed to the federal government.
Thanks to the “Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008,” anyone overpaid by a federal agency, at any time in their life, can now be tracked down and put on the hook for debts that are decades old.”
Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/us-treasury-irs-statute-limitations-tax-grab-208436421.html#ixzz3WXN3CO6B
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Then the government should have to prove it was illegally received, not demand it.