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Revision as of 18:26, 6 August 2026
Peter Popoff is a German-American televangelist and faith healer, best known for being publicly exposed in 1986 as using a hidden radio earpiece to receive personal information about audience members during his healing crusades, and for his later "Miracle Spring Water" broadcasts.
Early life and ministry
Popoff was born on 2 July 1946 in occupied West Berlin to George and Gerda Popoff; his father was an evangelical pastor of Bulgarian descent. The family emigrated to the United States in 1951.[1] Raised in a religious household, Popoff began preaching while still a teenager, billed in advertisements as "The Miracle Boy Evangelist," and attended Chaffey College and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He married Elizabeth Popoff in 1970, and the couple settled in Upland, California, where he built a television ministry that was broadcasting nationally by the early 1980s.[1]
Healing crusades and the Randi investigation
Popoff's televised crusades followed the format of the wider evangelical healing-crusade tradition: large public services in which he called individual audience members forward, described their illnesses and other personal details in specific terms, and declared them healed, presenting the information as revealed to him directly by God.[1]
In 1986, magician and sceptic James Randi attended one of Popoff's San Francisco services with a private investigator and a radio scanner, and intercepted a broadcast being fed into a hidden earpiece Popoff was wearing. The transmission came from Popoff's wife, Elizabeth, who was reading aloud the names, addresses and ailments that audience members had written on prayer cards before the service, culled and radioed to him in real time. Randi played the recording on The Tonight Show, remarking that "God's frequency" turned out to be 39.10 MHz.[1] The investigation and its methods were documented in detail in Randi's 1987 book The Faith Healers, which examined Popoff alongside several other televangelist healers.[2]
Aftermath and comeback
Popoff's ministry filed for bankruptcy in 1987 in the wake of the exposure.[1] He returned to television in the late 1990s, and from the mid-2000s began promoting "Miracle Spring Water" through late-night infomercials, describing himself as a prophet and inviting viewers to use the water as a "point of contact" for healing and debt relief.[3] A former employee of the ministry, Crystal Sanchez, later spoke publicly about the operation, including claims that the "miracle" water was ordinary bottled water.[3]
In March 2025, the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom fined the Word Network £150,000 over two Popoff broadcasts aired in May 2023, finding that the programmes had repeatedly suggested Miracle Spring Water could cure serious illnesses, including cancer, in breach of its Broadcasting Code.[4]
Related concepts
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "The Depraved Peter Popoff."McGill University Office for Science and Society.
- ↑ "The Faith Healers."Wikipedia.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "The Woman Who Took On Popoff: The Hidden Story of Crystal Sanchez, the Peter Popoff Whistleblower."Skeptical Inquirer.
- ↑ "Decision: Word Network Operating Company Inc (Peter Popoff Ministries, Dec 2023)."Ofcom.