Editing Peter Popoff (section)

==Biography==
'''Early life'''

A German-born american man born into
East Berlin on July 2, 1946, to George and Gerda Popoff. In his infancy, he was in a West Berlin bomb shelter, and had been rescued from a Siberian prison camp. Later on throughout his childhood Popoff emigrated with his family to the United States, where he attended Chaffey College before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara, from which he graduated in 1970.

Popoff followed in his father’s footsteps and aimed to become a preacher just like him. He began making appearances as a preacher in 1960 and was billed as "The Miracle Boy Evangelist" in print advertisements and commercials. 
He claimed to have the abilities to heal the sick and foretell the future, in other words a psychic or prophet.   

Popoff married his wife Elizabeth in August 1971 and the couple settled in Upland, California. He then began his television ministry that, by the early 1980s, was being broadcast nationally. His miraculous "curing" of chronic and incurable medical conditions became a central attraction of his sermons. Popoff would tell attendees suffering from a variety of illnesses to "break free of the devil" by throwing their prescription pills onto the stage. Many would obey, tossing away bottles of digitalis, nitroglycerine, and other important maintenance medications. Popoff would also "command" supplicants in wheelchairs to "rise and break free". They would stand and walk without assistance, to the joyous cheers of the faithful. Critics later documented that the recipients of these dramatic "cures" were fully ambulatory people who had been seated in wheelchairs by Popoff's assistants prior to broadcasts.  

In 1985, Popoff began soliciting donations for a program to provide Bibles to citizens of the Soviet Union by attaching them to helium-filled balloons and floating them into the country.When skeptics asked him to prove that the money he had collected had in fact been spent on Bibles and balloons, Popoff staged a burglary at his own headquarters. On subsequent broadcasts, he tearfully begged for additional donations to help repair the damage.
[[Category:European Villains]]
[[Category:Dark Messiah]]
[[Category:Cult Leader]]
[[Category:Embezzlers]]
[[Category:Male]]
[[Category:Liars]]
[[Category:Tricksters]]
[[Category:Cheater]]
[[Category:Greedy]]
[[Category:Obsessed]]
[[Category:Living Villains]]
[[Category:Psychopath]]
[[Category:Karma Houdini]]