Foursquare's vice president, Jared Roth, will serve as interim president until a new president is selected in June, Williams said. Finance director Jeffrey Bird has assumed the role of chief financial officer and treasurer.
Financial Advisory Consultants, headed by James P. Lewis Jr. of Villa Park, and IPIC, headed by Gregory Setser of Ontario, are accused of swindling hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, including numerous churches, pastors and congregants.
Lewis and Setser, both of whom face multiple felony fraud counts, apparently operated independently, authorities said.
Lewis, who is being held without bail in Santa Ana, pleaded not guilty last month to federal fraud and money-laundering charges.
A federal judge in Dallas freed Setser last month on condition he wear an electronic monitor while awaiting trial at his home in Texas. Setser, three members of his immediate family and an associate have pleaded not guilty to fraud and money laundering.
Federal prosecutors and Securities and Exchange Commission investigators said Lewis and Setser practiced what is known as affinity fraud -- preying on groups of people with close family, religious or ethnic ties, who spread word of the high-yielding investments among themselves.
Many Foursquare pastors and church members lost money to Lewis, Williams said.
The victims included Luann Joan Long of Riverside, who previously had told The Times that she was forced to sell her home because she had given Lewis her entire retirement savings last spring, along with life insurance proceeds from her husband's death -- totaling millions of dollars.
Williams said the church's investments with Lewis and Setser were made over a period of about 18 months. He said he could not provide a breakdown of how much went money to each operation.
Risser and his wife, Marilee, are well-known to Foursquare church members in Southern California, having served as pastors of a Foursquare congregation in Santa Fe Springs for 25 years before he was elected president of the denomination in 1998.
Williams said there was no evidence that Risser, 66, had any intent to benefit personally from the investments with Lewis and Setser.
The church hopes Risser will stay on as an unofficial elder and preacher, he added.
