STUART — Depending on who was telling the story this morning, the three women who bought property from Rodney and Shalonda McGill three years ago were either victims of a fast-talking couple who duped them or greedy prospectors who sold their souls for $50,000.

Assistant State Attorney Lev Evans told jurors in the mortgage fraud and racketeering trial against the couple this morning that the McGills used their positions as pastors to lure people into purchasing properties they owned at inflated prices and then leaving them with ruined credit and foreclosures.

“This case is about greed and fraud,” Evans said. “They held themselves out to be pillars of the community.”

From the same property that held the New Hope Outreach Church on Arch Street in Jensen Beach, Rodney McGill founded the investment club Young Millionaires Group.

It was through that group and through his local radio show that authorities say he got people to buy property from him under the guise of an opportunity to make a guaranteed $50,000, falsifying loan documents to get mortgages that at times exceeded the investors’ monthly incomes.

Shalonda McGill’s attorney Fran Ross told jurors she agreed with Evans that the case was about greed.

“But it wasn’t on the part of Shalonda McGill,” Ross said, later adding of the investors: “Like so many people, they wanted to get into the real estate business and make money.”

Ross said the investors themselves were the ones who committed fraud by signing falsified loan documents with information the McGills had no way of verifying.

Rodney McGill, acting as his own attorney, in his opening statements referred to his Rolls Royces and Bentleys, saying his opulent lifestyle led authorities to focus their investigation on him instead of the investors.

“They said there’ll be only one Willie Gary around here driving a Rolls Royce,” McGill said of investigators.

McGill called the three women “crooks” who were willing to lie to make money but turned on McGill as soon as the economy got tough.

“$50,000 will make you sell your soul,” he said of one investor. “And she did it.”

The morning ended with testimony from one of the alleged victims, Patricia Kelly, an assembly line worker from Melbourne who signed for loans totaling nearly $500,000 on two properties that later went into foreclosure.

Kelly is expected to continue testifying this afternoon.

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