SOUTHERN BAPTIST EXECUTIVES CONVICTED
IN ENRON STYLE INVESTOR BILKING SCHEME

From the Washington Post courtesy of Pandagon courtesy of Eschaton:

Two former executives of a failed Southern Baptist foundation were convicted here Monday in what prosecutors said was the nation's largest fraud ever targeting members of a religious group.

William Pierre Crotts, who was president of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, and Thomas Dale Grabinski, the group's former chief legal counsel, were each convicted of three counts of fraud and one count of conducting an illegal enterprise in a scheme that lasted decades and cheated 11,000 investors across the country of about $585 million.

In a trial that lasted 10 months, prosecutors claimed that the executives were driven by shame to hide the foundation's mounting investment losses, bilking investors who were recruited in Southern Baptist churches and by Bible-quoting salesmen who visited their homes. Investors were told their money would help Southern Baptist causes, such as building new churches, and were promised above-market returns.

Instead, prosecutors said Crotts and Grabinski had designed a Ponzi scheme in which new investors were needed to pay off the secret mounting debt. Donald Conrad, an Arizona assistant attorney general, characterized Crotts and Grabinski during closing arguments as business failures who defrauded investors in part to "feed their financial fantasies" that they were savvy businessmen.

Click here for the rest.

Well, okay, I guess I can buy that as a motivation. I mean, these guys were totally small time, nothing like Ken Lay and the billions he was playing with. On the other hand, Ken Lay was also a self-styled man of God, described at his funeral by longtime associate Mark Seidl as being a "straight arrow--a Boy Scout, if you will--who lived by Christian-Judeo principles." I wonder when they removed "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not bear false witness" from Christian-Judeo principles--I never got the memo. Anyway, I guess there are more similarities here than initially meet the eye.

Obviously, it doesn't really matter whether these Southern Baptist businessmen in Arizona were motivated by greed or motivated by keeping up appearances: they ripped off millions from lots of innocent people who believed their Bible-laced bullshit.

So there are a couple of lessons here. First, running around quoting the Bible doesn't make one trustworthy. (Yeah, I know, that's as plain as day, but it appears that many Americans are still pretty naive as far as the Jesus-talk is concerned.) Second, as I have observed on numerous occasions, fundamentalist Christians are extraordinarily adept at intellectually compartmentalizing contradictory thoughts. That is, I'm sure these guys, like Ken Lay, felt totally justified in committing their crimes, and their convictions, when they happened, came as a complete surprise--"But, but, I put my faith in the Lord!!!"

As the Bible says, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven."

Heh. Book 'em Danno!


Former Baptist Foundation of Arizona president William P. Crotts is
led from a Phoenix courtroom. (By Tom Tingle -- Associated Press)

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