Promoters Of Baptist Affinity Fraud Convicted

Both today's Washington Post and today's Arizona Republic report that two former executives of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona were found guilty Monday on 3 counts of fraud and one count of knowingly conducting an illegal enterprise in what has been called the largest "affinity fraud" ever. More than 11,000 investors lost more than $550 million in total. The investors, many of them elderly, were encouraged to invest their money at promised high rates and at the same time "do the Lord's work," building Baptist churches and retirement homes. Defendants William Crotts and Thomas Grabinski, however, were acquitted of 23 counts of theft. The jury found that they did not personally profit from the Ponzi scheme. Instead they got in over their heads and then tried to cover it up. Defense attorneys had argued that the foundation could have been able to pay off investors if state regulators had not forced it to stop selling securities in 1999.