Baptist Group’s Former Leaders Convicted of Fraud

Two former executives of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona have been convicted of fraud, reports the Associated Press.

A jury on Monday found the organization’s former president, William Crotts, and former general counsel, Thomas Grabinski, guilty of three counts of fraud and one count of illegally conducting an enterprise, according to the Arizona attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case. The men were acquitted of 23 counts of theft.

Prosecutors estimated that 11,000 investors, most of them elderly, were defrauded in the 1980s and 1990s when they were promised high returns and a safe investment for using their money to build churches and retirement homes. The investors’ combined losses totaled more than $500-million.