Update: ‘Trial of Faith’ saga continues
Author:Date: July 8th, 2009
PRINT
It was like a made-for-TV movie that, unfortunately, was all too real for thousands of retirees and aging investors: Con men lure unsuspecting seniors and others into investing in bad real estate deals and junk bonds by promising a lucrative return.
No, this is not the script for an upcoming movie about Bernie Madoff. That will come later. Rather, it’s the story of the Baptist Foundation of Arizona and the largest religious fraud in American history, perpetrated by at least two executives with the personality and know-how to carry it all out.
Appellate judges upheld their convictions last month. The foundation’s former president, William Crotts, and its top lawyer, Thomas Grabinski (in background here), still face prison terms of eight and six years, respectively. But when we saw the truncated story in The Arizona Republic in June, we couldn’t help thinking PHOENIX Magazine helped lay the case bare for Valley folks in a way local, daily media could not.
In Trial of Faith, PM contributing editor Terry Greene Sterling had put together a gripping, 18-page narrative for our April 2007 issue after following the Baptist Foundation case for 10 years. The story was the result of hundreds of hours of interviews, thousands of public-record reviews and notes from the 10-month trial. Steve Elliot assisted Sterling in the project.
It may be the most exhausting piece of journalism the magazine has undertaken to date. Check out the fruits of this labor at your local library sometime – both for curiosity’s sake and for perspective on just how huge the Madoff scandal is. To wit:
The Baptist Foundation’s meltdown wiped out about 11,000 mostly elderly Christians to the tune of $585 million. The Madoff scheme defrauded investors – big and small, from actor Kevin Bacon to your average armchair investor – out of $50 billion. That’s may be 85 times larger than the Baptist scandal, but Sterling’s story definitely hits closer to home.
[Note: A previous version of this post incorrectly stated Steve Elliot’s credentials. He was a student who assisted in the project.]