For “Baptist.” Our main (convicted) conspirators are William Pierre Crotts and Thomas Dale Grabinski. Of course, they are Republicans, too.

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.

The pair were handcuffed and led from Maricopa County Superior Court after the verdict.

Grabinski was head of the Arizona Christian Coalition at one point, and he also was rebuked for then working on the campaign of Republican Congressman JP Hayworth — note Steven Gilliard includes Grabinski in an article about naked voter fraud. No, that isn’t surprising. This seems a chiken and egg thing. . . which corruption came first, the Baptist corruption or the Republican corruption.