Ex-PTL Official Gets 8-Year Prison Term, $200,000 Fine

Former PTL Vice President Richard Dortch was sentenced to eight years in prison and fined $200,000 Thursday for helping to bilk millions of dollars out of the television ministry’s followers.

Dortch’s sentence was part of a plea agreement in exchange for testimony against his former boss, PTL founder Jim Bakker, whose trial on the same fraud and conspiracy charges is scheduled to start Monday.

“I could not believe that I participated in this . . . in deceiving people, in doing something I knew was wrong,” Dortch said after prosecutors showed the judge charts detailing a pattern of financial manipulations at PTL. “The shame of that was the most humiliating thing I have ever known.”

Prosecutor Deborah Smith said memos between Dortch and the PTL financial office showed “calculated attempts” to hide the financial difficulties at the ministry.

Prosecutors presented evidence that even though Dortch and Bakker said there would be a limit of 30,000 “lifetime partnerships” sold in the Towers Hotel at PTL’s Heritage USA, a total of 68,755 partnerships were sold.

Lifetime partners made a one-time donation of $1,000 in exchange for three nights of free lodging each year for life, but the Towers Hotel and other hotels planned for Heritage USA were never built or were left uncompleted.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Potter gave Dortch four years in prison and a $100,000 fine on the wire fraud charge and four years in prison and a $100,000 fine on the conspiracy. The prison terms were consecutive.

His sentence will begin after he finishes testifying for the government in the Bakker trial.