Jury Orders Bakker to Pay $129 Million

A jury on Friday decided that PTL founder Jim Bakker should pay $129 million to his former contributors, but attorneys said it is unlikely that the jailed televangelist’s followers will collect the money.

“The only thing my client owns is a 45-year lease on a 5-by-7 room in a Minnesota prison,” said Gene Carr, one of Bakker’s attorneys. Bakker received a 45-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy after a criminal trial last year.

The jury reached its decision Friday on the fifth day of deliberations in a class-action lawsuit that went to trial on Oct. 24.

The other defendants--accounting firm Deloitte, Haskins & Sells; David Taggart, Bakker’s former personal aide, and Aimee Cortese, a minister from New York who served on PTL’s board of directors--are not liable for damages, the jury ruled.

Tom Anderson, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, conceded after the verdict that it is unlikely his clients will collect any of the award from Bakker. Bakker earns 12 cents an hour working at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minn.

A bankruptcy trustee closed Bakker’s Heritage USA theme park last year, and Bakker was fined $500,000 when he was imprisoned.

The lawsuit claim totaled $757 million when it was filed in 1987 by about 145,000 contributors that PTL called “lifetime partners.” They alleged that Bakker conspired with other PTL executives and accountants to set up secret bank accounts to give Bakker, his wife, Tammy Faye, and other ministry leaders huge bonuses.

Anderson, who spent more than $2 million of his own money on the case, said he was “very, very disappointed” by the verdict.

“I feel that Deloitte Haskins & Sells got away with something, and I don’t like it,” Anderson said. “The money is not the worst thing, I just don’t think justice was done.”

Anderson said he will appeal.

Bakker resigned from his Ft. Mill, S.C., ministry on March 19, 1987, amid a sex and money scandal involving Jessica Hahn.