ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Supporters of then-televangelist Jim Bakker’s former Praise the Lord (PTL) ministry will get $6.54 each as the result of a class action settlement.
A 16-year-old lawsuit sought payments for the 165,000 people who joined the class action, the Associated Press reported. The plaintiffs had given $1,000 each for four-day vacation stays at a PTL resort near Charlotte, N.C., that was never constructed.
A July 24 order issued by U.S. District Judge Lacy Thornburg in Asheville, N.C., gives a California administrator one month to issue the checks. Former PTL accountants placed money in a settlement fund. The lawyers will get $2.5 million of the $3.7 million settlement.
Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry in 1987 after admitting to an affair with a ministry secretary. He was convicted two years later of a wire- and mail-fraud scheme involving the sale of more than 150,000 lifetime partnerships planned for the Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, S.C.
Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison but his term was reduced to 18 years and he served five before being paroled in 1995. He is on the air again with “The Jim Bakker Show,” taped in Branson, Mo.
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