BALTIMORE — A Baptist preacher will serve more than three years behind bars after admitting he filed false documents to obtain a loan and didn’t pay taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars he profited while leading a prominent Southern Baptist church in Maryland.
A federal judge in Baltimore sentenced Otis Ray Hope, 53, of Aiken, S.C., to 37 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release Aug. 4 for tax evasion, subscribing to a false document and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson also ordered Hope to pay restitution of more than $2.4 million.
Prosecutors say Hope created false financial statements to defraud a bank into approving a $1.75 million loan for a conference and retreat center in Hagerstown, Md., that he falsely claimed had reopened for business after a fire. Before that, they say he diverted tuition payments for an educational program at the church where he was pastor into an account he used to pay for golf outings, a family vacation to Hawaii, airline tickets, cars and home improvements.
Hope took over as senior pastor of Montrose Baptist Church, Rockville, Md., in 1996, at the time, the second-largest church in the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware with more than 2,000 members. He resigned in 2002.
Last August, he was serving as pastor of First Baptist Church, Warrenton, Ga., when a federal grand jury in Baltimore indicted him on three counts of tax evasion and one count of subscribing to a false document.
Hope said at the time he had done nothing wrong, but he resigned as pastor after telling the church about his indictment.
Hope pleaded guilty June 4 in a deal he made with prosecutors. If convicted in a court of law, then he could have faced up to 30 years in prison.
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