![Priscilla Deters]() |
Exclusive: the first photo of church fraud defendant Priscilla Deters Deters on trial |
![Nerve centre]() |
Productions Plus nerve centre: when searched on December 14, 1994, this house revealed papers stacked in all corners of a bedroom, and ringing answering machines, with callers demanding their money back. |
![Leatha Hein]() |
Leatha Hein, whose extensive research helped expose Productions Plusmore about Leatha Hein |
![Maurice Roberts]() |
Maurice Roberts, former superintendent of Mid-America YM, and Productions Plus victimmore about Maurice Roberts |
![U.S. Courthouse, Wichita, KS]() |
United States Courthouse, Wichita, Kansas |
![George Crawford]() |
George Crawford, attorney with the California Department of Corporations. He issued the 1991 Desist and Refrain Order, and sought the injunction and receivership in 1995. |
![George Brown]() |
George Brown, a member of Deters’ “Board of Directors”. He loaned her over $200,000, attended her trial, and after the verdict offered to co-sign for her bail; the offer was rejected by the judge. |
![Headquarters, Mid-America YM]() |
Headquarters, Mid-America Yearly Meeting, Wichita. The building in the rear was built with the expectation that Deters’ matching gifts would cover most of the cost. When the “gifts” failed to materialize, the yearly meeting was thrown into financial crisis. |
![Randy Littlefield]() |
Randy Littlefield — One of Deters’ strongest remaining supporters. He put $10,000 of his own into Productions Plus, and recruited both his mother and mother-in-law to invest as well. When he was pastor at League City Friends Church in Texas, he persuaded them to send (and lose) $139,000. As pastor of the Cherokee Friends Church, he was the main booster of the “faith covenant” that sent Deters over $400,000. He later worked for Deters in California, lobbying Quaker leaders there to get their Kansas brethren to call off the state investigation. After the trial, the judge called him a “candidate for indictment.” |
![Three from Cherokee]() |
Three from Cherokee: left to right are Jeff Fellers, Mary Washburn and Bob wilson, all from Cherokee, Oklahoma. Among the three of them and their families, they lost over $178,000 to the Productions Plus scam. |
![Will Haworth]() |
A modest hero: Will Haworth, pastor of the Hays Church of the Nazarene in Hays, Kansas. After his church lost all of its $44,000 investment, Haworth came under intense pressure from Deters and her cronies to refuse cooperation with the investigation. “I didn’t sleep much,” he said of that period. But he didn’t cave, and testified for the prosecution. |
![R.J. Wegner]() |
R.J. Wegner District Superintendent of the Nazarene Church in North and South Dakota. He collected $600,000 from his churches for Deters’ “Dakota Project”, and helped funnel money through a California church to evade the scrutiny of regulators. Losses to his churches exceed $500,000. |
![Steve Gradert]() |
Deters’ government-appointed defense attorney, Steve Gradert: he did a good job with what he had, which wasn’t much. |
![Annette Gurney]() |
Lead federal prosecutor Annette Gurney. “I never had a case like Priscilla Deters before,” she said. But she and colleague Allen Metzger won it. |
![Gary Fulton]() |
Gary Fulton, Investigator for the Kansas Securities Commission, and a small part of his documentary evidence. He led the search of Deters’ house, and painstakingly sorted and collated the six boxes of papers taken from it. |
![Lois Hutson]() |
Lois Hutson, a transitional figure between the Deters and Harmon cases: A widow, she is Randy Littlefield’s mother-in law, and at his behest she put several thousand dollars of her savings into the Cherokee project. She got it back early, however, in order to take advantage of another investment opportunity, with Phil Harmon. She sent him her entire nest egg of $95,000, and lost it all. She attended the Deters trial, and rooted for Priscilla all the way. |
