Ex-cult Minister Sentenced To Prison, Ordered To Pay Restitution To
Followers
Denver Post, Wednesday, March 18, 1998
A former minister of the cult religion The Way International was sentenced
to prison Tuesday in U.S. District Court and ordered to pay restitution of
more than $ 500,000 to his former followers after he admitted he had bilked
them of their money, in some cases their life savings.
Richard J. Panyard, 45, was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and
three years' probation and ordered to repay more than 20 of his followers a
total of $ 528,000. That amount included $ 176,000 to be repaid to one
follower, Kathleen Shay of Boulder, who had turned over to Panyard her
entire family inheritance of stock in McDonald's Restaurants.
In January, Panyard pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud. He and
two followers, Jack Northart and Charles Mandry, founded three companies in
the late 1980s using money coerced out of the Way's followers. The
companies struggled for two years without showing profits and around April
1989 became "a scheme to defraud," according to the U.S. attorney's office.
Judge Lewis T. Babcock defined them as the classic "Ponzi scheme," where
one person's investment in the company was used to payoff another's.
Babcock read portions of letters he received from people who had invested
with Panyard, including one woman who said she had been married by Panyard,
then forced to fight off his sexual advances less than a year later. "He
created an atmosphere of confidence. We depended on Richard Panyard to
guide us because we trusted him," the letter stated.
The Way International was founded in New Knoxville, Ohio, in 1961, as a
biblical research and teaching ministry, espousing that Jesus Christ is not
God, that there is no Holy Trinity and that Jews are not the chosen people,
but are a tribe from Siberia. The Way has been known to arm its senior
members, and some of its members are known to wear bulletproof vests to
public meetings.
A large number of followers live in the Black Forest area north of Colorado
Springs, and the church owns an encampment north of Gunnison, which has
been the target of numerous investigations involving firearms and munitions.
Panyard was ordered to surrender to the U.S. marshal on April 14.
