The Garfield County attorney has filed a bad-check charge against Bill Doughty, the controversial founder of a financially beleaguered sect of southern Utah constitutionalists.
Doughty will be arraigned Oct. 12 in the county courthouse at Panguitch. Charges are being pressed by Kelly Christensen, a former Doughty follower.Doughty could not be reached for comment this week. Chris-ten-sen declined to comment.
Garfield County Attorney Wallace A. Lee said Doughty is accused in the Sept. 19 claim of bouncing a $2,500 check to Christensen. The money was to have gone toward a $45,000 debt Doughty owed Christensen, who, with his family, was among dozens of out-of-state residents who came to Utah in the early 1990s to help build a community of constitutionalists - political conservatives who believe the U.S. Constitution has been misinterpreted and weakened over the years by the Supreme Court.
Doughty's Meadeau View Institute at Duck Creek in Kane County and his nearby back-to-the-land colony at Mammoth Valley in Garfield County fell on hard times last year, leaving scores of private lenders with little to show for their investment.
A Deseret News series published this summer detailed the disappearance of about $1 million in donations and loans to projects. Most were made by middle-class households.
The newspaper report triggered a probe by the state Division of Securities that is still under way, a division investigator said.
Though Lee called the county charge an "isolated incident," he said his office has pursued previous bounced-check complaints against Doughty. He said he does not know yet whether he will push for punishment or settle for simple collection of the $2,500.
"That's something I'd have to determine in working with the victim, whether they're satisfied and whether I think it'll solve the problem."
If prosecuted to the full extent of the law on the charge, a second-degree felony, Doughty could face a 15-year prison sentence and a $10,000 fine.