Rock Hill pastor who stole $8 million from church gets probation for impersonating doctor, touching boy
Pastor Cabe pleaded no contest to five counts of unlawful practice of medicine
Cabe spent seven years in federal prison for stealing more than $8 million
Current charges of giving medical exams and touching private parts have been pending for more than 5 years
The Rev. Johnny William “Bill” Cabe, the York County pastor who spent seven years in prison for stealing $8 million from church investors, will serve no prison time after pleading no contest Friday to 2010 charges alleging he claimed to be a doctor and performed exams on an 11-year-old boy he had befriended.Cabe, 56, was charged twice in the 1990s on similar allegations of giving hernia exams and other improper contact with minor boys at Riverside Independent Baptist Church but was never convicted. On Friday, Cabe was sentenced to five years’ probation, yet he admitted no guilt in pleading no contest to five counts of unlawful practice of medicine for touching the boy’s private parts.
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The child abuse registry and probation deal “warns members of the community” of what Cabe did while claiming to be a doctor in a church office filled with medical equipment, prosecutor Erin Joyner said in court.
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Prosecutors offered the plea deal to avoid forcing the boy to testify after he had made emotional gains after the trauma of finding out that Cabe was not a doctor and had touched him inappropriately. Also, the boy did not come forward until the boy’s mother found out he was touched by Cabe, Joyner said, and past allegations of improper touching likely would not have been admissible because Cabe was never convicted.
At the time the boy was touched, between 2008 and 2010, Cabe was a recently-released felon who spent seven years in federal prison for stealing millions from unwitting religious followers in a pyramid scheme that spanned the Atlantic Ocean. Cabe was convicted in 2001 in federal court of stealing more than $8 million in the 1990s but never admitted any guilt in the scheme involving another pastor and an art dealer from England. He was fined $7.8 million, and officials seized more than $1.2 million of his assets.Despite his felony convictions for stealing from dozens of people, including his own church members, Cabe even conducted church services by telephone from federal prison before being released.
Cabe appealed his fraud conviction but lost in 2003.
Convicted child sex offender John William (Bill) Cabe remains the pastor of Riverside Independent Baptist Church in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
