As night fell on Jan. 19, 2021, in the Federal Prison Camp in Duluth, Minn., near the shores of Lake Superior, inmate Paul Erickson fell asleep, disheartened by rumors that President Donald Trump would issue no more than 50 presidential pardons. 

“I couldn’t imagine I would make the cut,” he said in a phone call six days later with Religion Unplugged. 

It was only a few months before, on July 6, 2020, that Erickson had been sentenced to seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud and money laundering charges. The FBI, IRS and federal prosecutors had built a case that he defrauded at least 76 people out of millions of dollars in three different schemes over a period of 20 years. 

READ: Q&A With Russian ‘Spy’Maria Butina

Although Erickson kept an apartment and office in Sioux Falls, S.D., he fashioned himself as an eclectic, secretive Republican operative and a globe-trotting champion of conservative causes. 

“I fought in three and a half wars. Been wounded. Brought down governments. Installed presidents,” Erickson said in an interview with Religion Unplugged.

Erickson claims his 40-year career had included helping “three democratic resistance movements around the world.” 

Some of these claims could not be verified. Religion Unplugged did confirm he co-produced the late 1980s Hollywood action film “Red Scorpion.” He had helped manage Republican Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s campaign in 1992. He also served as a publicist for John Wayne Bobbitt, the man who became famous after his wife cut off his penis in 1993. He traveled the world to see the fall of the Berlin Wall and to assist anti-communist fighters in Nicaragua and Afghanistan. 

How Erickson Landed In Prison

The national spotlight turned on Erickson in recent years when the red-haired, Russian national he was dating, Maria Butina, was accused of being a Russian spy during intense scrutiny on Russian connections to the United States during the Trump presidency. Butina was arrested in 2018 and deported in 2019 after she pleaded guilty for failing to register as a foreign agent. 

Erickson, a lifelong bachelor who often presented himself as a ladies man, met Butina through National Rifle Association and gun rights circles. He’d allegedly supported her graduate degree studies at American University in Washington, D.C. and introduced her to powerful people in conservative and GOP circles. 

In his concrete prison cell in Duluth, Erickson thought back on these experiences, documenting his thoughts in handwritten letters to Religion Unplugged co-founder and former executive editor Paul Glader, who met Erickson in the 1990s through alumni circles at the University of South Dakota. 

Erickson, who professes a Christian faith rooted in Lutheranism, had resigned himself to serving his sentence and praying he would not contract COVID-19, which he claims was spreading through a high percentage of his fellow inmates. 

Trump Card: A Surprise Pardon

At around 1 a.m. on Jan. 19, 2021, news headlines started flashing about a string of 73 pardons in the waning hours of the Trump presidency. 

“One of my buddies down the hall came running in his stocking feet, ran into my room, wakes me up and says, ‘Paul! Paul! Wake up! You’re on TV!’ “ Erickson told Religion Unplugged. “That’s how I was informed.”  

Within hours, Erickson had gathered his belongings, turned in his uniform and left the prison in Duluth a free man ready to do business again, burner phone in hand.

It turned out former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway knew Erickson. Erickson said he didn’t know she was going to bat for him, endorsing his lawyer’s arguments that his imprisonment for fraud was small potatoes and suggesting that Erickson was a victim of an overzealous Russian collusion investigation led by Democrats in Congress and prosecutor Robert Mueller during Trump’s time in office. 

Erickson said Conway was his intern on the 1992 Buchanan campaign and that he had helped her launch her first political polling company. Finding no confirmation of those claims from any online sources, Religion Unplugged sought to check those facts with Conway.

When she didn’t respond to an email, a Religion Unplugged reporter attended an event at the Westmount Country Club in New Jersey on Nov. 20, 2022, where Conway was slated to speak to a crowd of 600 or so Republicans. 

Waiting in line for a photo to get a chance to speak with Conway, the reporter, Paul Glader, asked her if she knew someone named Paul Erickson and whether she’d help him receive a pardon. He also said he had some facts to check for an upcoming podcast about Erickson.

Conway looked surprised. She acknowledged she had helped get Erickson on the pardon list — but she rolled her eyes at the mention of Erickson. 

“I am glad he is out of prison,” she said. “What do you need to know?”

By this time, the photographer said she needed to pose for a photo. So while smiling toward the cameras, Glader informed her Erickson said she was “his intern on the 1992 Buchanan campaign. Is that true?”

While still smiling at the camera she said that wasn’t accurate. She had worked for pollster Frank Luntz during that time and said she had never worked for the Buchanan campaign. By this time, event handlers seemed annoyed the line was slowing. But Conway was still curious. 

“What else did he say? What else?” she said.

“He said he helped you launch your first company. Is that true?”

She smirked, then tried to maintain composure.

“Look. I spoke with him sometimes. He gave me advice,” she said. “There was no financial investment that he ever made in any of my polling business.” 

Glader thanked Conway for clarifying these facts and said that those of us who know Erickson know that he can exaggerate. 

“Yes,” she said. “He’s kind of like a Paul Bunyan.”

Like Tom Hanks from ‘Castaway’

Weeks before his pardon, adjusting to a seven-year prison sentence, Erickson had sent a Christmas letter to his friends that opened with the image of a palm tree and the word, “Island.” He wrote about lessons from the film “Castaway” in which Tom Hanks stars as a Robinson Crusoe-like character, a man alone on a deserted island. 

“Life in 2020 has cast many of us away to islands far from our normal routines, isolated from our usual world,” Erickson wrote.

He compared his experience in prison with other Americans living through a pandemic “with everything stripped away.” He then wrote about the Biblical story of the Apostle John “exiled to the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea (a Roman penal colony!) for failure to worship Caesar as God. (To understand my drama, substitute ‘Duluth’ for ‘Patmos’ and ‘Mueller’ for ‘Caesar.’ It’s a Revelation. Ha! Biblical humor!).” 

He wrote that the experience of prison in Duluth reminded him of trips to Lutheran “Camp Patmos” not so far from where Erickson was imprisoned. 

A Mysterious Political Operative 

Erickson was adopted and raised by a couple in Vermillion, S.D. He was known by high school classmates as a bright and ambitious student. He enrolled at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, the state’s flagship university, and became vice president of the Student Association in 1980. 

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader and others later reported that Erickson “was driven out of office after he obtained confidential student records and gave them to a political campaign.” Erickson then transferred to Yale University, where he earned a degree in economics. 

“He got in a bunch of trouble,” said Lee Schoenbeck, a state senator and lawyer in Watertown, S.D, who knew Erickson in college Republican circles in South Dakota. “Some of the people he got in trouble were good friends of mine. I’ve had no time for him ever since.”

Schoenbeck said he saw Erickson continue patterns of questionable tactics in politics yet continuing to rise as an operative in some parts of the Republican party. Schoenbeck said he was annoyed when his boss, former Sen. James Abdnor (R-S.D.), hired Erickson to be a “college coordinator” in 1980.

Schoenbeck claimed Erickson took credit for others’ work as Abdnor defeated George McGovern in 1980. That opportunity, however, helped launch Erickson into work with the national College Republican groups, giving him many political contacts for decades that followed. He attended law school at the University of Virginia, graduating with a J.D. in 1988. 

Erickson proved to have a knack for back-room hobnobbing in D.C. power circles.

“Erickson is a tall man with wide-open eyes, a constant smile and a receding hairline. He is nearly always talking, often dressed in a black suit and in the company of his trench coat,” wrote the late David Kranz, a leading political journalist at The Sioux Falls Argus Leader, for a profile of Erickson in 2003. 

Possessing a charming persona, Erickson regaled people with tales of his exploits: playing soldier with contras in the hills of Nicaragua 1990; working in a leadership role in Buchanan’s campaign; helping to organize Promise Keepers, a Christian men’s conference in 1997.

Kranz noted photos on the walls of Erickson’s apartment to back up these stories. FBI and IRS agents who investigated Erickson confirmed to Religion Unplugged that Erickson did make many of these kinds of travels and involvements. 

“He was far brighter than, and more well-educated than most guys that I deal with,” said Matthew Miller, the FBI agent in South Dakota who investigated Erickson’s financial fraud case. 

Erickson’s activism took an unusual turn in 1993, when he took on John Wayne Bobbitt as a client after Bobbitt’s wife, Lorena, cut off his penis while he was sleeping. His wife claimed that Bobbitt had raped her. Erickson said police and hospital officials convinced him Bobbitt was not guilty of that crime and noted that a jury acquitted him in less than two hours. During that time, Erickson became friendly with the famous non-fiction writer Gay Talese, who was covering the Bobbitt case on assignment for The New Yorker. 

Such anecdotes and snippets of Erickson’s unusual life fueled the jetset persona he presented to his networks of acquaintances in D.C., New York, South Dakota, Virginia and elsewhere. He passed himself off as a businessman, humanitarian, and a conservative operative with a knack for nabbing a front row seat to historical moments. Yet, not everyone bought the act. Some were skeptical of his stories and curious why he went to great pains to keep parts of his life a secret. 

Shirley Halleen, for example, was a Democrat politician who lived in the same apartment building as Erickson for years. She found him friendly and affable, often joining gatherings with older residents and bringing brownies and good conversation. Halleen was skeptical of his stories while enjoying his company. She remembers him claiming that he was helping the Trump administration to select cabinet members. 

“He was always telling these big stories,” she told Religion Unplugged. 

Glader spoke with dozens of sources who know Erickson for this report and a podcast by Campside Media on the show “Infamous” on Sony Media Entertainment.

Parts of Erickson’s life were never a secret. South Dakotans easily recognized Erickson cruising Sioux Falls in his red Ford Mustang with the license plate “Rtwing.” At least one source told Religion Unplugged they saw Ericson driving his car in Sioux Falls at the same time Erickson told them he was out of town on business. 

Erickson claimed to define his life by faith. In the Argus Leader profile, Kranz reported that Erickson was “a devout Lutheran who bases his whole mission in life on a line from the Bible: Ephesians, Chapter 2, verse 8. It reads: “For by grace ye are saved by faith.” Kranz reported that Erickson founded “Word Alone,” a Lutheran grassroots network of congregations seeking renewal of the church. Erickson told Kranz, “Salvation is a gift of Christ,” and explained that his mission in life is threefold, “To serve Christ, honor my country and build a values-based society.” 

Fraud, Lies and Prison time

But some South Dakota Republicans expressed skepticism that Erickson was using religion as a way to further Republican politics. Others became disillusioned with what they saw as disingenuous aspects of his words or character. 

Some investors such as former Lieutenant Governor Steve Kirby became upset with Erickson’s business practices, alleging Erickson failed to pay back a loan of $115,417. Kirby, a partner in a private equity company called Bluestem Capital Partners, won a judgment against Erickson for that amount in 2003. Other reports in South Dakota newspapers note at least seven court judgments for more than $421,000 against Erickson or his companies since 2003. 

“We just always thought he had a really interesting life,” said Loretta Waltner, a one-time friend and investor in Erickson’s schemes, putting her on a list of roughly 76 victims according to federal prosecutors. 

Waltner met Erickson when her Farmer’s insurance office was in the same building as the office he used in Sioux Falls. She recalled “he was always going somewhere, you know?” She appreciated Erickson’s friendly and fun-loving nature. At one point, she let Erickson use one of her horses to make a birthday video for Erickson’s rabbi friend in New York City. 

Waltner said Erickson asked her to invest in his business ventures around 2011 after her husband died. He “caught me at a point in time when I was a little off balance,” she said. “I was one of the more fortunate ones. I did get some payments back from him.” 

She said she would ask him about the investments and would sometimes receive checks that he claimed were profit checks. “I was not surprised when the FBI came knocking on my door,” she said. “He was very skilled.” 

Other victims Religion Unplugged spoke with included attorneys, Fortune 400 executives, political figures, business leaders and even a Rhodes scholar. They all attest to Erickson’s skill at creating warm friendship feelings and making unique business pitches that skirted normal due diligence efforts. Several victims chose not to be named and quoted publicly because of their embarrassment at being defrauded. Yet others came forward.  

Lisa Coll Nicolaou wrote an essay for Oprah magazine about how Erickson built a friendship with her through Yale alumni circles and ingratiated himself into friendship with her and her family before convincing them to invest in a Dignity Chair that allowed people with limited mobility to use the bathroom without assistance. 

“We joked that he was in the CIA. Our friend, the spy,” Nicolaou wrote in Oprah, noting she overlooked red flags because his personality and kindness was so winning. 

Another Yale classmate, Susan Holden, spoke (remotely) at the sentencing hearing in 2020. Holden, an accountant and CFO of several companies, explained that Erickson extorted money from her to invest in a land purchase in the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. 

“The level of lying that Paul Erickson is capable of is something that I have never experienced in my entire career. I considered him a close personal friend. And the violation of trust is something that is a burden I will carry for the rest of “my life,” she told the court. “How someone as smart and talented as Paul could have turned into such a heartless criminal is just such a waste of potential and talent.” 

Holden said she appreciated having a friend who was a Republican and thought differently from her. And she wondered if he was working in intelligence work while presenting as a business person.

“I was absolutely convinced that he was working for the CIA in some way,” Holden told Religion Unplugged in an interview. 

She described how Erickson took her and her 80-year-old mother on a road trip to Williston, North Dakota, pretending to show them their investments, which did not exist.

“The FBI later told me he never owned a single stick of real estate in that town,” she said in court. 

She told Religion Unplugged that she now sees Erickson as the “Bernie Madoff of the Bakken” region, a highly skilled swindler. 

District Judge Karen E. Schreier didn’t hold back, sentencing him to seven years in federal prison and ordering him to pay back a bulk of the $5.3 million he bilked from dozens of people. She expressed disgust that, over 22 years, he had scammed friends, family, classmates, Republicans and people he met through church circles. 

“The most appalling to me was the fact that you scammed your own godmother,” Schreier wrote, detailing how Erickson racked up $13,000 of purchases to her credit card without her permission while she was ill. 

Schreier noted that while some people vouched for Erickson’s personality and generosity, she saw that he was using money he scammed from others to be generous to friends in high places. In interviews with ReligionUnplugged.com, Erickson said he believes Schreier was politically motivated against him because he was a Republican operative.

“What comes through is that you’re a thief, and you’ve betrayed your friends, your family, pretty much everyone you know,” Schreier said at the sentencing. 

The Red-Haired Maria Butina 

Erickson met a red-haired Russian woman named Maria Butina through National Rifle Association circles in 2013. He accompanied the former NRA president David Keene to Russia. Keene, Jack Abramoff and Erickson had worked together decades earlier, lobbying on behalf of an African leader of then Zaire named Mobutu Sese Seko. Meanwhile, Butina was collaborating with a Russian politician named Aleksandr Torshin.  

Keene, Erickson and other NRA leaders were impressed by Butina’s efforts to establish a gun rights organization called “The Right to Bear Arms” in Russia. She said she grew up in Siberia, where she learned to shoot guns with her father and opened a small furniture store. Erickson told Religion Unplugged that he and others viewed Butina as a potential future leader for Russia, someone who appreciated libertarian ideas. He also found Butina attractive and started courting her. 

“Erickson was almost certainly aware that she was acting in furtherance of Russian government interests and coordinating her activities with Torshin,” said a Senate Intelligence Report in 2019. “Erickson and Keene helped Butina identify opportunities to advance her goals, including by inviting and accompanying her to conferences and meetings and introducing her to politically-active individuals.”

Erickson helped her come to the U.S. in 2016 to attend graduate school at American University and shared an apartment with her in Washington D.C. He also helped her network with powerful Republicans and conservatives in D.C., South Dakota and beyond. She asked a question of then presidential candidate Donald Trump at a town hall in 2015. Her birthday party in 2016 featured a “Stars and Tsars” themed costume party at Cafe Deluxe in the Cleveland Park area of D.C., where she dressed as Empress Alexandra while Erickson dressed as Rasputin. She made an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2017.

In addition to gun rights and Republican politics, Erickson and Butina shared an appreciation for and background in the Christian faith. In one phone call with Erickson after he was released from prison, he told Religion Unplugged: “Our faith life was crucial to me and to Maria. She was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church and became a traditional protestant Christian.”

Meanwhile, Butina and Erickson came under scrutiny from the FBI shortly after Trump was elected and political opponents and law enforcement agencies became suspicious of Russia’s influence ties to Trump and its influence of the 2016 election. A group of FBI agents wearing bullet proof vests knocked on Butina’s door in July 2018 while she was watching tennis on TV. She was arrested and accused by federal prosecutors of being a spy from Russia, allegedly using sex to network with heavyweights in politics. 

At the time, Butina and Erickson were planning a move to South Dakota. A separate raid on Erickson’s apartment in South Dakota yielded a handwritten note that said, “How to respond to FSB offer of employment?” Investigators wondered if it meant Erickson was considering a move for himself or Butina to work for the Russian Federal Security Service, which is the intelligence agency formerly known as the KGB. 

Prosecutors alleged that Butina was using Erickson in a “duplicitous relationship” and told her Russian contacts that she had “disdain” for him and that she cohabitated with him as “a necessary aspect of her activities.”

Butina’s lawyer Robert Driscoll served in the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration. He aimed to counter the spy and “Red Sparrow” narrative by showing the couple was truly in love, releasing photos and videos of the couple singing a Karaoke version of “Beauty and the Beast” theme song. 

Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent and was sentenced to jail for 18 months, including extended periods of time in solitary confinement. Putin called her sentence “an outrage” and some Twitter accounts for Russia’s Kremlin used her image as an avatar. 

Driscoll told Religion Unplugged that he or his colleague visited Butina each day in prison and worried about her well-being when she was in solitary confinement.

“She was very spiritual,” he said. “There's a Russian Orthodox priest who I think was very good to her for a while. She was even considering going into a seminary or a convent” when she was released from prison and deported back to Russia in October of 2019. 

“I was in solitary confinement, facing, as I mentioned, 15 years. And I had no hope,” Butina told Religion Unplugged. “And when you have no hope, that's the best time in your life. The best because then you remember, you realize that God is your hope. There is nothing else. And the person changed me. I completely changed.”

As she returned to Russia, Butina switched gears and became a personality on the state-controlled video platform, RT. She wrote a memoir and built her social media accounts, posting regularly about her public appearances around Russia. In one post, Butina visited Russian dissident Aleksei Navalny in prison and, according to some news reports, insulted him for whining. Years earlier, both she and Navalny were viewed as dissidents, potential enemies of the state according to Erickson. Her cooperation with Putin’s regime and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was now the norm. 

“He was trying to provoke other prisoners and the guards to do something to harm him so he can put it in the news,” Butina told Religion Unplugged. “When I come there and see Navalny who said like, “look… the window is broken. That's a torture.” That's not a torture. I saw the tortures. I saw people being tied up to a chair. That's torture.”

Butina, now 35, won a seat in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma in 2021, while running with President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party in the rural region of Kirov Oblast. One man who contributed money to her campaign was Patrick Byrne, 59, the former CEO of online retailer Overstock.com, who is also an outspoken libertarian, Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist. 

The New Yorker and other news outlets reported that Byrne and Butina had a romantic relationship when she was in the United States and, according to Byrne, intelligence agencies were using Byrne to build evidence against Butina, which he passed along to the FBI. Prosecutors alleged Butina was trading sex-for-favors as part of her networking in U.S. politics and business circles.

But Byrne, Butina and Erickson have challenged that narrative as incorrect, arguing that Butina was not a spy. Byrne even donated to Butina’s political campaign when she returned to Russia. 

“I made a gift to Maria out of a desire to let her land on her feet and restart her life in Russia,” Byrne told Insider.

While Butina was cheating — by her own account and Byrne’s — on Erickson with the billionaire Byrne, at least one friend of Erickson’s suggests Erickson wasn’t tied down with Butina either. Gary Byler is an attorney in Virginia who was involved in Republican politics with Erickson. 

“I don’t think Paul was wowed by the young woman’s red hair or bubbly personality,” he said. “I suspect it was the ties to Russia, trying to get gun rights to the Russian citizens. … I think he took her at her word and saw a great opportunity.” 

Meanwhile, Erickson told Religion Unplugged he believed Butina’s relationship with Byrne was platonic and that Butina was merely getting close to Byrne to further her interests in cryptocurrency. A senate intelligence committee report and an interview with Butina, however, paint a more unusual picture. 

After the Infamous podcast episodes aired this spring, Butina reached out to Glader and asked to talk. They recorded a two-hour interview in early June.

“I do make mistakes,” Butina said in that interview. “And I did take up with Patrick.” 

Butina also indicated that she didn’t fully know that Erickson was defrauding friends and family. She claims he also defrauded her financially.

“I cannot still process the two people I know,” she told Religion Unplugged. “The person I knew during my five years of dating him, and the person who lied to me when I was in prison.”

Pastors among defrauded Investors 

“There  was a whole segment of victims whom he met through sort of church and faith-related activities, Promise Keeper sort of things,” Miller, an agent who investigated Erickson, said in an interview with Religion Unplugged. “There was a religious vein to him.” 

FBI agent Miller noted that right-wing politics and protestant Christian faith were bridges Erickson often used with people. Erickson would “speak to religious groups and talk about some of his world travels that were religiously motivated to improve life for people overseas.”

Miller said he found Erickson injected faith elements into conversations with some fraud victims, a known tactic of con artists to relate to an audience. “If he was approaching someone who was deeply involved with church, he could talk to them on that level, on the faith level.”

Miller noted that Rev. Greg Johnson, a Lutheran minister, had known Erickson since childhood in South Dakota. Johnson and a friend invented a wheelchair that allows people in a wheelchair to use the bathroom on their own. They called it a “Dignity” chair, obtained patents and formed a company. Johnson signed a contract with Erickson to allow Erickson to find investors who might want to invest in the company or patents. 

“Erickson was unsuccessful and this arrangement ended in May of 2012 with a letter from Johnson’s lawyer to Erickson,” Miller wrote in an affidavit for a search warrant of Erickson’s property. Meanwhile, Miller said, Erickson continued to raise money for the Dignity wheelchair.

“Erickson used Dignity’s existing literature as props to convince investors to give Erickson money based on the false premise that Erickson was using money for business development,” he said.

The document alleged Erickson then used the money he raised for his own lifestyle expenses. 

The FBI and IRS searched all of Erickson’s records at his home and office.

“We recreated a very good financial picture of what happened,” IRS special agent Corey Vickery told Religion Unplugged. “Mr. Erickson, uh, kept pretty good records of his investors, or I guess you could call his victims” with records dating back to the 1990s. And Erickson’s abilities to present legal documents as real along with his charismatic personality managed to dupe people of all types into giving him money. 

“He just had a really unusual charm,” said Miller, the FBI agent. “Often in fraud cases, victims are motivated largely by greed. That's why they fall for exorbitant promises of huge profits. And that was an element in this case, but Paul really tried to appeal to their better angels in a way.”

Kathy Bazoian Phelps is an attorney in California specializing in Ponzi schemes. She said the reason most Ponzi scheme artists such as Bernie Madoff or Paul Erickson grow their ventures is through their ability to gain people’s trust through networks, including religious networks. Madoff, for example, recruited many investors from his own Jewish networks, friendships, and religious organizations and charities. 

Most people “trust the people who are in their affinity groups, you know, whether that's a fraternity or a family or a cultural circle, um, or a business, or we see them often in religious organizations, in churches and parishes,” Bazoian Phelps told ReligionUnplugged. “We want to live in a world where we can trust our pastor.”

At Erickson’s sentencing hearing on July 6, 2020, in U.S. District Court in South Dakota, Schreier noted a list of people who wrote letters to the court on Erickson’s behalf, including Esquire magazine writers Tom Junod and Gay Talese. Evangelical author and radio host Eric Metaxas, a Yale classmate and friend to Erickson, also filed a letter on Erickson’s behalf. And the Catholic writer and former editor of First Things, Joseph “Jody” Bottom filed another letter. 

At Erickson’s sentencing hearing in 2020, Schreier noted that Erickson hired his own pastor to work for one of his purported companies, Compass Care, to recruit investments from parishioners and friends. Schreier said the pastor had to pay for business meals and travel expenses on his own credit card and was never reimbursed. 

“You did that because, as a pastor, he lends a level of credibility to your investments. People trust him. People trust pastors,” Schreier said. “Then you left him high and dry after ruining his personal reputation.”  

Hope for change or restitution? 

Back in December of 2020, as Erickson said in prison writing his Christmas letter, he pointed to the theologian Richard Rohr for those whose daily routines had been stripped away or whose identities had been cast away.

“Rohr offers that in that moment, you can discover ‘your True Self… who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God … who you were before you did anything right or anything wrong.’”  

Erickson turned more pastoral.

“In this Christmas season of birth and new life, don’t miss the one guaranteed opportunity arising out of a national re-set … a re-birth of who you are or were meant to be. Be watchful for the vision shown to John in Revelation 21:1, “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away’...,” he wrote. “If the events of 2020 have caused you to forget your True Self and left you stranded on an unfamiliar island, you can still go home again!” 

Meanwhile, at the end of the Infamous podcast reporting in the fall of 2022, Glader spoke with Erickson to ask him if he would make good on a promise he made in court to pay back millions in restitution to victims he defrauded. 

“Elocutions in modern court are meaningless,” Erickson said. He went on to say he believes he never defrauded anyone but, rather, just had some businesses not work out. 

Others, including his victims, law enforcement agencies and his ex-girlfriend, beg to differ.

“It sure seemed to me like he just, he lived an entire adult life kinda on the take on the grift, which is amazing,” said Driscoll, Butina’s attorney. 

Loretta Waltner, one of his former friends and victims in South Dakota, predicted Erickson will either “take a different lifestyle in a different way and be an honest person,” she said. “Or the FBI will be knocking on somebody else’s door.” 

“He’s one of those people,” she added, “if you put all that energy to good use, he could have made an amazing impact on people.”

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Paul Glader is the former executive editor of ReligionUnplugged.com and executive director of The Media Project. He has reported from dozens of countries for outlets ranging from The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel Online and others. Glader is currently senior editor for CNN Business, overseeing coverage of public companies including technology, retail, food and other sectors. He’s on X @PaulGlader.

Mary Cuddehe is a writer living in New York. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Monocle, Poder, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic and The Nation.