(RNS) — Since he was elected to his role a year ago, the Rev. Brian K. Blackwell, head of the African Methodist Episcopal Church’s retirement services department, has received one question hundreds of times: “When am I going to get my money?”
As of Wednesday (Sept. 17), Blackwell, the church and participants in its retirement plan who lost a substantial percentage of funds — leaving many with about 30% of what they had hoped to use for retirement — are closer to having an answer.
On Aug. 18, Judge S. Thomas Anderson of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee approved $60 million in partial settlements for the thousands of clergy and staff who learned much of the retirement money was missing. Now, 30 days after the court’s approval, the deadline for appeals will pass, lawyers involved in the litigation said.
RELATED: Federal Judge Approves Partial Settlement for Lost AME Church Retirement Funds
“We’re hopeful that after tomorrow (Sept. 17), we can work to facilitate access to these settlement funds as soon as possible,” Matt Lee, co-lead counsel for the plaintiffs, told Religion News Service on Tuesday via email. “I believe that there’s a good chance that process will start as soon as next week.”
Early in the litigation — which the judge noted involved “over a million-and-a-half pages of documents” — the plaintiffs said some $88.4 million was lost from the retirement fund plan of the historically Black denomination. The AME Church said it was the result of embezzlement by the Rev. Jerome V. Harris, who retired in 2021 after 21 years as head of the retirement department. Harris, who the denomination said provided “deceptive, false and grossly inflated financial statements” about the retirement plan, died in 2024, of a heart attack.
The partial settlements for the plaintiffs — some 4,500 people whose single case was consolidated from six — are with the denomination and Newport Group Inc., a third-party administrator involved with the church’s retirement services. The AME Church provided $20 million into a settlement fund and Newport put in $40 million, totaling $60 million plus any interest.
Asked what total percentage of the funds plan participants hoped to recoup will end up in their accounts, Lee said, “We expect the settlement will more than double plan participants’ current account balances and restore them to about 61.5% of the June 30, 2021 statement balance.”
Two Florida ministers who had objected to the settlement both told RNS in recent weeks they had no plans to appeal. “However,” added the Rev. Charles Larkin Scott Sr., of Royal Palm Beach, in an email, “the need to have oversight and scrutiny on the remaining process is necessary.”
Scott has written to the court that his “financial devastation has forced dependence on adult children after a lifetime of self-reliance.” Other plan participants described in interviews how their quality of life was diminished and plans for their children were affected in the wake of the retirement fund losses. The Rev. J. Edgar Boyd, a leader of the “AMEs for Justice and Accountability” group, has said he heard from retired clergy whose economic situations have been “imperiled tremendously.”
A settlement administrator is expected to transfer funds to a trust from which eligible plan members or their beneficiaries can receive distributions. The change in the accounts is expected to occur automatically, Lee said.
Asked to comment on the timing of the next steps, Douglass Selby, general counsel of the AME Church, told RNS he had “no further comment at this time.”
When the judicial decision was issued in August, he told Religion News Service: “Obviously, we still have a ways to go to get our plan participants who suffered this wrong fully restored to their financial position, but this is an important series of first steps.”
