Pittsburgh church founder sentenced for labor trafficking, fraud charges

A Pittsburgh woman who founded her own church, recruited and abused women in it, then perpetrated a years-long fraud operating a fake travel agency will spend 12 years in prison.

Tracie Dickey, also known as Tracie Williams, 57, was sentenced on Monday on wire fraud and labor trafficking charges in Chicago.

She was found guilty by a jury in 2019 with crimes that dated from 2005 through February 2013, including holding at least four victims in forced labor for more than 10 years.

During those years, prosecutors said, Dickey took in more than $1 million, primarily from taking her followers’ wages and donations.

Documents in Dickey’s case lay out a complex scheme where she used both psychological and physical control of her church members to get rich.

“Defendant’s role as bishop was not incidental to her fraud — it was essential to it,” the prosecution wrote in a sentencing document. “Defendant was methodical in the way she went about solidifying her control over her followers, as was evident from the testimony of her victims at trial. Defendant did not happen upon a group of uniquely compliant or vulnerable young women – instead, she systematically manipulated and abused them until they saw no other path forward than total obedience.”

It referred to the church as a cult.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Dickey founded Deliverance Tabernacle Ministries, which operated in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida, more than 15 years ago. The church’s Facebook page listed its address at a location that is a Bloomfield post office.

Dickey started out as a kind, motherly figure in whom the young women she recruited could confide. Once they trusted her, the prosecution said, abuse began.

“In defendant’s ministry, obedience to defendant was obedience to God,” the prosecution wrote. “Failure to obey the defendant was defying God and risking physical and spiritual harm. Defendant slowly and systematically isolated her followers, cutting off their contact with family and friends, until their whole world was defendant’s ministry and defendant’s good graces were the only measure of worth. Defiance – no matter how small – was met with serious consequences, including being slapped, hit, punched, choked, or being left homeless or without food.”

Once she had attained control of her followers, the prosecution said, she demanded and received full control over their work and pay.

“Defendant reinforced her teachings by requiring the girls to live together, by using group dynamics and fear to shame those who failed to comply, and then by threatening the basic stability of their lives – restricting food, sleep, and even a place to stay.”

She then held the women in a state of servitude, prosecutors said. Some women described being forced to live without water or electricity, and even being homeless, to comply with Dickey’s demands.

As part of the scheme that led to the federal charges against her, Dickey forced her followers — all young women — to get jobs as hotel desk clerks. She even relocated most of her church to Orlando where it would be easy to get that kind of work, the government said.

Then, it continued, Dickey created a travel agency under her own name, World Ambassador Travel. She taught the women in her church how to attribute reservations in the hotels where they worked so that her agency would get a commission, even though it did no actual booking.

“Unlike many con artists and fraudsters, defendant did not simply cheat others out of their money through some sort of investment scheme or ordinary fraud,” prosecutors wrote. “She forced them to work and then took every dollar of their earnings for her own benefit. She did so – not at gun point, but instead by means more insidious and cruel – by repeated physical and psychological abuse that left her victims apologizing to her even when they were forced to flee her church to preserve their own lives.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago said that Dickey used the proceeds of her fraud on travel to fine hotels, rented a lavish villa and spent thousands on personal expenses such as beauty treatments. During an FBI search at the villa, investigators found thousands of dollars worth of items of new, designer clothing, still with tags on them.

In sentencing documents, the government noted that, even while in custody, Dickey was continuing to perpetrate fraud, creating other church websites through which people could donate.

She had more than $17,000 in her inmate trust account, prosecutors said.

Even after trial, some of Dickey’s followers still wrote letters of support, arguing that she had been wrongfully convicted.

Elder Mazie Stoner, of Sheraden, wrote to the court that Dickey had been her pastor for more than 21 years.

“I know I’ve been a great challenge to guide and watch over,” she wrote. “I’ve tried to walk away from her and God a few times and done some things that I’m not proud of.

“She has been a friend, a pastor and a spiritual mother to me through it all. Through her faith in God she stood right by my side, even now the persecution she is enduring, she does it with so much grace and maturity.”