Maybe the $102,000 BMW should have tipped off churchgoers in Ripon, California (pop. 14,000), that Pastor Randall Radic was up to no good. But they never imagined he was illegally selling their church (and his soul) right out from under them. The pastor forged papers for a $200,000 loan, using the church as collateral, then sold the house of worship for $525,000 before authorities caught up with him.

He's due to be sentenced Thursday, and as forgiving as his God-loving flock might be, many of them have been pushing for a full 16-month maximum sentence. It looks, however, like he won't serve any more than the six months he's already spent behind bars awaiting trial. Instead, AP reports today, he's snitched on a cellmate and cut a deal.

Then he cut another deal with a publisher for a book about his exploits—it's the fruit of a lengthy labor that began with a letter to blogger Dr. Blogstein in which he pleaded:

I need an agent, so I can get an advance, so I can eat and finish my book.... Can you do anything to succor a former Old Catholic Priest gone wrong? Who simply embezzled, but HAS learned his lesson (the hard way), having been incarcerated with pedophiles, murderers and gangbangers.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Blogstein couldn't do anything for the guy. But according to AP, Radic did find a sucker to publish The Sound of Meat, his jailhouse memoir in which he not only owns up to his church theft but many other sins, he's he's said. The book is set to be published by Ephemera Bound on July 30, 2007.

Surely, though, a former man of the cloth is penitent over the ordeal, especially as his old congregation struggles to pay tens of thousands of dollars in transactions fees it cost them to get their church back.

"I'm spending time with my fiancée, who stood by me through all of this," Radic told Dr. Blogenstein back in July before his sentencing. "I'm also smoking good cigars and drinking wine."