Kansas City, Mo. ? A church that had accepted money from convicted former pharmacist Robert Courtney on Monday announced a plan to give $600,000 to victims of Courtney’s drug dilution scheme.

“We would, in no way, try to hold on to funds that were illegally gained,” said J. Lowell Harrup, senior pastor of the Northland Cathedral. “You don’t build a church that way.”

Courtney had contributed stock worth $600,000 to the Northland Cathedral’s building fund in 1999 and 2000.

He told investigators that he watered down chemotherapy drugs to raise money to meet his church pledge. Later, he disclosed that he had diluted drugs for a decade.

Harrup said the announcement was timed to come after criminal issues in the case had been resolved.

Courtney was sentenced in December to 30 years in prison for diluting chemotherapy drugs he sent to a Kansas City oncologist.

His wife, Laura Courtney, recently was sentenced to one day of unsupervised probation for making a false statement to investigators early in the case.

Harrup said the church soon would make a $250,000 contribution to an existing $11 million restitution fund being administered by the federal court in Kansas City.

Courtney’s original contributions were spent in a $12 million church building project that concluded just after his arrest in August 2001.

The $250,000 contribution will be funded through the sale of church properties.

The church also will establish a $350,000 trust fund that will be administered independently from the church and will be distributed among Courtney’s victims, Harrup said.

Victims and their families who qualified for federal restitution would be eligible to draw proportional shares from the smaller trust established by the church, Harrup said.

“The amount of money is a significant burden to the church,” said G. Stanton Masters, a church member and lawyer who has helped Harrup with legal issues.

U.S. Atty. Todd Graves, whose office prosecuted Courtney, praised Northland.

“This is a matter of conscience,” said Graves. “I think this is a great step for the church. Only they can arrive at a just amount.”