Employee Betrays Church, Embezzles $16k
A woman from North Carolina has been arrested for embezzling funds while working at a church daycare. Carol C. Gomez, 57, from Stony Point, was charged with one count of theft by an employee on July 29 by the Alexander County Sheriff’s Office. The charges followed a report from the First Baptist Church of Taylorsville, where she was managing the daycare and allegedly stole approximately $16,000 over three years. Gomez appeared in court for the first time on August 5 and was released on a $25,000 bond.
In a separate incident in California, Chanell Easton, 38, was convicted of embezzling over $360,000 from St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Yuba City. Easton, who was a former church administrator and the wife of a former police chief, was found guilty of two counts of aggravated identity theft. Between 2013 and 2018, she used several church-affiliated credit cards for personal expenses, including purchases at a hair salon, retail stores, and a vacation rental service. One of the cards belonged to the church’s youth ministry pastor, whose identity she used to make purchases from Zappos.com.
Another embezzlement case involved Andrew Patrick Landsperger, a former church accountant in Virginia. Landsperger received a five-year prison sentence for stealing over $176,000 from Galilee Episcopal Church of Virginia Beach. From January to August 2022, he made unauthorized transactions on his Amazon account using the church’s credit card and altered his salary through the church’s payroll system. Although the church experienced a total loss of $176,536, they recovered $112,324 through insurance and credit card company reimbursement.
Landsperger’s misuse of church funds included unauthorized Amazon transactions totaling $34,653.72 and $134,839.52 in overpayments due to payroll alterations. Besides his prison sentence, he was ordered to pay restitution for the remaining $64,199 lost through his fraudulent activities.
These cases underscore a disturbing trend of embezzlement within church communities, where trusted employees have taken advantage of their positions for personal gain. The affected churches have pursued legal measures to recover their losses and hold the responsible individuals accountable.