Florida church bookkeeper sentenced to federal prison after stealing $875,000 from parish

CNA Staff, Nov 15, 2024 / 14:00 pm

A bookkeeper at a Florida Catholic parish has been sentenced to more than two years of federal prison after stealing nearly $900,000 from the church at which she managed financial records. 

Heather Darrey will spend 27 months in prison on a wire fraud conviction over her $875,323 theft from Christ the King Parish in south Tampa, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. 

The prosecutor’s office did not name the parish, but the Tampa Bay Times identified the church in question as Christ the King.

Darrey worked as the records and finance manager at the parish, the U.S. attorney’s office said. 

She “abused her position of trust by engaging in a scheme in which she created false and fraudulent bank checks drawn against [the church’s] business bank account and made them payable to her own account,” the prosecutor’s office said. 

Checks were also made payable to her mortgage company and other creditors.

Prosecutors said Darrey would draft legitimate checks to parish vendors and have them signed, after which she would destroy those checks and make out fraudulent ones for herself.

Darrey also “input false and fraudulent data” into the parish’s accounting software system. 

The money was “largely spent on mortgage payments, car and boat loans, and credit card bills for clothing, restaurants, vacations, and concert tickets,” the prosecutor said. 

The bookkeeper had reportedly attempted to minimize the amount she had stolen from the parish when officials looked into the funding discrepancies there. She also reportedly asked the church not to report the matter to law enforcement. 

Darrey had previously pleaded guilty on June 6. The court also entered an “order of forfeiture” for the bookkeeper to repay the proceeds of her crime. 

The theft “financially hobbled” Christ the King Church, the Tampa Bay Times reported, with the stolen funds “muddling a $7 million building project and damaging the congregation’s trust.”