An assistant Episcopal Church treasurer and CPA in Wilkes-Barre has been sentenced to five years’ probation and ordered to make restitution following his conviction for embezzlement.
David Williams, 64, of Park Avenue, Wilkes-Barre, was convicted of stealing $20,000 from the church. A forensic audit revealed his theft totaled $76,659.11 from 2011 to 2018, but the majority was outside the state’s statute of limitations.
Williams admitted to the theft, while his wife blamed it on rising medical bills. Initially, he admitted to stealing only $10,000.
The theft was discovered when church officials installed new accounting software and discovered that the numbers did not add up.
I donated over $1500 to this church (in church envelopes) and $3000+ in the church offering plate without self identification of my money, at a time when I couldn’t even afford to pay my bills or pay for groceries or pay my mortgage. But I was giving out of the goodness of my heart. The church had a very active program with the homeless and low income community and this is something that I greatly wanted to assist with (even when I couldn’t pay my own bills, at least I had a roof over my head). Well, apparently ALL of the money from the offering plates plus $1000 in my envelopes was stolen by this man. They actually started looking into the discrepancies after I reported that my tax forms only reported $500 from church envelopes when I had given $1500. The church did an investigation and everything came to light. But no one ever got back to me, specifically, about my missing $1000.
At the time that this happened, the priest advised the congregation to “pray for this man”. How about give me my $4000 back and I’ll donate it to an organization that could really benefit instead of this evil thief? He has to pay back $20,000 of $76,000 he stole. Believe me he can afford the $76,000, this man lives in a gigantic house overlooking the city that he stole from. I WANT MY MONEY BACK! HOW DARE YOU David Williams???!!!
You may want to contact the bishop diocesan about these issues.