Alabama Methodist church went belly up after its secretary stole all of its cash

OF the $89,440.32 stolen by Carmen Ramer Davis, 59, from the Brooklyn Congregational Methodist Church in Coffee County, a portion was spent in casinos in Mississippi and Alabama.

Davis, according this report, was sentenced on Good Friday to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay back the cash.

Last year she pleaded guilty to eight counts of wire fraud.

The church discovered it had been robbed in 2019 when a church leader received a bank letter about insufficient funds to cover a $75 cheque from its account.

As a consequence of losing almost $90,000, the church was forced to close, according to US Attorney Sandra Stewart. She said in a statement:

The crimes committed by Ms. Davis victimized an entire faith community. The harm will continue to be felt for quite some time. I am hopeful that the sentence imposed will deter others from engaging in such deceitful conduct.

US District Judge R Austin Huffaker Jr ordered Davis to serve one year of supervised release after she leaves prison as part of her sentencing.

The church appointed Davis as its secretary in 2006, which gave her access to its bank account to pay the congregation’s bills.

Prosecutors said Davis obtained a debit card for the church account without church leaders knowing, and that she used the card to make fraudulent cash withdrawals and to purchase personal items.

An investigation into the fraud revealed Davis used some of the church’s money to pay for trips to casinos in Mississippi and Alabama.

Huffaker said during Friday’s sentencing hearing that Davis defrauded the church from July 2008 to July 2019. She was ordered by the judge to pay restitution to the church in that amount.

This, David told the court, was something she was unable to do, claiming that she no longer possessed the money because she gambled it away and used it to support her own needs.

You can also support my work via a one-off donation via PayPal, Buy Me a Coffee or GofundMe.

If you spot any typos in this report, please alert me via email: freethinkered@aol.com

Latest posts

2 responses to “Alabama Methodist church went belly up after its secretary stole all of its cash”

  1. God helps those that help themselves…

    Like

  2. Perhaps it is easier to steal from a church because those working for it are assumed to be honest. The reality dawns when the money is gone. There was a time when it was not expected that churches would harbour priests. We seem to have moved a long way from that particular belief.

    The belief that seems to remains with Christians is that atheists are bad people who cannot be trusted.

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: