Church employee steals $360,000, uses pastor’s credit card to buy jewelry, feds say
An administrator of a church stole more than $360,000 in church funds as part of an embezzlement scheme that went on for five years in northern California, federal prosecutors said.
Chanell Easton did so in a variety of ways from 2013 to 2018, including by using credit cards linked to St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Yuba City, according to court documents. She paid the cards off with the church’s money, prosecutors said.
One of the cards belonged to a youth pastor, whose identity she used to buy items worth thousands of dollars on online retailer Zappos, prosecutors said.
With the pastor’s card, Easton bought jewelry, including a rose gold ring and a gold St. Christopher necklace, as well as a green lace halter top — items that “had no possible legitimate church-related purposes,” court documents say.
She also charged hair salon expenses, a $2,072.20 vacation home rental in Fort Bragg, California, and two VIP country music concert tickets worth $923.54 to the church’s credit cards, according to prosecutors and court documents.
Easton, a 38-year-old resident of Oklahoma City, was found guilty on two counts of aggravated identity theft March 4, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California announced March 5.
In May 2022, she was indicted on 22 counts of wire fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft in connection with the stolen church funds, The Sacramento Bee previously reported.
Easton pleaded guilty to the counts of wire fraud on Oct. 17, 2023, but maintained her innocence when it came to the aggravated identity theft charges, which she pleaded not guilty to, according to prosecutors.
Adam Gasner, her defense attorney, told McClatchy News on March 6 that “Easton previously expressed remorse and admitted wrongdoing when she plead guilty to wire-fraud in relation to the theft in this case.”
When it came to Easton using the pastor’s name and credit card, Gasner acknowledged this was theft and credit card fraud, but the attorney argued it didn’t amount to aggravated identity theft because other church members were allowed to use his card, a trial brief says.
“We respect the decision of the judge, who found differently,” Gasner said.
McClatchy News contacted St. Andrew Presbyterian Church for comment on March 6 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
Thousands spent on cellphones and bills
Easton used her position as church administrator to her advantage, as she was responsible for church finances, according to a trial brief submitted by the government.
Though the church had a reporting and oversight structure, “it provided little effective oversight, and Easton exploited the structural weakness to her advantage and avoided detection throughout her years’ long embezzlement scheme,” the trial brief says.
In addition to using church credit cards, Easton transferred money from church bank accounts to her bank account, according to prosecutors.
She used the money to pay off her own credit card, to pay cellphone bills and to purchase new phones, prosecutors said.
According to a superseding indictment, more than $14,000 went toward cellphone bills and new phones for Easton and her family.
“Easton also stole money from the church by writing checks to others for personal expenses and by writing checks to herself, on which she forged the signatures of the church’s treasurer or the head volunteer of the church’s food pantry,” prosecutors said.
Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 25, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
She faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of wire fraud, as well as a mandatory sentence of two years in prison for each count of aggravated identity theft, prosecutors said.
Easton is married to Aaron Easton, the former police chief of Marysville, the Sacramento Bee reported in May 2022.
Mystery surrounds the death of Aaron Easton’s former wife, Sara Easton, who died of a head gunshot wound in 2015, the Sacramento Bee reported in January 2023.
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