GREENVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) – A man convicted of conspiring with his mother to steal $1.5 million from a Tennessee Baptist church was sentenced Oct. 4 to just over four years in prison.
Senior U.S. District Judge Leon Jordan sentenced Michael Dean Whitt, 44, to 51 months in federal prison, the maximum allowed by law, for conspiracy to commit bank fraud and money laundering.
Authorities say Whitt conspired with his mother, Barbara Whitt, to embezzle funds from First Baptist Church in Morristown, Tenn., over a period spanning nearly three years. As financial secretary at the church for 46 years, she confessed to writing more than 1,600 checks to herself to draw $1,514,593 from the church’s general checking account.
Whitt was not authorized to sign checks, so she made them out to “Cash” and then had them signed by claiming they were for legitimate expenses. She then typed her name to make them payable to “Cash – Barbara Whitt” and cashed them at a nearby SunTrust bank on her lunch hour.
Responsible for receiving the bank statements and managing the checking account, she held other checks written for legitimate expenses to artificially inflate the balance. The scheme worked until May 2010, when a church audit found $500,000 was missing.
Prosecutors said she took the money at her son’s “request and direction.” He used the cash to buy prepaid credit cards to purchase items including motor vehicles, accessories for his motorcycle and trucks, watches, consumer electronics and improvements to the house where they both lived. He also used funds to buy drugs, especially Oxycodone and Xanax.
Michael Whitt was supposed to be sentenced at the same time as his mother, but he violated conditions of his supervised release from jail by refusing to take drug tests or to participate in drug counseling.
Arguing for a reduced sentence, Whitt’s lawyer, Robert Dickert, blamed his crimes on an “over-indulgent mother” who “furnished a good bit of money to her son.”
U.S. States Attorney William Killen countered that Whitt should receive the maximum sentence as a deterrent to others. “The criminal conduct of Michael and Barbara Whitt shook their community,” he wrote. “Congregants who gave to First Baptist Church did not expect their tithes and offerings to be squandered upon an altar of dysfunctional consumerism and hedonistic drug abuse.”
The judge sided with the prosecutor, noting that Barbara Whitt had sought and received forgiveness from both First Baptist and another congregation where she is a member. “I haven’t heard anyone forgive you,” Jordan said, according to a report by the Knoxville News Sentinel.
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Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.