Saturday, January 30, 2010

Rev. Isaias Rivera arrested

Stealing, theft, embezzlement… it all has such a negative ring to it. It makes me wonder why a pastor would steal from his own church.

The pastor of a Lawrence church, his wife, and the church's secretary have been charged with embezzling almost $137,000 from the congregation's bank account.

Pastor Isaias Rivera of  Tabernaculo de Adoracion y Musica denies the charges.

Posted by at

Comments (2)

Loading... Logging you in...
Dashboard | Edit profile | Logout
  • Logged in as
Loading...
+1 Vote up Vote down
I Am The Blog's avatar - Go to profile

I Am The Blog 23p · 794 weeks ago

That's pretty sad, but not surprising. Assuming the crime is confirmed, my guess is that the pastor will do a "heart-felt" mea culpa about letting God and his congregation down, he'll get a reduced judgment because he's a man of God, and he'll soon find a new church who will take him in.

What's more surprising to me is the amount of money. $137,000 embezzled from one church?! Which means the church must have a lot more than that, otherwise it would have been noticed sooner. No wonder churches are still expanding even during the economic crisis, they're probably doing better than most businesses are.
Loading...
+1 Vote up Vote down
Baconsbud's avatar - Go to profile

Baconsbud 96p · 794 weeks ago

I always wonder how anyone in a church actually gets caught embezzling money. Unless all the money given to them is a check or credit cards there are large amounts of cash which can easily be set aside.

I Am, I don't see that as tough to keep hidden fairly easily since it was embezzled over a 5 year time frame. I noticed that this happened somewhere near Boston. If the church has 200 regular members giving about 10% of their income it can easily add up to a large number. If the average income of members is 35,000 and they all give 10% that is an income of 700,000. They would have averaged embezzling 27400 a year which is less then 4%.

Post a new comment

Comments by