The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Nancy Bertine, the now ex-wife of Pastor Lloyd Bertine, stands accused of stealing $182,000 over a four year period from Gulf to Lake Church in Crystal River, Florida. Gulf to Lake is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.
According to Citrus County Sheriff’s Office online booking records, Nancy Ellen Mitchell Bertine, 74, of Hernando, is charged with scheme to defraud to obtain property valued more than $50,000 and grand theft of more than $100,000, according to Citrus County court records.
Deputies arrested Bertine on July 24 after a months-long investigation, the Citrus County Chronicle reported. The probe revealed hundreds of personal purchases made with the nonprofit business account of the Gulf to Lake Baptist Church in Crystal River, the newspaper reported.
According to a criminal complaint, the church’s financial department discovered that numerous fraudulent transactions had been made on their Amazon account by Bertine.
Deputies began a criminal investigation on Feb. 5 into the grand theft, in which $182,610.16 was missing, court documents state.
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The dissolution of a marriage earlier this year between Bertine and Lloyd Bertine, the head pastor who founded the church in January 1995, led to the discovery of the alleged embezzled funds.
Court documents state that the pastor had learned his wife was having an extramarital affair. She had been helping to manage the finances of the church but was fired from her position.
“Pastor Bertine and finance staff … quickly realized that on the defendants’ church office computer, there was an Amazon account opened in the defendants’ name solely,” court documents stated.
An investigation determined that Nancy Bertine was using the church’s nonprofit credit card, through Capital One, to make purchases for herself.
Some of the items included women’s clothing items, hair products and hair dye kits, cosmetics, dog food and cat food, documents stated. There were also more than $37,000 in fraudulent purchases from Amazon between 2022 and 2024.
“Yeah, I did it, I ordered those items, just like I ordered all the other items for the church that people asked me to order,” Nancy Bertine told investigators, according to the criminal complaint. “I’ve ordered a lot of stuff; I mean a lot! I didn’t even think about it at the time I was ordering those things, I just ordered them and the church would pay the bill.”
After pulling financial records, detectives learned that the defendant had made 1,433 purchases from Amazon from 2021 to 2024 that totaled $46,516.36. There were 2,098 charges made to the church’s credit card, the Chronicle reported.
She allegedly spent $196,000 but has paid back nearly $14,000 of the personal expenses.
“What happened was falsifying the records of what was being purchased and that’s why we never knew,” Lloyd Bertine told WFLA-TV.
The pastor said his ex-wife has given written notice that she will repay the funds and has money in her account to do so.
“She has the money from selling our house that she can use to repay everything,” he told the television station.
Nancy Bertine is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 8.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Wow, that’s a lot of money that she stole without oversight! Every church I was in had to be transparent down to line items in their expenditures.
If the Rev has faith, The Lord will provide him a place to sleep after she sells their house. In a pinch, The Rev can sleep in the pews till something turns up.
She was the founder/head pastor’s wife, a “Christian woman,” and maybe that’s why her financial decisions weren’t questioned until after their marriage fizzled. In any case, OC is right. Nancy should not have been able to buy things without proper oversight/accounting principles in force. Reminds me of a church I knew where they trusted one of their brethren (without oversight) to pay the bills. He had a gambling addiction and stole money from the church’s coffers for it. They forgave him but I don’t know whether he paid them back or not. That can be a major setback to a small, struggling church, which this one was. The church continued to operate for some years after that but now it’s defunct.