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Black Collar Crime: Baptist Pastor Gregory Neal Pleads Guilty to Stealing $130,000 to Pay Off Gambling Debts, Sentenced to Eighteen Months in Prison

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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.

Gregory Neal, the executive pastor of Journey Baptist Church in Barrington, New Hampshire, pleaded guilty to stealing $130,000 from the church to pay his gambling debts and was sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

News Center Maine reports:

A New Hampshire executive pastor has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing about $130,000 from his church to pay off gambling debts and make purchases.

Gregory Neal, of Barrington, 45, was sentenced in federal court Wednesday and ordered to pay back the Journey Baptist Church and the insurance company that covered a portion of the losses.

He pleaded guilty in April to one count of wire fraud.

“A man who abused his position of trust — as a leader of his church — and stole from his congregation to support his gambling habit has been brought to justice,” U.S. Attorney Jane Young said in a statement.

Prosecutors said that between January 2017 and March 2020, Neal made unauthorized withdrawals of the church’s funds to pay off his debts and made unauthorized purchases with church credit cards.

His lawyer asked for a sentence of five years of probation to allow Neal to continue running his carpentry business so he can pay back the church and support his family.

“When the theft was uncovered, Mr. Neal confessed and tried to make amends,” his sentencing memorandum said. “He repaid several thousand dollars and, after being confronted by law enforcement, saved additional money to repay. He attended Gambler’s Anonymous meetings and started a new business, building kitchen islands, to support his family.”

Included were letters of support from Neal’s wife and church parishioners.

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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IFB Preacher Donnie Romero Caught Cavorting With Prostitutes, Smoking Weed, and Gambling

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Donnie Romero is the pastor of Stedfast Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas. Romero is the bosom buddy of Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Yesterday, Anderson released a video detailing Romero’s resignation from Stedfast Baptist. According to Pope Anderson, Romero was cavorting with prostitutes, smoking weed, and gambling.  What’s next? Romero secretly used the NIV to study for his sermons? The good news is that according to Anderson’s and Romero’s soteriology, the fallen pastor is still saved. There’s nothing Romero can do to ever lose his salvation. Once saved, always saved, baby, even if Romero brings shame to his family or infects his wife with a STD.

Anderson must be livid over Romero exposing that his little club of IFB churches is just like the rest of the bunch; that for all their talk about soulwinning, homosexuality, and any human behavior they deem sinful, these “men of God” are no different from the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world.

Here’s Anderson  five-minute video:

Video Link

Here’s Anderson’s eighty minute speech to congregants at Stedfast Baptist. It is evident, at least to me, that Anderson views himself as the Apostle Paul of his little group of hyper-fundamentalist Baptist churches. Anderson has already chosen a new pastor for the church.

Video Link

Romero’s church bio states:

Pastor Donnie Romero was born in Western Colorado in 1982. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. In 2002 at the age of 19, he was saved through door to door soul winning. He met his wife ***** a few years later. In 2007, they started to attend an independent Baptist church and were married shortly thereafter. The Romero’s have been blessed with 7 wonderful children. Pastor Romero is now faithfully training up men to preach the gospel door to door as the bible teaches.

Pastor Romero does not believe that churches are started by bible colleges or denominations, but they are built by the Lord Jesus Christ, through soul winning and hard Bible preaching. He is a faithful soul winner and has a desire to see lives changed as a result of the Word of God. He also whole heartedly believes that the Bible is the final authority in all matters of life.

If you are up to it, please read the YouTube comments. You will gain fresh insight into how IFB Christians think. Some commenters believe Romero is a hero, a man of character for owning up to his “sins.”  That his confession shows that the “new” IFB church movement takes such behaviors seriously. Sure it does . . .

You can check out Romero’s sermons here. Please have a barf bag handy, you will need it!

Black Collar Crime: Evangelical Pastor Mark Millers Stands Accused of Ripping-Off Parishioners

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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.

Mark Miller, pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, was charged Monday with “two counts of obtaining money by false pretenses.” According to Miller, he has a drug and gambling addiction.

ABC-8 reports:

A former Sand Springs pastor now stands accused of swindling his parishioners out of thousands of dollars.

Mark Miller, 48, was taken into custody on Monday and charged with two counts of obtaining money by false pretenses over $500 or a con game after a year-long investigation.

For many, the news was a total shock.

“When you think about a pastor of a church and he’s stealing money from church members, it’s just shocking and sad,” said convenience store owner, MD Hossain.

Hossain says Miller would come into his store all the time, located right across the street from Broadway Baptist Church. He says Miller always seemed like a nice guy.

“He would buy drinks and gum,” said Hossain. “A very good customer.”

Now, the good customer and beloved former pastor of Broadway Baptist Church is facing allegations of conning parishioners out of thousands of dollars.

“It was $25,000 here, $12,000 there. It was significant,” said Captain Todd Enzbrenner with the Sand Springs Police Department.

According to the affidavit, Miller first started borrowing money in October of 2016. He allegedly told victims he needed the money to pay for his daughter’s college tuition but instead would use it on lavish things.

“He borrowed a large sum of money from a particular person, and then that victim tried to recoup the money several months later,” said Enzbrenner. “They found out that he was also borrowing money from other parishioners and using that money to go on expensive vacations.”

The affidavit also states Miller told detectives he had painkiller and gambling addictions. It says he would gamble the borrowed money to try to double it to pay back what he borrowed.

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Black Collar Crime: Catholic Church Accounting Clerk Barbara Snyder Convicted of Fraud

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Barbara Snyder, an accounting clerk at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Onalaska, Wisconsin, was convicted of stealing more than $800,000 from the church, using the money to gamble.

Anne Jungen, a reporter for the LaCrosse Tribune wrote in August, 2017:

The former accounting clerk at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Onalaska was convicted Friday of two federal charges that accused of her stealing more than $800,000 from church donors and falsifying her tax return.

Barbara Snyder, 59, between January 2006 and December 2015 received weekly church donations and paperwork documenting the amount collected. She was responsible for retaining the paperwork, depositing collections and maintaining accounting records reported annually online to a financial services company with a server based in Ohio.

During her tenure, Snyder misappropriated $832,210 for “the purposes of wagering such funds at nearby casinos,” falsified accounting records and bank deposit slips and covered her misconduct by throwing out paperwork that documented actual church donations, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Madison.
Snyder reported an income of $162,949 on her 2015 tax return, although prosecutors contend her income “was greater than that reported,” the complaint reported.

She pleaded guilty to wire fraud and making false statements on tax returns and agreed to make restitution as part of the agreement.

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Yesterday, Snyder was sentenced to four years in prison.

A former accounting clerk at a church in Onalaska has been sentenced to four years in federal prison for stealing from her congregation.

Fifty-nine-year-old Barbara Snyder, of West Salem, was accused of stealing more than $800,000 from St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church when she was responsible for depositing church collections and maintaining accounting records between 2006 and 2015. Authorities said she used the money to gamble at casinos.

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