A U.S. District judge has sentenced a Lubbock church finance manager to more than four years in federal prison for embezzling $261,440.20 from the church, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Nathan Allen Webb, 43, a former employee of Christ the King Cathedral Church, pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in February.
Prosecutors said Webb had been the only church employee with access to the church’s PayPal and Venmo accounts. Over the course of a year and a half, Webb made more than 230 unauthorized transfers from the church accounts to himself. Webb admitted to embezzling the nearly $261,500 in parishioner donations during the 18-month period, according to the news release.
Prosecutors alleged that Webb concealed his fraudulent activities from the church finance committee and diocese by altering bank statements to make debit transactions appear as credits on the church’s PayPal and Venmo accounts.
According to prosecutors, Webb took a church laptop with him on a trip to Colombia, South America, in February 2021. While in Colombia, Webb transferred $2,914.07 from the church’s PayPal account to his own PayPal account before sending the funds to his personal bank account on March 2, 2021.
Church leaders confronted Webb the next day after discovering the fraudulent transactions. Prosecutors said that Webb refused to leave Colombia, eventually overstaying his visa. When the Colombian government ordered Webb to leave the country, he bought a plane ticket from Cartegna to Fort Lauderdale.
However, Webb did not board the flight to Fort Lauderdale, allegedly because he knew FBI agents were waiting for him at the airport. Instead, he traveled over 500 miles inland to Pereira, where Colombian officials arrested him, the news release stated.
Prosecutors said Colombian officials held Webb for some time based on an Interpol Red Notice. However, the U.S. government was able to negotiate his release and extradite him to Texas.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix sentenced Webb on May 26 to 51 months in federal prison and ordered him to pay $261,440.20 in restitution.
According to the news release, the judge also ruled that an obstruction of justice enhancement was appropriate for Webb, given his calculated efforts to evade arrest.
The FBI’s Dallas Field Office investigated the fraud with the assistance of their colleagues in Colombia, while Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Howey prosecuted the case.
That’s the WRONG Christ the King Church photo….that’s Christ the King in DALLAS, Texas. Christ the King Cathedral in Lubbock is a more modern looking edifice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_Christ_the_King_(Lubbock,_Texas)#/media/File:Christ_the_King_Cathedral_3_-_Lubbock,_TX.jpg