Man seeks leniency on tax charges

A former Upper St. Clair church administrator who stole more than $1 million from his church is asking for leniency on related federal tax charges when he is sentenced Tuesday.

David Reiter pleaded guilty in December to 16 counts, including willful failure to pay employment payroll taxes and filing false income tax returns.

Reiter, 52, of South Park, was the business administrator at Westminster Presbyterian Church and was responsible for payroll and keeping the books.

He was sentenced in state court in January 2020 to 10 to 20 years for the theft, a term later reduced to five to 10 years.

Federal authorities then indicted him on charges of failure to pay taxes related to the stolen money. He admitted that he failed to pay $805,000 in employee payroll taxes from 2016 to 2018 and did not accurately report his personal income.

U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose will sentence him by video on Tuesday. His lawyer, David Chontos, said in court papers that his client’s federal sentence should be served at the same time as his state term as opposed to tacked on the

end. He’s already served more than 25 months. The law provides for not more than five years in federal prison.

Reiter’s friends and family have presented numerous letters to the judge on his behalf.

“Achorus of people have spoken on David’s character and his life,” Mr. Chontos said. “This group, all who know David better than all who read this writing, concur that David is worthy of leniency.”

Mr. Chontos said Reiter’s wife was largely to blame.

“Abuse knows no boundaries,” he wrote. “David was a victim of that. Verbal and mental abuse from his wife.”

People who know him said his wife, Connie Jo Reiter, put pressure on him to provide material possessions and vacations they couldn’t otherwise afford, his defense said.

“While it does not excuse his conduct, it helps explain why the person so many people spoke glowingly about in high school and college became a felon,” Mr. Chontos wrote.

He said Reiter has shown remorse and recognizes that he had “gone astray and was chasing an evil mistress — money.”

The church’s board of directors in 2018 checked an audit and found money missing from the church’s bank account and its early childhood education programs, as well as charges made on the church credit card account.

Federal authorities said Reiter had been stealing since 2011, using the money for personal expenses and trips to Disney World, King’s Island and other amusement parks.

He pleaded guilty in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court in 2019 to theft, receiving stolen property and a variety of other offenses. In addition to his prison term, Judge Jeffrey Manning ordered him to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution.

Connie Jo Reiter pleaded no contest to conspiracy and receiving stolen property and received three years of probation, with one year on house arrest.