Grace Cathedral accused of taking woman’s life savings
MEGACHURCH /
Ernest Angley’s church is accused of coercing an elderly woman in suburban Chicago to hand over her life savings —$ 340,000.
The woman has dementia and is bipolar. The Cook County Public Guardian is caring for her and is fighting to reclaim the money.
According to the CBS affiliate in Chicago, WBBM, Bridget Pollard, 76, has lived by herself since her husband died in 2015.
The childless woman lived in hoarding conditions and blocked relatives’ efforts to help her, Pollard’s niece Bridget Johnson told the TV station.
The niece told the station that Pollard emptied out her late husband’s state pension and then wrote a $ 340,000 check to Grace Cathedral, Angley’s megachurch in Cuyahoga Falls.
“She was basically stalked by the church to give money,” Dawn Lawkowski- Keller of the Public Guardian’s Office told WBBM. “The literature talks about how you’ll go to heaven if you give this money.”
The Public Guardian’s Office is now suing the church for the money.
“I was able to freeze $ 340,000 in their bank account at Huntington Bank,” Lawkowski- Keller told the Beacon Journal/ Ohio. com.
According to her niece, Pollard hadn’t been to the church in many years and visited only a handful of times, once for her baptism. She stayed connected through a singer at the church, Corliss Whitney, who is named in the public guardian lawsuit.
“Miss Whitney became her power of attorney. She tried to petition to become her guardian, which is very unusual,” Lawkowski- Keller told the TV station. “She never once tried to remove her from that bad situation.”
A church attorney declined comment to the station; WBBM could not reach Whitney for comment.