D.A.: Ex-church treasurer embezzled $391,000
The former treasurer of a Lutheran church in Laureldale embezzled about $391,000 from the congregation over a decade, Berks County detectives said Wednesday.
Melanie L. Kummerer, 54, of Loose Lane, Ontelaunee Township, surrendered to detectives from the district attorney’s office Tuesday to face charges of theft by deception, theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received, security execution of documents by deception and related counts.
She was free on $10,000 bail after arraignment later Tuesday before District Judge Dean R. Patton.
The investigation began in July when a representative of Calvary Lutheran Church, 1009 Elizabeth Ave., reported a theft to Laureldale police that resulted in significant financial loss.
Laureldale police asked county detectives for assistance.
According to investigators:
Kummerer was appointed to the part-time position of central treasurer of Calvary Lutheran in January 2009. She held the position until Feb. 25, 2019, when she resigned.
She received a predetermined yearly stipend of $2,503 for maintaining and securing church financial records at her residence. In August 2018, the church installed a new pastor. During their interview of the new pastor, the Rev. Drew Neidig, the leadership of the church raised concerns about the church’s finances.
In October 2018, Neidig attended his first finance committee meeting and asked Kummerer to provide the committee with a balance sheet and income statement sheet at all future meetings.
Kummerer failed to produce the balance sheets and income statement sheets at the next two meetings, providing various excuses for not complying with the request.
On Oct. 4, 2019, Calvary Lutheran Church provided investigators with a copy of a comprehensive forensic audit of the financial records.
Detectives used the audit to identify more than 200 checks totaling $391,444 that were forged by Kummerer from 2009 into 2019.
Neidig said the loss of funds had a “tremendous impact” on the church over a number of years. The church sometimes had to borrow from its members to pay its bills.
The pastor noted the loss to the 400-member congregation averaged about $40,000 a year.
“It put us in a very tough financial position,” Neidig said. “We were often behind in paying our bills and it’s because we did not have the money.”
Neidig said he comes from a financial background — serving as a pastor is a second career for him — and he insisted on having financial accountability when he arrived in 2018.
He noticed some of the financial records had been altered to make payments to the treasurer appear as legitimate expenses. The finance committee started digging deeper.
“One of things that the church and other nonprofits do is assume that everyone is trustworthy,” he said, “and therefore they don’t have good financial controls place and that certainly was the case here because we assumed people were trustworthy, and we didn’t have property checks and balances.”
Had the thefts continued for a few years, Neidig said, it probably would have forced the church to close.
“The good news is we’re looking at putting this behind us and we’re on better financial footing than we’ve been in several years,” the pastor said.