As a Florida woman prepares to be sentenced next week for embezzling nearly $900,000 from the parish where she worked, a retired IRS investigator says the case shines a spotlight on the need for parishes to implement measures to help detect and prevent theft.
In June, Heather Darrey pled guilty to embezzling hundreds of thousands from Christ the King parish in Tampa, where she had been the finance manager.
A sentencing memo in the case, filed in a U.S. district court Friday, revealed that Darrey used the $875,000 she stole from the parish to help fund a lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of a boat, and vehicle, and the installation of a pickleball court at her house.
“From October 2023 to March 2024, Heather Darrey violated one of the most basic moral imperatives—thou shalt not steal—by embezzling $875,323.19 of Church #1’s money for her own personal enrichment,” prosecutors argued.
Between October 2023 and March 2024, Darrey spent more than $50,000 on concert tickets, nearly $80,000 on a boat loan, and almost $300,000 on mortgage payments for her primary residence, the memo said.
The memo also listed more than $1,000 on hair and nail expenses, and more than $18,000 on hotel and vacation expenses - part of the nearly $500,000 in purchases Darrey made on a credit card during the six-month duration of the scheme.
The pickleball court Darrey installed in 2024, at a cost of roughly $20,000, went in after police informed her that she was under federal investigation, prosecutors said.
According to court documents, Darrey repeatedly took signed checks made out to various parish vendors, destroyed them, and wrote new checks in the same amounts to herself and her creditors. She would then input the original information into parish accounting software, making it appear that she had mailed the original bank checks to the parish vendors.
It took several months for the fraudulent activity to be detected, in part because of the construction of a new youth center at the parish, which saw large amounts of cash flow through parish operating accounts.
A parish accountant detected Darrey’s activity in March 2024, and she admitted to stealing some money. She was fired, but she begged the pastor not to contact police. But after an audit of the parish finances, the extent of Darrey’s theft — more than $750,000 — became clear. The parish, along with the Diocese of St. Petersburg, called law enforcement officials, and Darrey was arrested.
Darrey, who reached a plea bargain almost immediately after her arrest, could face up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced for her crime.
However, the sentencing memo said federal prosecutors support a sentence “at the low-end of the guideline imprisonment range of 41 months to 51 months.”
Robert Warren, a retired IRS investigator and professor of accounting at Radford University, said the case shows a need for internal controls to both prevent and detect fraud at Catholic parishes.
In particular, he pointed to the importance of creating a separation of duties, especially through the involvement of multiple people in financial transactions.
“In this case, the parish lacked preventive controls, which would include making sure that the employee with access to the accounting records did NOT have access to the assets, in this case the checkbook,” Warren told The Pillar.
“The parish should have had one person receive the invoice and verify that the work was done, another employee to enter the transaction in the accounting records, another to make the check and get it signed, and another to reconcile the bank account on a monthly basis,” he continued.
“While this may seem onerous for a small parish, the pastor could have enlisted volunteers to help in this process.”
The Church’s Code of Canon Law offers some norms on financial administration, but most particular policies are set by diocesan bishops, leading to a wide variety of regulations across the country.
In the Diocese of St. Petersburg, where the embezzlement took place, financial policies mandate that pastors must be signatories, but they do not seem to explicitly require that the checkbook holder not be responsible for parish bookkeeping and ledger entry.
The financial policy manual does indicate that pastors should “implement, monitor and administer systems with appropriate internal controls for the collection of funds and the disbursement of funds,” and requires that parishes submit to annual “internal control evaluations.”
The diocese also requires that “monthly bank reconciliations be performed for all bank accounts, by someone who is independent of recording cash transactions,” but in the case of Christ the King parish, those reconciliations did not immediately catch Darrey’s fraud — possibly because it took vendors time to pursue payment at the parish with someone other than Darrey herself.
Warren said there are a few other facts about the case that stand out to him.
“First, the building project was being paid out of the general (operating) account. Instead, the funds should have been segregated into a separate account earmarked for the purpose for which the funds were donated.”
“The second odd fact about this case is the sheer audacity of Ms. Darrey's spending habits,” he said.
“I find it hard to believe that someone at the parish did not know about her lavish lifestyle and should have wondered how she could afford it. If you see something, say something,” Warren said.
“And I hope none of those concert tickets were spent on the St. Louis Jesuits,” he added.
