Theft sent church reeling, pastor testifies
A church secretary who stole $50,000 from Little Rock’s First Presbyterian Church while managing its finances left behind unpaid bills, untold tax penalties and a congregation struggling to learn to trust again, the church’s former pastor testified Friday.
But Jennifer Jacovelli won’t learn the price she will pay for her thefts for another month.
Her attorney, Stephen Morley, said Jacovelli’s drug addiction led her to steal, pointing out that she wrote several checks to a man that church members know to be a drug dealer. He also noted that she didn’t have bookkeeping experience when she took the job in 2006 and that the church’s stewardship committee, which is ultimately responsible for First Presbyterian’s finances, did little to oversee Jacovelli.
The Rev. Howard "Flash" Gordon testified that Jacovelli’s betrayal left both him and the congregation having a hard time trusting others.
"We had to reaffirm our basic nature, which is to trust others," Gordon told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims on Friday. "We struggled for awhile."
Gordon, who retired in May after leading the Scott Street church for 17 years, and his wife, Roberta Saxon, both testified Friday about the damage, both fiscal and emotional, Jacovelli did to the 181-year-old church at the start of a two-part sentencing hearing.
Jacovelli, 36, asked the judge to decide her punishment, admitting to stealing $50,709 from the church over the course of a year. She pleaded guilty Monday to Class B felony theft, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Deputy prosecutor Colin Wall said Jacovelli was responsible for the church’s checkbook and finances. Checks had to be signed by two other people, Wall said, but Jacovelli would dupe them into signing blank checks or pretend to be paying legitimate bills while depositing the money in her own bank account.
Sentencing is typically done within a month of a guilty plea to allow for a background check on the defendant, but Gordon and Saxon are leaving the country on Sunday for a 14-month trip, and prosecutors wanted the judge to hear their testimony before deciding on an appropriate punishment. Sims will rule on Aug. 21 after a second hearing with more testimony from witnesses for both prosecutors and the defense. It’s not clear if Jacovelli will take the stand at that hearing.
Gordon described Jacovelli and her husband as "good people," testifying that Jacovelli did a good job at first after he hired her for the secretary job in 2005. But she refused efforts by church members to help her with her problems, he said.
"We tried to help," he said, saying he hoped any punishment would include an opportunity for rehabilitation. "Our help was rejected."
"Tell me what you want me to do," the judge asked Gordon. "Do you want me to send her to the pen or give her probation?"
Gordon said he would like to see Jacovelli spend a short time in prison, not as a punishment but as a warning.
"I think Jennifer should have a small experience of incarceration," he told the judge. "So if she messes up, she’ll know what she faces."
Sims said he would take Gordon’s recommendation under advisement.
Saxon told the judge that she first became suspicious of Jacovelli about a year ago while depositing an $80,000 bequest for the church’s Stewpot ministry. A bank manager told her the church needed to clear up a deficit in its accounts.
"I was so surprised because I thought we were doing well," Saxon said, saying the bank occasionally allowed church accounts to run into the red.
Saxon, a member of the stewardship committee, said she had Jacovelli look into the problems and Jacovelli said she had mistakenly overpaid the church’s pension account and insurance by $7,000. But when Jacovelli quit the next month and Saxon took over managing the church’s finances, she said she found a drawer full of unpaid bills and a disturbing lack of financial and bank records.
"I couldn’t make sense of anything," she said.
Saxon, who has an accounting degree, said her reconstruction of the church’s finances found that Jacovelli hadn’t paid withholding taxes on her own wages, leading to ongoing problems with the IRS that have yet to be resolved. The church is having to pay the taxes that Jacovelli didn’t pay, Saxon testified.
She said Jacovelli stole cash contributions from members, wrote a $500 check to herself from the Stewpot account and overpaid her $18,000 salary by $9,952 in 2007 and $5,596 in 2008, the same year she also got a $1,100 raise.
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