July 18, 2002
The pastor at Mesa First Assembly of God Church will be passing the collection plate after deciding to return $70,000 contributed by a generous parishioner who had embezzled the money.
Senior Pastor Craig Carter said he had no reason to mistrust the contributions of longtime parishioner Ron Lee Marion.
But Marion, 46, of Gilbert, was sentenced Friday to three years in prison and five years of probation for embezzling $1.7 million from Honeywell during 1999 and 2000, while he worked as a purchasing agent for the aerospace company.
Carter said in his 40 years as a minister, he'd never been faced with this problem, which raised ethical questions.
"What do you do? You've got people that give freely in a church offering or people who give to a charity. Is it our obligation to determine where those funds came from?" he asked. "It's a difficult situation to be in."
The Rev. Chris Carpenter, pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Mesa, said the policy of most churches is not to accept large donations from someone unknown or not regularly involved in the parish. He also refuses unsolicited corporate funds or donations of such items as cars, TV sets and VCRs.
But in the case of a regular, committed churchgoer whose donations suddenly go up, Carpenter acknowledges that he wouldn't necessarily notice it.
"This is a wake-up call," he said.
Carter said Marion has been a longtime member of the church community.
"Ron and his family have been a part of our church for quite some time. They've been involved in the church, and they've always contributed to the church," Carter said.
But his contributions grew dramatically, from $480 in January 2000 to as high as $15,000 in June of that year.
Carter plans to ask his congregation for an offering to pay back the ill-gotten funds."We have some funds in our general fund that are not designated funds. I probably have about $50,000 there. That's our operating budget, so I can't take everything that's there," he said.
The decision was a turnabout for Carter, who in March wrote to Marion and said the church would not return the tainted contributions.
On Wednesday, he said the money belonged to Honeywell and must be returned.
"We're a church, and we want to do the right thing," he said.
David Cantor, a criminal defense attorney representing Marion, said he is glad the church will repay the money.v
"Why did they wait four months to do the right thing? As of four months ago, they said we don't think it's proper to give it back," he said.
According to court records, Marion admitted stealing the money by creating false purchase orders for equipment never received from a company called Star Aviation, owned by Reynaldo Unzeuta Garcia.
Garcia, 49, is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 7.
Honeywell filed a civil lawsuit against Marion and Garcia, trying to recoup its losses.
Attorney Craig Simon, who is representing Marion in the civil action, said his client has already repaid $144,000 to Honeywell.
Simon said Marion's share of the $1.7 million was only $600,000. Of that, he paid $175,000 to the Internal Revenue Service in income tax.
"Our research unfortunately revealed that we cannot get a refund on that," Simon said. "Nor can Honeywell get a tax credit from that money."
Marion is repaying everything he can, Simon said.
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