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- David Reiter, 50, and his wife, Connie, 44, are accused of stealing $ 1.2 million from Westminster Presbyterian Church in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania.
- Police said they used the money to fund trips to Disney World and Hershey Park, as well as to buy tickets, scrapbooking equipment and music lessons for Pittsburgh Pirates kids.
- The Westminster Presbyterian Church stated in a statement that funds were largely transferred electronically.
A church administrator and his wife are accused of stealing $ 1.2 million from their congregation for 17 years to fund personal vacations and tickets for sporting events, Pittsburgh officials said. post-Gazette.
According to the police, David Reiter, 50, and his wife, Connie, 44, used money from the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania, to finance their trips to Walt Disney World and Hershey Park, as well as to buy tickets, scrapbooking material for Pittsburgh Pirates. and music lessons for their children, according to a criminal complaint seen by INSIDER.
Reiter worked as a church administrator for Westminster Presbyterian Church for 17 years between 2001 and 2018.
Chief Church Constable Jim Gilchrist confronted Reiter about the alleged fraud of November 2018, saying he feared that Reiter imitated an auditor, according to the complaint.
At the time, Reiter had told Gilchrist that he "needed to resign" because he had "committed bad things," the complaint said.
Reiter then allegedly stole between $ 600,000 and $ 630,000 from the church and early childhood education programs, a separate entity located in the basement of the building, to "improve things to the house, "according to the complaint.
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After an investigation, the police said Reiter took about $ 1,227,423 from the church by transferring funds from his bank account to his personal account.
He was charged Tuesday with 10 counts of theft, forgery and concealment of stolen property, said the Allegheny County Attorney 's Office in connection with the criminal complaint.
Connie Reiter faces two counts of stolen property concealment.
The Westminster Presbyterian Church told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper in a statement that David Reiter was an "active and trusted member of the church" who "engaged in sophisticated forms of deception to hide his flight ".
"While the church still had reasonable levels of checks to receive and count money and make disbursements by check, the theft was mostly accomplished through electronic funds transfers," the statement said. . "New procedures and controls have been put in place to prevent such activities in the future, and a full external audit will be conducted this spring."
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