A former high-ranking leader of St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon accused of embezzling about $272,000 through a scheme involving cash rent payments from a church tenant was ordered Friday to stand trial on 16 embezzlement and money laundering counts.<\/p>\n
Former Bishop Emmanuel Shaleta, 69, remains out of custody and has since resigned from his post. He is accused of collecting several months of rent payments in cash that typically would have been deposited by check into a bank account dedicated to church operations.<\/p>\n
When asked where the money had gone, Shaleta allegedly told other church members that he had given the money to the needy, though prosecutors argue there is no evidence to confirm that.<\/p>\n
One of Shaleta\u2019s defense attorneys, Danielle Iredale, argued in court that, contrary to claims that Shaleta\u2019s actions contradicted typical church procedures, Shaleta had the discretion as the bishop to use those funds as he saw fit.<\/p>\n
The attorney also argued that it wasn\u2019t out of the ordinary for money to go to charitable causes in a way that was not formally documented. She cited a donor who gave the church two donations of $1 million each, but according to his statement to detectives, he told Shaleta that he wished for his donations to remain anonymous and asked Shaleta to provide the funds in cash to people in need on a \u201cboots on the ground\u201d basis.<\/p>\n
Iredale argued that without knowing precisely where that money went, the prosecution could not claim Shaleta was using it for his own personal purposes.<\/p>\n
Deputy District Attorney Joel Madero said that while Shaleta had \u201csignificant control over how that money is spent, that certainly doesn\u2019t allow it to become an unaccounted-for slush fund used for who knows, with no oversight, with no accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to testimony over the course of a two-day preliminary hearing to determine whether Shaleta would go to trial, his former secretary testified that Shaleta instructed her to tell the church social hall\u2019s tenant to begin paying his rent \u2014 which exceeded $30,000 per month \u2014 in cash rather than by check.<\/p>\n
When she asked him why, he told her, \u201cWe need the cash for the needy in Iraq,\u201d she testified. She also said she gave Shaleta those cash payments at his direction.<\/p>\n
Rent payments would usually be deposited into an account for church operations such as maintenance and renovations, but instead Shaleta wrote checks for the exact rent amounts from a separate bank account intended to help the needy and deposited the funds into the operations account as a reimbursement, according to Christine Dawisha, Shaleta\u2019s former secretary.<\/p>\n
After a few months of this, she said she notified members of the church\u2019s financial committee.<\/p>\n
Garvin Garmo, who is a member of the committee, testified that the church\u2019s policy is to have two church leaders sign off on checks of this type.<\/p>\n
However, each of the \u201creimbursement\u201d checks Shaleta wrote was signed only by himself, according to Garmo. Dawisha testified that Shaleta told her one signature was sufficient because of the special nature of the \u201cneedy account,\u201d but Garmo testified that no church bank account was exempt from the two-signature policy.<\/p>\n
When confronted about this, Shaleta told Garmo it was \u201can internal matter,\u201d but did not elaborate further, Garmo testified.<\/p>\n
Shaleta was arrested in March at San Diego International Airport. According to testimony, he was preparing to board a plane headed out of the county and had more than $9,000 in cash on him at the time.<\/p>\n
Shaleta faces up to 15 years in state prison if convicted of all charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former high-ranking leader of St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon accused of embezzling about $272,000…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[7,1312,138,3053,6568,181,23,100,74,84,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-446795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-east-county","tag-el-cajon","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}