\u2018Hurtful and difficult\u2019: Pastor responds after former church employee accused of embezzling over $570K<\/a><\/p>\nDeputies said she used a church credit card and payroll access to make personal purchases \u2014 including Amazon orders, flights, hotel stays and amusement park tickets.<\/p>\n
It all came to light when two new financial committee members noticed bank accounts running lower than they should have been. A full review of church records revealed years of unauthorized charges.<\/p>\n
Nassau County deputies said that through unauthorized charges, personal credit card payments, and additional payroll payments to herself, English embezzled:<\/p>\n
Nearly $40,000 in 2019<\/p>\n
Nearly $90,000 in 2020<\/p>\n
More than $100,000 in 2021<\/p>\n
Nearly $125,000 in 2022<\/p>\n
Just over $123,000 in 2023<\/p>\n
More than $90,000 in 2024<\/p>\n
English was arrested in Baker County in April after deputies highlighted her case in a \u201cWanted Wednesday\u201d post.<\/p>\n
Following the arrest, Amelia Baptist Church pastor Forrest Jones said in a statement that the church\u2019s leadership reported the theft to the Nassau County Sheriff\u2019s Office, and that no evidence has been found that any other members, employees or pastors of the church did anything wrong.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the last few months have been incredibly hurtful and difficult, it would be easy to become distracted from our main mission as a church,\u201d Jones said in the statement. \u201cAmelia Baptist Church remains committed to the values that make us a church family.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pretrial hearing was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. \u2013 A woman accused of embezzling more than half a million dollars from a Nassau…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[265,3895,116,118,117,2159,3898],"class_list":{"0":"post-51181","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-fernandina-beach","10":"tag-jacksonville","11":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","12":"tag-jacksonville-news","13":"tag-money","14":"tag-nassau-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}