A former church secretary arrested in January for embezzlement at a church appeared in court yesterday afternoon.
Deonne Brachmann was the secretary and treasurer at Open Heaven when she fell for a fraudulent lottery scam and made multiple payments over the course of a month using church funds.
Court documents state Brachmann was instructed to make multiple payments so she could receive her winnings of 40 million dollars and two vehicles. Brachmann wrote six checks to herself for $10,100 and then tried to make a check payable to a third party for $6,500, but the check was returned by the bank for insufficient funds.
Church staff contacted Brachmann, who said that she had won the lottery and was sending the money to the “lottery people”, and that she had planned to share her money with the church, so she felt as if she did nothing wrong. Brachmann informed police that she had used the church funds to buy pre-paid debit cards to pay the scammers.
When Brachmann was told she was being scammed, she responded by saying she had been told that by other people, but she truly believed they would deliver her winnings.
Brachmann is being held on a $15,000 bond; her next court date is set for April 28th.
