California pastor could spend 220 years in prison for allegedly scamming friends of nearly $240K
A California pastor and former political candidate who is accused of scamming longtime friends out of nearly $240,000 through several schemes, is now facing up to 220 years in federal prison after he was arrested on an 11-count federal grand jury indictment.
The pastor, Terrance Owens Elliott, 60, a.k.a. “Tony Elliott,” of Crestline, was arrested Thursday, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. Each of the 11 counts comes with a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
Elliott, who was most recently listed as the pastor of The Ship of Zion Church in San Bernardino, has been charged with 11 counts of wire fraud which caused his victims approximately $238,563 in losses.
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In one scheme related to a family trust, according to a 13-page grand jury indictment returned on Feb. 26, Elliott convinced one friend identified as “M.C.,” to put her inheritance money into a trust that he would administer purportedly to avoid losing her Medicare and Social Security benefits. Elliott was named as a co-trustee of victim M.C.’s trust, “which listed victim M.C. and victim M.C.’s children, namely, victims V.H., W.L., and P.G., as beneficiaries of the trust,” according to the indictment.
After M.C. signed the trust, Elliott kept the executed trust agreement, which was supposed to provide for M.C.’s financial needs during her lifetime. The agreement also allowed for her funeral expenses to be paid from the trust and any funds remaining after her death to be passed on to her children.
The pastor then opened a bank account in the trust’s name listing only himself as a trustee and gave the bank a fraudulently modified copy of the trust agreement which gave him sole power to make payments from the trust’s bank account.
Elliott then wrote checks and made online transfers to a church identified as “Church A” — that weren’t permitted under the trust agreement. He also used the money from that trust’s bank account to purchase postal money orders that were used to pay the church’s rent and personal expenses, such as the repair of a Chevrolet truck, Nike sneakers, a piano, clothing, and an extended warranty for a motorcycle amount to about $150,263.
From June 2021 to February 2023, Elliott was also allegedly involved in another scheme in which he advised a victim listed as W.H. in the indictment about selling a house that was occupied by renters. Elliott allegedly convinced W.H. that he could avoid paying a capital gains tax from the sale of the house by loaning M.C.’s trust $65,000.
The pastor agreed to repay the loan with a 10% annual interest but then failed to honor the agreement after collecting several signed blank checks from the bank account of W.H.’s corporation.
Elliott allegedly used one of the blank checks to make an unauthorized transfer of $16,000 to Church A. and transferred $49,000 to the trust. He never repaid any part of the $65,000 loan.
“Defendant Elliott convinced victim W.H. to provide him with multiple signed blank checks from W.H. Corporation’s bank account, and instead of transferring the entirety of the $65,000 to victim M.C.’s trust account, defendant Elliott used one of those checks to make an unauthorized transfer of $16,000 to Church A. Defendant Elliott knew at the time he transferred $16,000 to Church A, that victim W.H. did not authorize this transfer,” the indictment notes.
“Defendant Elliott spent the bulk of the money from victim M.C.’s trust on unauthorized expenses that were not for the benefit of the trust’s beneficiaries, such as defendant Elliott’s personal expenses. Through this scheme, defendant Elliott defrauded victim W.H.’s corporation out of approximately $65,000.”
In another scheme from September 2018 to June 2021, Pastor Elliott falsely represented to nonprofit corporation A and Church B’s board of directors that nonprofit corporation A owed money to W.H. Corporation for services rendered related to a lawsuit against Church B and nonprofit corporation A according to the indictment. This false representation caused nonprofit corporation A to be defrauded of approximately $23,300.
“Defendant Elliott then well knew, W.H. Corporation had performed no work on behalf of either Church B or Nonprofit Corporation A, and Church B and Nonprofit Corporation A owed no money to W.H. Corporation,” the indictment notes.
“Defendant Elliott caused Nonprofit Corporation A to issue approximately 32 checks to W.H. Corporation, which defendant Elliott later deposited into W.H. Corporation’s bank account, a bank account that defendant Elliott controlled. Defendant Elliott did not use the money from the checks for Nonprofit Corporation A’s benefit.”
Elliott, who once served as a police chaplain and public safety commissioner in San Bernadino, also campaigned in 2022 for a 2nd Ward City Council seat, according to The Sun.
Tina Satterwhite, a former congregant of Elliott’s now defunct, Mt. Zion Baptist Church, detailed how her then pastor preyed upon her after the shooting death of her son. She alleged that after Elliot moved to San Bernardino from a church in Los Angeles, he fleeced her of more than $75,000 from the sale of her house in 2004. She said he left her broke and homeless.
“He destroyed me. My spiritual belief in God has wavered. It’s been hell for a long time,” Satterwhite, a former corrections officer, told the publication at the office of her then attorney, Michael Scafiddi. “I was depressed, and (Elliott) took advantage of that. I was going through some very troubling things.”
A federal bankruptcy judge hit Elliott with a $75,166 judgment in that case in June 2014 after a five-day bench trial but Scafiddi said the pastor has never attempted to pay it.
“The guy’s a complete scammer,” Scafiddi said of Elliott in 2022. “We tried several times to locate him. We never could. Then I see an ad on Facebook that he’s running for city council, and, I’m like, ‘This is the guy I’ve been trying to get to pay on this judgment for years.’“
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