A Roman Catholic deacon who served as the business manager for a
parish in West Chicago was sentenced Monday to six years in prison for
stealing more than $317,000 from church coffers.
George Valdez, 58, of the 800 block of Gates Street in West Chicago,
stole the money from St. Mary’s Parish by writing duplicate checks to
himself and using parish credit cards.
With the funds, he bought tickets
to Bears and White Sox games, helped pay for his daughter’s wedding,
purchased numerous dinners at upscale restaurants and paid for hotel
rooms for his personal use, prosecutors said.
He also placed his family
on the church health plan without paying premiums.
“The parish leaders gave an out-of-work member of the parish a job
and within three months he began stealing from them,” Assistant DuPage
County State’s Attorney Helen Kapas-Erdman told Judge Kathryn Creswell.
Fighting back tears, Valdez, who has been in the county jail since
his arrest last March, said he was “sorry to my God, my family, my
parish and my priest. I ask for forgiveness from all.”
Valdez, who has no previous criminal record, served as the parish’s
business manager from June 2006 to September 2009, when an audit of the
churches finances by a new priest uncovered the embezzlement.
Creswell ordered Valdez to report to her the first Monday he is out
of prison to set up a repayment schedule of the $317,257 he owes.
“He is not a cold-hearted thief,” said defense attorney Nicholas
Kirkeles. “Things got away from him and he wanted to buy things for his
family that he could not afford.”
Several members of his family were present in the courtroom, but declined to comment.
Valdez faced between 6 and 30 years in prison.
The 30-count indictment last March came in the wake of other bad news
involving the parish last year.
In January 2010, a Shorewood priest was
accused of molesting an 8-year-old St. Charles boy while he served as a
seminarian at St. Mary's in 2005.
He later was sentenced to four years
in prison. Also last year, the parish's grade school, which had opened
in 1922, closed as the result of low enrollment and a deficit that
reached $330,000.
"During the audit, we knew something was wrong right away, and that
it was bad and big" the Rev. John Balluff, pastor of St. Mary's, said
last year after Valdez’s arrest.
In the parish bulletin distributed last Easter, Balluff stated Valdez
was fired after the funds were discovered to be missing.
The bulletin
also stated that "the diocese is self-insured, and we will be reimbursed
the full amount of the theft."
Kapas said that a church insurance policy has repaid $249,000.