CA Pastor Charged With Scamming Friends, Nonprofit out of $230K

Pastor’s criminal history shows pattern of financial fraud

Terrance Elliot was already a convicted felon when he became pastor of Aboard the Ship of Zion in San Bernardino, California. Now, he faces 11 new felonies and a possible 20-year prison sentence.

Terrance Elliot / Courtesy photo

Elliot was arrested March 6 following a grand jury indictment for allegedly swindling several “long-time friends” and a nonprofit out of more than $230,000, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California.

The statement outlined multiple schemes allegedly hatched between September 2018 and February 2023.

In one case, Elliot convinced a friend, identified as “M.C.,” to let him manage her inheritance money, “claiming that she would lose her Medicare and Social Security benefits if she directly received the inheritance.”

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Elliot then used a “fraudulently modified copy” of a trust agreement to give himself sole control of the victim’s money, which he then withdrew to pay a church’s rent and cover personal expenses such as Nike sneakers and an extended warranty for a motorcycle.

“Elliott also obtained access to M.C.’s account at a different bank to make approximately $27,164 in unauthorized transfers of some of her monthly Social Security payments to the church,” the press release explained.

In another case, Elliot allegedly convinced a nonprofit that it owed money to a corporation, only to take the payments and deposit them in a bank account he controlled.

Checkered Past

Elliot previously made headlines in 2022, when his run for San Bernardino City Council was derailed by legal troubles. The San Bernardino Sun reported that Elliot was delinquent on a $75,000 judgment brought against him in civil court after he defrauded a member of his former congregation at Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

The victim, Tina Satterwhite, had sold her home and handed the money to Elliot to hold in a trust account. But instead, according to The San Bernardino Sun, Elliot put the money in a different account earmarked for a church building fundraiser and began making withdrawals for personal expenses. Satterwhite said the scam left her unable to pay her rent and eventually homeless.

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According to The San Bernardino Sun, that incident turned out to be just the latest in a pattern of misdeeds, going back to at least 1983, when Elliot was convicted of four felony counts of forgery for passing bad checks and sentenced to three years in prison. In 1994, he pleaded guilty to stealing funds from another church he pastored, Good Samaritan Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Then as pastor of Opportunity Baptist Church, he faced a lawsuit after defaulting on a loan the church had taken out.

In addition, Satterwhite’s attorney, Michael Scafiddi, told The San Bernardino Sun that even Elliot’s academic credentials were a lie. At the time, Elliot’s church biography said he had three doctorate degrees in law and letters, philosophy and theology. But according to Scafiddi, Elliot admitted in court that he had no degrees.

Despite these revelations, Elliot remained in the pulpit. The Los Angeles Times reports that he has pleaded not guilty to the new charges of wire fraud and is free on a $9,000 bond.

A Broader Problem

Todd Johnson, co-director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, told Christianity Today that the trust people feel for each other in religious organizations makes churches vulnerable to fraud.

“One of the things we found after someone had been convicted of embezzlement, some cases where a pastor was actually in prison, you had church members who still said, ‘I don’t believe he could do this.’ They were the victims, but they still couldn’t accept it,” Johnson said.

“That shows the power of trust. And trust is good, but if it’s misused—which is the definition of affinity fraud—that’s really a problem.”

A 2022 study by Johnson’s organization projected that embezzlement in churches will decline to about $10 billion in 2025, but, based on current trends, will rise to $170 billion in 2050 unless churches do more to protect themselves.

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