• Printer friendly
• E-mail to a friend
• 4 comment(s)
• Recommend

  ( 0 )

• 

Denise D'Sant Angelo and her public defender Jeff Chambliss walk out of the courtroom yesterday evening where D'Sant Angelo is on trialfor stealing $2800 from local nuns. Photo by Victor Maccharoli.

Cube Ad

Alleged nun scammer stands trial

By ERIC LINDBERG — March 13, 2010

A woman suspected of stealing $2,800 from three Santa Barbara nuns who were forced from their local convent several years ago appeared in court yesterday as the trial into her alleged misdeeds got underway.

Denise D’Sant Angelo, 53 at the time of her arrest in 2008, is accused of depositing a handful of donation checks into her personal account that should have gone to help the Sisters of Bethany trio find new housing. She faces one felony count of grand theft, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

“For sure in this case, the actions of Mrs. D’Sant Angelo were bad, were illegal and hurt someone,” said Brian Cota, a deputy district attorney prosecuting the case. He added later, “The unfortunate fact of our society is that while some people saw it as an opportunity to help others, some people saw it as an opportunity to help themselves.”

He said the defendant placed donations to the sisters into her personal account in October 2007 and had drained the account within five weeks with no apparent benefit to the nuns.

D’Sant Angelo’s attorney, Public Defender Jeff Chambliss, countered that contention, however, arguing that his client had been laboring to create a nonprofit organization in the sisters’ name and didn’t know how to handle the donations in the meantime.

“She was confused about what to do with this money,” he said in his opening remarks.

Chambliss said she had withdrawn the donated funds from her account and kept them in a moneybag with 26 uncashed checks also dedicated to the sisters’ cause.

Police investigators arrested D’Sant Angelo in late 2008 after allegedly uncovering financial evidence indicating that she had spent the money for her own purposes.

The case stemmed from an order by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in mid-2007 informing the sisters — part of a Guatemala-based order — that they would have to leave their longtime convent at 215 N. Nopal St. The church apparently planned to sell the property to help pay off a $660 million sex abuse settlement.

Local community members responded by forming an impromptu group known as Save Our Sisters. D’Sant Angelo became involved with the organization early in its formation, and eventually became its chair and president.

The group raised roughly $13,000, the majority of which appears to have made its way to the trio of nuns. But Cota said a handful of checks that were received in October 2007 ended up in the defendant’s bank account.

He told the jury he plans to introduce deposit slips and bank statements that will prove D’Sant Angelo spent the money for her own personal gain.

“You’ll see when she went to an ATM, you’ll see when she went to Chili’s,” Cota said. “You’ll see, plain and simple, that the money was spent.”?He said she made 13 cash withdrawals in increments of $20 and $40, along with several larger withdrawals of $200, $300 and $400, in the weeks after she deposited the checks.

Cota also refuted arguments that the defendant had been working toward gaining nonprofit status for Save Our Sisters, noting that in spite of what she told her fellow committee members, she never opened a nonprofit account.

The prosecutor said other members of the organization, as well as the nuns, eventually began to suspect D’Sant Angelo of mismanaging the funds.

“Things just didn’t add up,” he said.

The sisters cancelled a $10,600 check they had given to the defendant, representing all the money they had collected prior to her involvement, and asked for the remaining money in her possession.

Mack Staton, a local attorney retained by the sisters on a pro bono basis, testified that he sent a letter to the defendant asking for the checks or funds.

“She told me that I did not need to be involved, that she was in the process of turning the matter over to the attorney general,” he said, adding later that she didn’t respond to further requests.

Chambliss argued that D’Sant Angelo learned that the archdiocese had been planning to close the convent for several years and decided to hold onto the funds until it became clear how they should be used.

“My client did not want to give the money back to the sisters until she knew it would be used for the purposes the donors intended,” he said, arguing that the donations were earmarked for housing costs, not daily needs or other uses.

He also noted that the defendant traveled to Los Angeles in October 2007 to register a nonprofit name with the state before attempting to open an account for the organization at Citibank.

“She was lacking some documentation she needed to get, so she was unable to open the account,” he said.

Nonetheless, she registered an online domain name, secured a taxpayer identification number, filed articles of incorporation and paid $250 to get a city business license, Chambliss said, all in the name of Save Our Sisters.

He acknowledged that she deposited several checks into her personal account, but said she withdrew that money eventually and placed it with other uncashed checks in a blue moneybag for safekeeping.

Prior to D’Sant Angelo’s involvement in the organization, donations to the nuns went directly to their convent and were deposited into their checking account, testified Anthony Dal Bello, who helped spearhead the local effort to support the sisters.

He said the defendant expressed concern about that process, suggesting that the pastor at the nearby Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church could somehow tamper with or mismanage the funds, and suggested funneling donations to her office in Santa Barbara.

When asked whether he had any concerns at the time that the sisters or the pastor of the church would mismanage the funds, Dal Bello responded emphatically, “Absolutely not.”

As far as the convent itself, it never went on the market. The nearby church purchased the property from the archdiocese for an undisclosed sum, and the three nuns have since left the Santa Barbara area.

The trial resumes on Monday morning in Judge Jean Dandona’s courtroom.

Comment on this article

Subject:

Body:

Poster:

Enter text seen above:

nuns are bums : 3/13/2010

i think we shall find out that the nuns were not being evicted and that one of the three nums have been dis co num ucated for raising money for personal use.

yebar

---

waste of tax payer money : 3/13/2010

Look at the waste of taxpayer money prosecuting and person for what $2,800?
Judge Dandona should have a talk with the parties and get this out of the courts.
Certainly we have more pressing issues to deal with than this?

citizen

---

Scam Artist : 3/13/2010

Ms. D'Sant Angelo is a scam artist and a fraud. She has a LONG history of bouncing checks to everybody and everyone who would take one from her and sure didn't make restitution for any of those! It's amazing she was never prosecuted for those - the damage she did to local businesses was WAY more than $2800. Sounds a bit like Karma to me!

Karma

---

Another white criminal... : 3/13/2010

---