A South Bend church will see a former secretary serve more than a year behind bars for embezzling church funds.
Jayne Loprest will serve 12 months and a day in prison, followed by three years of supervised release for mail fraud.
The 54-year-old admitted to taking $119,000 from South Bend’s Hilltop Lutheran Church.
Church leaders say some of the money was used to pay the property taxes on Loprest’s upscale Granger home.
She worked as the church secretary from 2001-2009. In 2009, a local bank notified church leaders they were overdrawing on their accounts.
Board members confronted Loprest, and she apologized. They even planned on filing a civil suit, but eventually dropped it when Loprest agreed to pay Hilltop back.
The embezzled money was set to fund all the various missions the church supports.
