BishopAccountability.org

Who is Danny Wooten? Preacher, thief, womanizer, Renaissance man?

By Rebecca Kimitch
Contra Costa Times
January 18, 2015

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_27347201/who-is-danny-wooten-preacher-thief-womanizer-renaissance

In March 2011, Danny Wooten stood in an old dialysis center on the corner of Garey Avenue and Grevillia Street in Pomona, and amid the 150 dialysis stations and old nursing area, he envisioned a church.

 
 

Moved by the voice of God, Wooten, 51, embarked upon a massive and costly renovation of the 13,000-square-foot building. Six months later, New Covenant Christian Fellowship Center, Church of God in Christ opened its doors, . And just beyond those doors, a giant portrait of Pastor Wooten was hung.

 
 

Now, barely three years later, the church’s founder is behind bars, accused of embezzling $6.4 million from the city of Pasadena, where he was employed as a management analyst in the Public Works Department.

 
 

And the church can’t seem to survive without him, or his money. New Covenant is behind in its rent and “members are aware they are going to have to leave the property soon,” said Bishop Christopher Milton, head of the Southern California Evangelistic Jurisdiction, New Covenant’s parent organization.

 
 

Wooten allegedly directed more than $700,000 of the stolen funds to an account bearing the church’s name. The embezzlement scheme, revealed last month when Wooten and two others were arrested and charged on a 60-count felony complaint, involved an obscure fund intended to pay for placing Pasadena’s utility wires underground. Using fake invoices, more than two-thirds of the fund’s total payments were stolen over the course of a decade, according to an audit of the fund.

In addition to New Covenant, Wooten also allegedly directed $2.1 million to the Southern California Evangelistic Jurisdiction Center. Despite its similarity in name to New Covenant’s parent organization, Bishop Milton says they are not related. He said the two churches named in the embezzlement scheme are “affiliated with Pastor Wooten alone.”

 
 

Beyond the churches, a lot of entities are affiliated with the name Danny Wooten. Karate companies, a preschool, a music studio, a magazine, various nonprofits — Wooten has started them all, according to state business license and tax records. And in addition to being a pastor and city bureaucrat, the North Carolina native is also an author and playwright. Some say womanizer, crook and maybe even abuser should be added to the list, according to city and court records.

 
 

And despite his varied entrepreneurial ambitions, court records also show Wooten has time and time again found himself in rough financial waters — facing bankruptcy, evictions, tax liens, and thousands of dollars in back child support.

That was, until he landed his job in Pasadena.

People who know Wooten through his church say they are shocked by the allegations and are reserving judgment until the court case plays out.

“Nothing in his background, in the person I know, in the person I grew up with, it just doesn’t match up with what they are saying he did. You just have to ask, is it true?” said Xavier Musgrove, 29, who grew up going to church with Wooten and considers him an uncle, though they are not actually related. “Everybody is just completely thrown off by it. If someone is kind of crooked acting, or acts a little backstabbing, you might say, eh, I could see it. But not him.”

Other church leaders agreed.

“It seemed like he had a love and heart for the community,” said Amos Young, pastor and founder of the Kingdom of God Revelation Ministries, also in Pomona.

Besides providing spiritual support, Wooten’s church offered the community a media center with 20 computer workstations and a food basket program.

And Wooten has been a beloved mentor to many young people, Musgrove said, himself included.

“He is always inspirational, every time he sees me, he says: ‘tell everyone to look out for you, you are going to make it in life.’ It’s just nice, because stuff like that reminds you that at least if there is one person who thinks you can succeed, it helps you believe in yourself,” Musgrove said.

 

But Pasadena resident Carol Potter wasn’t so impressed when she had to work with Wooten to underground the utility wires to her home.

First, Potter found it highly unethical when Wooten recommended residents use one particular contractor, Tyrone Collins, for the work. As it turns out, Collins was one of Wooten’s partners in the embezzlement and received $3.5 million in unauthorized payments, according to the District Attorney. He was also arrested last month.

To make matters worse, when Potter started having problems with the undergrounding project, Wooten wouldn’t return her calls and couldn’t be found.

“You could never get a hold of him,” she said. “But when you did, he was your best buddy. He would just turn on the charm.”

“He was like a snake oil salesman.”

Though largely lauded within the church, Wooten has faced scathing allegations there as well. In 2013, he wrote a letter to Bishop Milton addressing accusations against him of sexual misconduct, including having affairs and sex on church property and misappropriating church funding, according to city documents.

Wooten denied most of the allegations: Calling them “cowardly” and part of a plot against him.

He did, however, admit to one: Giving church money to families.

“I will admit to guilt due to my heart of giving,” he wrote.

He specifically writes that he provided Melody Jenkins and her family “food when there was no food and shoes when there was no money for shoes.”

Jenkins, a one-time assistant to Wooten in Pasadena and a member of New Covenant’s leadership, was the third person arrested last month with Wooten and Collins. She was allegedly given an unauthorized payment of nearly $44,000 from the utilities fund.

And Wooten may have indeed had at least one affair, according to documents released by the city to demonstrate a possible financial motivation for Wooten’s alleged theft .

Emails between Wooten, at his Pasadena email address, and a woman named Theresa Lollis, at a Los Angeles County email address, indicate a romantic relationship. The two refer to one another as boyfriend and girlfriend and emails from February and April 2011 from Lollis to Wooten read: “I love you hotlips” and “Happy Birthday handsome.”

Wooten and his wife married in November 1997.

Other accusations against Wooten are worse.

Six months before he was married, Wooten and a former girlfriend of three years both requested restraining orders against each other.

Wooten said the woman began stalking him after they broke up and he started seeing someone else.

The woman alleged Wooten, who was convicted of battery in 1997, assaulted her in the back of a van. She also wrote: “Danny has been very abusive in the past. Not all the abuse was reported but some was. He did go to counseling but that didn’t seem to help much. I have been bitten, hit, kicked, pressure pointed… Danny Wooten is a 4th degree black belt in shotokan karate, but has no control over his temper.”

New Covenant church was just one of Wooten’s many side projects housed on the Pomona property at 2475 N. Garey Ave. The site is also home to: his music studio and production company Quiet Fire Productions, school New Covenant Christian Preschool Academy and non-profits Soul Harvest International and New Covenant Community Development Corporation.

But as Pasadena looks to recoup some of the stolen funds through a civil lawsuit, the financial success of any of the entities is difficult to assess.

The church is funded entirely through member offerings and receives no funding from the Church of God in Christ, Bishop Milton said. And though its website (taken down following Wooten’s arrest) said it has 100 active members, videos of Sunday sermons on its Facebook page show a more sparse crowd.

Tax forms for the non-profits show $0 in income, but they are incomplete and such forms are not even required for organizations that earn less than $50,000.

Wooten, who says he has a bachelor’s degree in finance, points to Quiet Fire Productions as the money maker. The company produces gospel music, films, theater, books and concerts, according to Wooten’s bio. In 2007, Quiet Fire produced a gospel play written and directed by Wooten called Midnight Cry and Wooten says performances of the show have largely financed the church, according to city documents.

But since Wooten’s arrest, the Quiet Fire website has been taken down and a recently listed phone number is no longer in service. And other Wooten entrepreneurial endeavors, launched in the 1990s — Golden Tiger Shotokan Karate, United Sport Karate League and Gospel Life Magazine — appear to be now defunct.

The ’90s were a financial rough spot for Wooten.

The decade started with him declaring bankruptcy with his now ex-wife in Alabama. Then, in the second half of the decade, he was evicted four times from apartments in Pasadena and Azusa, despite working full-time in admin for UCLA from October 1994 until May 2000.

In 2000, he had a tax lien placed against him and owed $1,455 for tax years 1995 and 1997. And in 2002, he was nearly $8,000 behind on child support payments and had a monthly income of $920, according to court documents related to his divorce.

It wasn’t until Wooten started working for the city of Pasadena in July 2002 that his financial situation turned around.

“I knew working for Pasadena, he started making a lot of money,” Musgrove said. “Before that he always drove a Dodge Neon, but after, he got a Cadillac.”

Wooten earned $131,000 a year in Pasadena as a management analyst.

He allegedly began stealing funds about a year after starting with the city. As time passed, he got sloppier and more greedy, according to the city audit. The first fiscal year, just under $200,000 was taken. By 2011, the year Wooten started his church, the total amount stolen bumped up dramatically to $1.1 million a year.

In April 2011, a month after he first saw the old dialysis center, Wooten attempted to get a $3.5 million loan for New Covenant church. But the application was denied, according to documents in the audit. It didn’t matter, he found the money for the renovation, at least. According to the church’s official history, the construction estimate “miraculously matched almost dollar for dollar the exact budget that Pastor Wooten raised.”

Musgrove said though it was clear from day one Wooten was making more money working for Pasadena, he still lived modestly and certainly did not appear to be embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the city every year.

He and his wife live in a standard two-story stucco home in Montclair, in a new subdivision just off Mission Boulevard — a part of town known more for motels and industry than homes. The couple purchased the newly built home in 2007. Last year it was valued at $537,898, according to the San Bernardino County Assessors office.

“You would think he might have a big house, all kinds of tailored suits. But they didn’t live above their means. You know that Dodge Neon? After my uncle, my auntie started driving it and drove it for years.”

 




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