CALIFORNIA
Contra Costa Times
Rebecca Kimitch
POSTED: 01/18/2015
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.”
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