Louisa church secretary who embezzled $670K sentenced to 4 years

The former secretary of a Louisa County church was sentenced last week for quietly stealing $670,000 from her congregation.

Judge Timothy Sanner approved a deal that will put Brenda Ragland behind bars for four years and require she buy a life insurance policy to partially protect her restitution to the church known as the House of God.

“It was a creative and great suggestion from a church board member,” Louisa Commonwealth’s Attorney Rusty McGuire told The Daily Progress in an email, “and then we negotiated it as part of the resolution.”

McGuire said that on April 2, the day of her sentencing, Ragland handed a check in the amount of $189,000 to the Louisa County Circuit Court and was ordered to make monthly payments of $1,200. But it’s the life insurance policy for the 65-year-old embezzler that may be the most creative part of her sentence.

“The church is the beneficiary of the policy,” said McGuire.

While the insurance policy valued at $150,000 won’t come close to repaying the full amount Ragland has admitted to taking, McGuire stands by the deal.

“We try our best to make the victim whole,” he said, “but with this amount of money we had to be creative.”

Charlottesville lawyer David Heilberg agreed.

“What a great idea,” Heilberg told The Daily Progress. “I haven’t seen that, but it makes complete sense. It’s creative and something that all lawyers defending property crimes should think about.”

Heilberg said that courts overseeing property crimes typically try to emphasize restitution over punishment — or paying the victim’s attorney fees.

“The underlying principle is to pay the victim before you pay me,” said Heilberg.

When she was arrested, Ragland reported owning her own house with her husband and getting a monthly retirement check of $1,926.

“The premiums will not be cheap,” said Heilberg, “and they will go up as she ages.”

According to consumer financial information firm SmartAsset, a healthy, nonsmoking 65-year-old woman seeking a $150,000, 10-year life insurance policy might expect to pay a premium of $73 to $124 per month.

For more than 20 years, Ragland worked and worshipped at the church whose white, single-story sanctuary sprawls across a verdant tract fronting Columbia Road near the village of Cobham. At the time of her arrest, she had spent 39 years in the community and had no criminal history.

On her public social media communications, Ragland would routinely post Bible passages as well as videos of hymns and sermons from church services across America.

But unknown to the House of God, she also was treating the church as “her personal piggy bank,” in McGuire’s words.

According to prosecutors, Ragland would not only dip into church accounts but would also deposit tithings from fellow parishioners into her own bank account using the Cash App digital wallet service.

McGuire said the long-running theft came to light in 2023 when the church attempted to obtain a letter from its bank before making a donation to the building fund of another church. The House of God, he said, was told it didn’t have sufficient funds.

When the investigation began, the balance of missing money was $99,424, according to the original criminal complaint. But by last fall, after further examination, the number had grown to $670,000.

In November, Ragland pleaded guilty to 14 felony embezzlement counts and agreed that the prosecution’s allegations were correct.

This is not the first time someone has embezzled money from a Louisa congregation. In 2010, a jury convicted Rodney Rodis, the pastor at both the Parish of St. Jude in Mineral and Immaculate Conception near Bumpass, of stealing more than $1 million. In addition to a 13-year state sentence, Rodis had previously been sentenced to more than five years in the federal system.

Adding insult to injury in the Rodis case, the supposedly celibate Catholic priest was also found to be living a double life, living with a wife and three daughters in the Fredericksburg area.

He died while incarcerated in 2014 at the age of 58.

McGuire said that Sanner mentioned Rodis when sentencing Ragland and contrasted the two cases, since unlike Rodis, who was entrusted with running two churches, Ragland did not hold a supervisory position.

“He mentioned that four years was more appropriate,” said McGuire.

The Daily Progress’ efforts to obtain comment from the church and Ragland’s attorney, Ghislaine Storr Burks, were unsuccessful.

Source: www.dailyprogress.com