A former pastor who engaged in theft and fraud to steal more than €125,000 from his own Kildare, Republic of Ireland-based church has been sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison. Ebenezer Oduntan, a former pastor of the City of David Church in Naas, Co Kildare, was convicted of 87 charges of a range of theft and fraud offences by Judge Martina Baxter following a three-week trial at Naas Circuit Criminal Court last in March. His sentencing took place in April but didn’t receive much prominence in the media.
The naturalised Irish citizen, who works as a taxi driver, faced 73 separate counts of theft, five charges of deception and nine offences in breach of company law following an investigation by the Corporate Enforcement Authority.
Prosecution lawyers told the court that over €75,000 had been stolen from the church via the use of blank cheques, while approximately €52,000 was stolen through a credit union account. None of the stolen money has been recovered from Oduntan, who is no longer a member of the church since 2020.
The court heard that Oduntan notified the authorities in September 2020 that he wanted to confess to fraud in relation to the church’s accounts as he had experienced a crisis of conscience for dipping into its funds. His counsel, Damien Colgan SC pleaded for leniency, claiming that Oduntan who had no prior convictions, had been ostracised by his community and had no friends.
The judge sentenced Oduntan to seven years in prison on the deception charges, six-and-a-half years for the theft convictions and three-and-a-half years for providing false information to the CRO, with all sentences to run concurrently. She also suspended the final six months of all sentences with Oduntan’s time in prison backdated to when he was first placed in custody on March 13th, 2024.
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