A former California assistant pastor has been sentenced to two years in state prison for stealing funds from a church while its founding pastor lay dying, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
Curtis Frank Lemons, 68, misappropriated $200,000 from New Progressive Christian Baptist Church in Oxnard, southern California, while working there as the assistant pastor in 2020. Oxnard is about 60 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Lemons’ crime occurred during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and as founding pastor Jesse James Taylor was months away from death…