Pastor’s wife spent over $180,000 of church funds on herself, Florida cops say

The dissolution of a marriage led to the discovery that a pastor’s now ex-wife embezzled over $180,000 of church funds for personal expenses for years, Florida authorities said.

Nancy Bertine, 74, is charged with scheme to defraud to obtain property valuing over $50,000 and grand theft of over $100,000, according to Citrus County court records.

Until their divorce was finalized in April, Bertine was married to the senior pastor of Gulf to Lake Baptist Church in Crystal River, where she also worked, records show.

When the pastor learned she was having an affair, it cost Bertine her job, and the couple filed for divorce, another church employee told deputies with the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office.

But when church staff looked at her office computer, another issue came to light.

They found Bertine had an Amazon shopping account connected to the church’s credit card, where she had been making hundreds of purchases for herself and not just for the church, which is a nonprofit organization, deputies said.

Bertine described herself as the church’s worship team ministry leader, and investigators said she oversaw the church’s finances. She said she had been involved with the church since it began about 30 years ago.

Church staff found out the theft dated back years, authorities said, and law enforcement became involved in February.

Deputies visited Bertine at home, where she told them her former role entailed ordering all the equipment, supplies and other items the church needed. When investigators said they asked her about the other items, including cosmetics, pet food, hair dye and women’s clothing, she confirmed she had ordered them, too.

“I’ve ordered a lot of stuff, I mean a lot,” she told deputies, according to the affidavit. “I didn’t even think about it at the time I was ordering those things, I just ordered them and the church would pay the bill.”

She couldn’t remember exactly how long she had been doing this, but told deputies “forever,” the affidavit said.

She recalled that a handful of times, when someone had asked her about something she had ordered for herself through the company’s account, she would pay the church back for it, deputies said.

Law enforcement said they pulled the financial records of Bertine and the church and found Bertine made more than 1,000 purchases on Amazon from 2021 to 2024 without approval of the church’s leadership.

During that time, Bertine is accused of embezzling over $196,000. Records showed she reimbursed the church for nearly $14,000 in personal expenses, bringing the total amount misappropriated to $182,610, deputies said.

Bertine told deputies she was a God-fearing woman and never meant to take something that wasn’t hers, according to investigators.

“The suspect advised that she was willing to pay back any money that she ‘might have accidentally used’ and wanted to make this whole situation right,” deputies wrote in the affidavit.

The church’s senior pastor, Lloyd Bertine, also told WFLA that his ex-wife said she would pay the money back.

“She has the money from selling our house that she can use to repay everything,” he told the outlet.

He said staff made an announcement to the congregation to keep them up to date on what happened.

“It was just to inform the congregation of what we found that Nancy had done, what we had done about it, and contacting law enforcement,” the pastor told WFLA. “We all have agreed to pray for her and pray that something will be learned.”

Crystal River is about an 80-mile drive north from Tampa.