A Central Florida pastor was arrested Wednesday and charged with grand theft for allegedly selling food and other donated goods meant for Hurricane Frances victims from his church, Polk County authorities said.
Polk County Sheriff's deputies raided Mercy House Ministries, where supplies intended for Hurricane Charley and Frances victims were being displayed as if it were a grocery, investigators said. Undercover detectives bought some of the items, originally obtained by church members from a hurricane aid distribution center, before making the arrests.
Pastor Billy Dan Benton, 48, and his wife Pamela, 44, of Lakeland are facing charges of grand theft and fraud. They have been held in the Polk County Jail on $25,000 bail each since Tuesday night.
Kristina Pelfrey, 36, and her husband, Thomas Dale Pelfrey, 40, of Winter Haven and Michael James Johnson, 37, of Aburndale, also were arrested on grand theft and fraud charges. All three are also in the Polk County Jail with bail set at $25,000.
Church members said they were in the process of searching for an attorney to represent the five who were charged and declined to comment on the arrests. The church has been providing food in the rural, largely impoverished community for at least a year.
Mercy House on at least five occasions received large donations of food, baby supplies and other items worth at least $300 from a hurricane distribution center in Bartow, a sheriff's report said. Undercover deputies noted they bought a can of baby formula marked "sample, not for sale" priced at $1.50.
The church also purchased milk and eggs from a local grocery store and marked up the prices, the sheriff's office said.
"It's not a church in any shape or fashion, it looks like a grocery store when you go in there," said Polk Sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers.
Rodgers said the food on the church's shelves would be photographed and inventoried and returned to the hurricane distribution center where it would be given to needy storm victims.
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