Former Uniontown treasurer found guilty of stealing $112K from church group
Uniontown’s former treasurer was found guilty Tuesday of embezzling $112,000 from a collective of area churches during her time chairing its board of trustees.
A Fayette County jury took about three hours to find Antoinette Hodge, 55, guilty of 29 of 31 charges against her.
Using her position with the Youghiogheny Western Baptist Association, prosecutors said, she wrongly withdrew money from group accounts and falsified checks worth tens of thousands of dollars. She had volunteered for the YWBA from 2018 to 2022, when the board voted to remove her from her post.
“There was a very thorough investigation by the state police, in conjunction with my bureau of investigation here at the district attorney’s office,” said Fayette County District Attorney Mike Aubele. “And we were able to bring her to justice for what she did. It’s terrible anytime anybody takes advantage of an organization like the YWBA. She was in a position of trust. She abused that trust.”
During deliberation, the jury reviewed 77 individual transactions and 25 alleged forged documents, Aubele said.
One transaction was a withdrawal from the YWBA’s money market account. Others were checks made out to her — or, as in the majority of the cases, to cash.
In the two counts where the jury voted to acquit, the checks were written to other people.
“Although the signature may or may not have been placed there by somebody other than the true signatory, I think the jury felt that they looked like they were cashed by the right people,” Aubele said. “But again, those two checks really didn’t take away from the money that she took. They found her guilty of pretty much everything that we were alleging she did wrong.”
The YWBA consists of 27 churches in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, including in Fayette and Greene counties. The churches pay membership dues to the organization, which also collects funds through church donations and fundraisers.
Diane Hobson, moderator of the YWBA, declined to comment on the verdict Wednesday.
Hodge’s attorney was unavailable for comment, the Fayette County Public Defenders’ Office said Wednesday.
Hodge’s sentencing is scheduled for April 30.
At that hearing, Aubele plans to ask to have Hodge sentenced to a term in state prison consecutively with the time she is already serving.
In December, she was sentenced to 21 months to 10 years in prison for stealing $106,750 in tax payments in her role as Uniontown’s treasurer in 2020 and 2021. She was also ordered to pay more than $220,000 in restitution, which included the cost of a forensic audit conducted on behalf of the city.
Aubele doubted the YWBA will ever see the full amount of money it’s owed, or anything near it. Once Hodge is released, she would likely be put on a payment plan topping out at a few hundred dollars a month.
He said it would “probably take longer than her life expectancy to pay anyone back — if it ever happens.”
“Unfortunately, in a situation like this, where we can’t make the victims whole, we’re left with trying to deter conduct from anybody else, should they decide to decimate an organization as she has,” he said.