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Prosecutors believe a Fort Wayne pastor and businessman stole $75,000 from a trust fund established to help pay for the care of about 150 developmentally impaired adults who were patients at his company’s group homes.
Ernest M. Beal Jr., 56, chief executive officer of Your Friends & Neighbors, ordered the company use money from the patients’ trust fund to pay operating expenses and payroll, according to a probable cause affidavit filed Thursday in Allen Superior Court.
At least one of his properties was in foreclosure, and the company’s line of credit with a bank was overextended, court records said.
About 150 Indiana clients of Your Friends & Neighbors participated in the trust fund, depositing their Social Security benefit checks, paychecks and other income into the account. The trust fund money was meant to pay for the expenses and care of the patients, the documents said.
Beal ordered the withdrawals on numerous occasions between February 2006 and September 2008, the trust fund’s administrator told Indiana Attorney General’s Office investigators.
At one point, the account should have had $115,000, but because of the withdrawals Beal ordered, it had $7,000, the affidavit said.
A former employee told investigators that Beal fired her when she confronted him about dipping into the trust fund. Additionally, Beal was withdrawing the money when he and his wife were each making about $300,000 a year, with the company paying for their house and vehicles, the employee said, according to court documents.
When the attorney general’s investigator interviewed Beal in December, he said he had borrowed the money from the trust fund and always paid it back with interest. All but about $75,000 had been repaid to the account, which Beal promised to return in 30 days. By February, the money had not been refunded, the affidavit said.
Reached by phone in Indianapolis on Thursday, Beal denied any wrongdoing. He said after the interview with authorities, he promptly returned the money. “There isn’t any missing money in the Client Trust Account,” he said.
Beal, who is an attorney and the pastor of Faith United Church of Christ on Coldwater Road, also said his business was not in financial trouble. Your Friends & Neighbors operates group homes throughout Indiana and Georgia. Its headquarters is at 1515 Magnavox Way in Fort Wayne, according to Indiana secretary of state records.
Beal would not say how many facilities the company operated but said it has about 300 clients in Indiana. His charge, a single count of theft, is a low-level felony for which he could get up to three years in prison and pay a $10,000 fine.
