Lutheran Pastor Convicted of Embezzling Donations from Homeless Outreach Program

On March 6, 2024, Reverend Eric T. Lindstrom — a 54-year-old senior pastor at Bethany Lutheran Church in Duluth, Minnesota, and founder of the church's Lakeside Hope winter homeless outreach program — was sentenced to 30 months in the custody of the Minnesota Commissioner of Corrections at MCF-Faribault after pleading guilty on November 17, 2023, to one consolidated count of theft by swindle over $35,000 under Minn. Stat. § 609.52, subd. 2(a)(4), and one count of tax evasion. Investigators determined that between January 2017 and October 2023, Lindstrom diverted $184,372 in restricted donor funds through a fictitious vendor he called Northland Restoration Services LLC, by skimming cash directly from quarterly Hope Sunday collections before they were logged, and by using the program's debit card for personal fuel, hardware purchases for his private lake cabin, and over $3,000 in charges at a Cabela's sporting goods store. The scheme was uncovered in fall 2023 when a newly elected church treasurer, a retired bank compliance officer, requested W-9 forms for all vendors and discovered that the EIN for Northland Restoration Services did not validate. A subsequent search warrant recovered a three-ring binder containing 47 forged invoices, all printed on the church's own color laser printer, billing the homeless shelter for repairs to a building that did not exist, with the company address line listing the GPS coordinates of Lindstrom's personal lake cabin. Among the funds he diverted was a $25,000 bequest left by a deceased congregant who had designated her savings specifically to keep people warm through Minnesota winters along the Lake Superior waterfront. - - Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.