Megachurch Pastor Convicted After Embezzling $890K from Building Fund

On January 22, 2025, Wendell Trent Holloway — a 51-year-old founder and senior pastor of Living Cornerstone Fellowship in Concord, North Carolina, serving as Chairman of the Board of Elders and President of Living Cornerstone Ministries Inc. — was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison after being convicted on all 42 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and filing false tax returns in the Western District of North Carolina, Case No. 3:24-cr-00091. Beginning in July 2020, Holloway authorized 31 wire transfers totaling $890,143.42 from a restricted congregational building fund into a Nevada LLC he had secretly registered under his own name, with no employees, no contractor's license, and no physical address beyond a UPS Store mailbox. The investigation was triggered when newly hired church business administrator Daryl Mendenhall discovered the LLC had been paid nearly $900,000 over four years without a single permit filed or shovel put in the ground, and drove the Nevada Secretary of State filing directly to the elder board chair. Forensic auditors at Cherry Bekaert LLP traced every transfer to Holloway's personal accounts within 72 hours of each wire. He was ordered to pay $890,143.42 in restitution and $214,000 in back taxes. Among the 4,200 congregants who gave to the Vision 2025 campaign was a retired schoolteacher from Kannapolis who had pledged $12,000 in monthly installments over three years toward a children's ministry wing her grandchildren were supposed to use — a wing that was never built. - - 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.