A woman who pleaded guilty to stealing more than a quarter of a million dollars from a northern Iowa church has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison.
Forty-seven-year-old Melissa Noland was the bookkeeper for the First United Methodist Church in Mason City for five years, until she was fired in January of 2019. According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Noland wrote checks to herself using the church’s checkbook, she used the church’s money to pay her own credit card bills and she inflated her own pay.
She’s been ordered to repay the $274,222.09 she stole from the church.