A Little Testimony
Wednesday, July 4th, 2012Descriptions of the trial are continuing from Juror #215. Here is his description of the testimony of one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, a senior elder in “God’s church”.
——————————— From Juror #215 ————————————-
——- Audra Weinland Little – The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree ———-
By far, the prosecution witness who spent the most time on the stand was Audra (Weinland) Little. She took the stand immediately following the lunch break on Thursday, and the prosecution questioned her until we ended for the day on Thursday, and then picked up again where they left off on Friday morning. By the time that the defense finished their cross-examination and the prosecution completed their redirect questioning, it was noon on Friday. She sat on the witness stand for approximately 6 hours total. {For those who might not be aware, Audra is Ron’s daughter and the church bookkeeper. In November of 2009, the government had to make a federal case of it to compel her to answer questions about church finances. Audra was also ordained a senior elder early in 2010. Mike(DDTFA)}
Her testimony began much the same way as the other church members and elders, with an overview of the church structure and tithe systems, and a discussion of saving their second tithe to travel on holy days.
They talked about when she became involved as the bookkeeper for the church in 2007, and moved to the northern Kentucky area to be closer to her parents and to work out of the church “office” in the Weinland’s basement. To actually call her a bookkeeper is a bit of an overstatement. In listening to her description of her job, her duties involved depositing checks and writing checks, but that was about it. Her daily duties involved:
– Driving to the main post office in Cincinnati to the church’s PO box to get the mail, which mainly consisted of tithes sent in by the members
– Filling out deposit slips for the church accounts and taking the tithe checks to the bank
– Recording the amount of each member’s tithes so that a summary of annual tithes could be sent to each member each year.
– Writing reimbursement checks to any elders who had incurred church expenses
– Transferring money from the church accounts to the Weinland personal accounts to pay the credit cards
– Paying the credit card bills monthly to bring the balance of each down to $0 each month
– In 2008, when there were regular charges being made to the cards by Google for the advertising, she would also monitor the card balances regularly mid-month, and would make extra card payments to keep the balances under their credit limits.
She testified that when she first moved to the Cincinnati area, that she already owned her own car at that time, but that shortly after her father purchased her a new BMW due to the fact that her job required so much driving back and forth to the post office and to the bank.
The church had, during the time in question, about 10 bank accounts at 6 different banks. There were three persons authorized to access those accounts:
– Ronald Weinland
– Laura Weinland
– Audra Weinland
The Weinlands, during the time in question, had about 8 domestic bank accounts at 5 different banks. Again, there were three persons authorized to access those accounts:
– Ronald Weinland
– Laura Weinland
– Audra Weinland
The Weinlands had about 6 credit card accounts from 4 different credit card companies, each account with a $50,000 credit limit. In some cases, for a single account, there were separate cards for both Ron and Laura.
Audra’s testimony is where the accounting process to pay the bills was revealed. The bills for the card would come in, or Audra would check the balance online. Audra would transfer the full amount of the bill from a church account into a Weinland account, and then would pay off the card from a Weinland account. This was the process that was established by her mother prior to Audra’s employment by the church, so she just went along with it. Audra made no attempts to audit the credit card statements for the nature of the expenses, she just kept paying them off monthly.
The prosecution was showing checks written and electronic debit records from the Weinland accounts as well as large transfers from the church to the personal accounts, and attempted to ask Audra what each of these were for. Audra stated that without seeing the coordinating credit card statements from the same time periods, there would be no way for her to remember. Well Audra, since you asked…
The prosecution began showing the credit card statements to the court. This was really the first time, other than the handful of receipts that were shown during Steve Dalrymple’s testimony, that we got a really good look at how the money was being spent each month. We saw dozens upon dozens of credit card statements, with a wide variety of charges. I’ve already discussed in prior posts what kinds of things were being purchased, so I won’t rehash that again now, but this was the big courtroom moment when it was all being drug from the shadows and subjected to the light of truth. Audra insisted that checking the validity of each of the charges was not her job. Her job was just to keep the bills paid and keep the balance of the cards down each month so that they could keep traveling around the world for the church.
Audra also handled paying all of her parent’s household bills out of the Weinland accounts for the regular monthly utilities, cable, phone, etc. Since Laura also had access to both the church and personal accounts, it was not uncommon for Laura to transfer funds from church to personal accounts as well. We looked at many checks written by Audra out of the Weinland’s “main” checking account, which logically appeared to be the payments for these utilities each month.
Then, the prosecution began showing canceled checks from one of the Weinland’s secondary accounts, which were also written by Audra. These appeared to be checks paid to all of the same utilities, cable, phone, sanitation, etc. as the previous set of checks from the main account, but in different, smaller amounts. The prosecution asked Audra whose utilities these checks were paying, and she claimed to not remember. They asked her if, in fact, these were HER utilities that she was paying out of one of her parents’ accounts each month, and she claimed to not remember. We looked at check after check; dozens if not hundreds of checks, all written by Audra from this secondary checking account, all paying monthly utility bills. At one point, Audra was visibly wearing down from the repeated questioning. Each time that the prosecution showed a check and asked if this check was paying one of her bills, she at first claimed to not remember, but this reached a tipping point where it was obvious that she just couldn’t continue to lie anymore. When the prosecution asked if the next check was paying her phone bill, the answer was, “yes.” When asked if the next check was paying her electric, the answer was, “yes.” Deposits into this account were made by Laura. Ron later testified when asked about this secondary account that this account was opened specifically for the handling of all of Audra’s living expenses.
There were a great many things revealed during Audra’s testimony, including the fact that checks were written paying Jeremy’s tuition, but not that this was considered a “scholarship.” That scholarship information did not come out until Ron’s testimony.
On the one hand, the 6 hours of Audra’s testimony was very dry and businesslike. We looked at hundreds of pages of financial documents, statements, bills, and canceled checks. On the other hand, it was clear that each of the pieces was another nail in the coffin to prove that the Weinlands were getting more money funneled into their checking accounts to pay their own family expenses than they had reported on their 1040s that were seen on the first day of the trial. All of the evidence was there, presented during Audra’s testimony that just needed to be assembled into the big picture. The very next witness to take the stand, of course, was the IRS Special Agent who had spent countless hours putting the jumbled mess of corruption together into that big picture, which was really the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.
———- End of Juror #215’s description of A Little testimony ——————
Juror #215, thank you for this description. I don’t understand why the government has not indicted Audra and Laura as co-conspirators along with Ron.
