Ex-police chief's wife stole from Yuba City church for lingerie, vacations. Is prison next?" by Ishani Desai, Sacramento Bee, August 22, 2024 Northern California church administrator, who swindled a Yuba City church out of more than $360,000 in part from the youth ministry and who used the money for her personal use, was sentenced Tuesday to five years and one month in prison, prosecutors said. Chanell Easton, 38, the wife of a former Marysville police chief, pleaded guilty last year to 22 counts of wire fraud. She was also found guilty on two counts of aggravated theft in March after a bench trial in Sacramento federal court. Easton embarked from 2013 to 2018 on an embezzlement scheme in which she used credit cards from St. Andrew Presbyterian Church to book a vacation to Fort Bragg and buy country music concert tickets, jewelry, clothes and lingerie, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. She also wrote checks to herself by forging the signatures of the church treasurer and the head volunteer of the church's food pantry, prosecutors said in a news release. The $360,000 funds stolen by Easton represents about half of the church's annual donations given by parishioners, Assistant U.S. Attorney Elliot Wong said, according to court documents. However, the total amount Easton stole is not known, Wong wrote. She destroyed the church's financial records when she left her church job, "plainly designed to hide and obstruct any investigation into her embezzlement," Wong wrote