Darrell Wills is looking forward to putting the last eight years behind him.
After a lengthy battle trying to prove his pastor defrauded him and another business partner out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, the conviction is in and Wills is breathing a sigh of relief.
A jury in May found J.B. Williams, the pastor of Abundant Living Faith Ministries, guilty of bank fraud and possession of personal identification information without authorization and acquitted him on a charge of theft, according to court records.
He has a case management hearing in August to determine his sentence.
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"I don't want what happened to myself and Mr. Goldsmith, to happen to anyone else," Wills said.
In 2016, Wills and his partner Hillard Goldsmith, both former members of Williams' church, discovered that Williams had been withdrawing funds from their retirement savings account with Bank of America for years, according to court records.
Williams, who Wills said touted himself as a "financial guru," approached the two men in 1999 offering to help manage their courier service, External Office Systems 1 Inc., according to court records. Wills and Goldsmith allowed Williams to use their signature stamps for their bank account at Regions Bank to submit payroll checks to employees, pay bills for business operations, and transfer money to the retirement account.
Unbeknownst to them, Williams had been moving huge sums of money in and out of the account for decades after posing as one of the rightful account owners who shared the last name as him.
Prior to establishing External Office Systems 1 Inc., Wills and Goldsmith had a separate business with a third partner with the last name Williams, according to court records. The business opened the Bank of America account but Goldsmith and Wills decided to leave it open even after the business dissolved to put their savings in from their new business endeavor.
Court records show that Wills and Goldsmith tried to review their account but were denied because they no longer had access to it. According to previous reporting, Williams also tried to get Wills to resign as officer and director of EOS-1 and relinquish control of his bank accounts to Williams. Wills never signed the documentation, he told police. However, his and Goldsmith’s account was transferred to Williams in May 2016.
Wills said they could prove that Williams had taken about $500,000, but he took well over that. On top of what he took, there's a tax bill worth roughly $150,000 to the IRS and another $32,000 due to the Department of Revenue, Wills said. The restitution amount is just under $300,000, he added.
"I used to stay up all night trying to figure this whole puzzle out," Wills said. "I thought I knew this person."
Wills met the convicted pastor when he was 25. Coming from a tough family life with no father figure, Wills said Williams filled that void for him, and it was the greatest thing. "I was always with him," Wills said.
Williams is still preaching weekly services at Abundant Living Faith Ministries, according to Wills, and until 2017, he was also president of the Northwest Florida Black Business Investment Corporation, which provides low-interest loans to emerging and expanding black businesses.
Calls to Williams and his church were not immediately returned.
Pastors are in a position of trust and held to a different standard, Wills said. To have his trust violated by a man he looked to as a father was unbelievable and disheartening.
Now Wills is working to put the nightmare behind him, because he said he has to.
"It's a daily battle," he said. "I don't think you ever fully escape it."
Breaking & trending news reporter Elena Barrera can be reached at ebarrera@tallahassee.com . Follow her on X: @elenabarreraaa .
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: 'Disheartening': Jury convicts local pastor of defrauding former church members
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