Because it’s a donation, not a purchase. I bet the private schools didn’t have to return the money, because they provided the services paid for.
But donations work differently. Since the Church didn’t earn it, and the source is fraudulent funds, they must return it.
Otherwise, every crook in the world would just have their buddy set up a church, donate all their dirty money to it, and then they can freely keep the money when they are caught.
The people who are defrauded of their money in the scheme deserve to have their money returned.
This makes sense.
Obviously the court agrees, but that’s nonsense. What you’re describing is just money laundering through a charity, and if they could make that case they should charge the church with a crime. That’s obviously not what happened here, the church was not accessory to the fraud and is not responsible for it.
The defrauded party deserves their money back, but from the person actually convicted of the crime and not the church. That money is gone, and trying to draw a distinction between donations and purchases to extort it just doesn’t fly.
It is not a donation. It is shared responsibility for the costs of the ministry by a supporting member.
If the donations were used on tax returns it is more like a purchase.
The church is 120 years old... so there is no way his buddher could set up the church for fraudulent purposes before any of them were born.
And it is a Lutheran church, which requires a pastor with a copious amount of education, years of scholarly work, not a fly-by-night make believe diploma from a 6 week “preaching for dummies” crash course.