Elkin Valley Baptist Church broke ground on a new sanctuary in September of 2022. The project is likely to be delayed after funds were stolen from the church.
Parishioners of Elkin Valley Baptist Church were expecting to be worshiping in their brand new sanctuary by May of this year, but construction is unlikely to be completed by then after more than $793,000 dollars the church had raised for the project was stolen by internet scammers.
The church, founded in 1884, had long outgrown the building on North Elkin Drive constructed in 1954 and had been holding services in its family life center since 2016. In September of last year, the church broke ground on a new facility after raising funds for the project for seven years.
On Nov. 4, 2022, Elkin Valley Baptist Church received an email from Landmark construction, their builder, with payment instructions. A second, nearly identical email, came in just after the first. The emails arrived on a Friday when the office was closed, church leaders explained. Upon checking the emails on Monday, a church representative responded, unknowingly, to a cloned email.
“We followed those instructions, not knowing, and paid the bill. It wasn’t until several days later that we were contacted by Landmark about paying the bill and we said, ‘we did pay the bill.’ That’s when it was discovered that someone had intercepted the email chain,” explained Senior…
