Woman charged with stealing $300K from Alabama church for TikTok coins

An Alabama woman pleaded guilty to stealing nearly $300,000 from the church where she worked and sending much of it to content creators on TikTok.

Kristen Battocletti of Tuscaloosa, Ala., was accused of using a parish credit card to make more than 600 transactions over a seven-month period in 2023, including the purchase of more than $220,000 worth of TikTok coins.

She was charged with one count of wire fraud, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. Battocletti, 35, agreed to plead guilty and repay the church, according to court documents.

Her sentencing is set for November. The maximum penalty is 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.

Public defenders listed for Battocletti did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. A message left at a phone number associated with her was not returned Wednesday morning.

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Battocletti stole the money from St. Francis of Assisi University Parish in Tuscaloosa while working as an administrative assistant there, according to federal court documents. She linked the church Mastercard to her Apple Pay account and then used it to make the purchases, including about $80,000 in personal expenses such as car insurance payments, the documents said.

The rest of the spending was on TikTok coins, including nearly $70,000 in June 2023, about $105,000 in July and about $75,000 in August. Battocletti used the coins to send digital gifts to content creators, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

The coins are a digital currency that viewers use to send virtual gifts to creators, which they can then cash in. “Gifts are virtual items you can send to show your appreciation for your favorite creators on TikTok,” the platform’s website says.

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Battocletti was responsible for the parish bookkeeping and had been employed there since 2018, said Donald Carson, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Birmingham.

The money was taken gradually, but eventually others at the church began to notice that cash was missing, Carson said. “The loss began to add up, and that’s one of the triggers that got their attention,” Carson said.

The pastor and the parish’s finance council discovered the unauthorized transactions when they investigated the missing funds. A diocese auditor confirmed the findings.

“It’s tough when a member of your family, so to speak, makes decisions that are not in your best interest or in her own,” Carson said. “Our concern, at this point, is really to pray for her and her family, and her best outcome and recovery through all of this.”

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