Terry Elliott, the candidate behind whom the unions representing San Bernardino’s police officers and management had lined up as the central element of their effort to drive Second Ward Councilwoman Sandra Ibarra from office in 2022, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on 11-counts relating to his having swindled individuals of more than $230,000 through misrepresentations he made involving a church and a nonprofit corporation with which he is associated.
Elliott was arrested Thursday, March 6, and is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon in United States District Court in Riverside.
Elliott had an established criminal history when he was recruited by the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Management Association to run in the June 2022 election against Ibarra in what was her first reelection campaign after having been elected to represent the Second Ward in her maiden campaign for political office in 2018. Ibarra, who had been supported by the police unions in 2018, fell into disfavor with the police department when she publicly remarked upon the fashion in which the city’s police officers and the department in general stood down and took no action to arrest the participants in looting of commercial establishments at various locations in San Bernardino, including within the Second Ward, during the riots that occurred on the evening and early morning of May 31/June 1, 2020, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department on May, 25, 2020.
While the San Bernardino Police were present en masse while hundreds of rioters were staging protests that turned violent and involved breaking windows, going into stores and shops and walking or running away with merchandise, the department’s command made a set of strategic and tactical decisions to remain non-confrontational with the volatile crowd and only a handful of arrests of isolated participants in the rioting were made. The department and its officers defended that action, or non-action, as a prudent response that prevented any untoward incidents involving police, rioters and bystanders and an escalation that would potentially have led to further violence, injury and death.
Ibarra’s criticism was bitterly resented by the department’s rank and file as well as its management. Less than two years later, as the 2022 San Bernardino municipal election approached, members of the department prevailed upon Elliott to vie against Ibarra. Elliott had previously volunteered to serve as a chaplain with the police department and was the pastor at a San Bernardino church, the Ship of Zion. The leadership and members of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Management Association swung behind, indeed prompted, Elliott’s candidacy, despite having knowledge that Elliott did not actually reside in the Second Ward and that he had an extensive history involving fraud, theft and financial misdealings that had resulted in the loss of at least two of his pastorships, civil judgments against him, a bankruptcy and criminal convictions.
After graduating from Cajon High School in 1982, Elliott embarked on a career as a Baptist clergyman, becoming affiliated with a congregation in Los Angeles County in 1985. In 1986, however, he was arrested with regard to a matter involving passing fraudulent checks, the records pertaining to which have now been sealed, followed by another arrest for grand theft on January 26, 1994 that resulted in a felony conviction on June 10, 1994. That  complicated his status as a man of the cloth, and taken together with allegations that in his capacity as a preacher he sought to cozen his parishioners out of money, led to his departing from the church he was associated with in Los Angeles County to San Bernardino, where he became active with two congregations.
In 1998, following the death of the Reverend Henry Campbell, Elliott stepped in to take the helm of The Ship, which had been founded by Campbell in 1962. In 1999, Elliott, as the pastor and president, and James Marshall, as chairman and head deacon, founded the Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, located at 1895 Del Rosa Avenue in San Bernardino, as a California nonprofit corporation. Elliott soon, however, entered into untoward and unethical financial relationships with some of that house of worship’s congregants, and in one case engaged in acts U.S. Judge  William V. Altenberger said amounted to fraud when Elliott conned one of the members of his church, Tina Satterwhite, out of more than $75,000 when she had turned to him for help in a time of need.
Despite those issues, the San Bernardino Police Department had welcomed Elliott into the position of department chaplain, a voluntary post in which he ministered to the department’s members and their families, providing personal, spiritual, moral, and ethical consultation and encouragement and serving as what the department termed a “beacon of moral conduct, compassion and decency.”
In 2022, the department’s officers and the two unions representing its personnel – the San Bernardino Police Officers Association and the San Bernardino Police Managers Association – resolved to throw their support to someone other than the incumbent in the Second Ward city council race. When no viable candidate surfaced, members of the department encouraged Elliott to declare his candidacy for the post. He did so, whereupon the unions endorsed him and made substantial contributions to his electioneering fund.
In the spring of 2022, when Jon Plummer, who was then the president of the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, was confronted with documentation relating to Elliott’s convictions and Judge Altenberger’s finding of fraud with regard to Elliott’s action, he doubled down, having the association’s spokeswoman, Tamrin Olden reiterate that its membership was foursquare behind getting Elliott elected to the city council. Olen emphasized in a statement to the Sentinel that “Terry Elliott has been a longtime advocate and partner of the department and association, helping us better serve the community through volunteer work,” which she said included, “helping to create and foster relationships with the community, being there for those in need of spiritual and emotional support through the chaplain program, and collecting donations for the department and community.”
Moreover, the department’s officers underscored how Ibarra’s questioning of the department’s passive response in the face of looting that took place on May 31/June 1, 2022, her characterization of the department’s response as being insufficiently aggressive in protecting property and businesses that were under siege and her suggestion that the department was top heavy and overweighted with brass in that it had too many upper management lieutenant and captain positions and too few uniformed officers on the streets was unacceptable in a city official. The unions and members of the department poured tens of thousands of dollars into Elliott’s campaign, which enabled him to outspend Ibarra by a ratio of thirteen-to-one on their respective electioneering efforts.
Despite the lopsided nature of the campaign, Ibarra managed to prevail in what turned out to be one of the tighter municipal races in San Bernardino history in which she bested the challenger with 766 votes or 49.62 percent of the 1,476 total votes cast in the Second Ward that year, with Elliott registering 710 votes or 47.88 percent.
At this point, approaching three years later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office together with a federal grand jury have taken action which the San Bernardino Police Officers Association, the San Bernardino Police Management Association and the San Bernardino Police Department in general find rather embarrassing. On February 26, a federal grand jury in Riverside returned an indictment alleging Elliott engaged in multiple con jobs targeting long-time friends and a nonprofit corporation tied to a church, bilking them out of an amount of money approaching a quarter of a million dollars.
According to the indictment, from October 2019 to February 2023, Terrance Owens Elliott, 60, a.k.a. “Tony Elliott,” of Crestline defrauded several long-time friends out of approximately $150,263. While representing himself as working in the San Bernardino city government and being involved with the San Bernardino Police Department, according to the indictment, Elliott convinced one friend – identified in the indictment as “M.C” – to put her inheritance money into a trust for her own benefit. “Elliott convinced this victim to allow him to establish and administer that trust, claiming that she would lose her Medicare and Social Security benefits if she directly received the inheritance,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Elliott prepared a trust agreement that appointed himself as a co-trustee, documents show. The trust provided that its money was to be used for M.C.’s financial needs during her lifetime and set money aside to pay for her funeral expenses, and arranging for any remaining property placed into the trust to be passed to her children upon her death.
Elliott then opened a bank account in the trust’s name listing himself as the exclusive trustee and gave the bank a fraudulently modified copy of the trust agreement that purported that he had the sole power to make payments from the trust’s bank account.
He then wrote checks and made online transfers to a church – identified in the indictment as “Church A” – that weren’t permitted under the trust agreement. He also used the money from that trust’s bank account to purchase postal money orders that were used to pay the church’s rent. Elliott further used the account to pay for his personal expenses, including the repair of a Chevrolet truck, Nike sneakers, a piano, clothing, and an extended warranty for a motorcycle.
Elliott also obtained access to M.C.’s account at a different bank to make approximately $27,164 in unauthorized transfers of some of her monthly Social Security payments to the church.
When the victim’s family asked Elliott about the trust account or asked for bank statements, he lulled them into complacency by feigning getting upset, berating them for reproaching him and insisting that everything was under control.
When M.C. died, Elliott tricked another victim – identified as “W.H.” – into paying approximately $8,615 for the victim’s funeral expenses, falsely claiming he needed authorization from a judge before money in the trust bank account could be released.
Through this scheme, Elliott defrauded four victims – including M.C. and W.H. – out of at least $150,263.
In a separate scheme, from June 2021 to February 2023, Elliott advised victim W.H. on selling a house when renters occupied the property. After W.H. sold the house, Elliott called him and suggested the victim’s corporation loan M.C.’s trust $65,000, falsely claiming this would help the victim to avoid having to pay a capital gains tax from the house’s sale.
Elliott prepared a loan contract between a corporation W.H. had set up and M.C.’s trust, which they signed. Elliott told W.H. that Elliott would transfer $65,000 from the corporation to the trust account and that the trust would repay the loan with 10 percent annual interest. Elliott convinced the victim to give him several signed blank checks from the bank account of W.H.’s corporation.
Instead of honoring the contract, Elliott used one of the blank checks to make an unauthorized transfer to Church A – without W.H.’s knowledge or consent. Although Elliott ultimately transferred $49,000 to the trust, he never repaid any part of the $65,000 loan. Instead, he spent the bulk of the money on his own personal expenses.
From September 2018 to June 2021, Elliott used his relationships with Church A and its board of directors to help manage the church’s litigation expenses and other costs involving a different church – identified in the indictment as “Church B” and a nonprofit.
Elliott lied to the nonprofit and Church B’s board of directors that the nonprofit owed money to W.H.’s corporation for services rendered related to litigation against them. He caused the nonprofit to issue approximately 32 checks to W.H.’s corporation, which Elliott later deposited in a corporation-related bank account that Elliott controlled.
Elliott did not use the money from the checks for the nonprofit’s benefit and defrauded it out of approximately $23,300, according to the indictment.
In total, according to accounting figures contained in the indictment, Elliott allegedly caused his victims approximately $238,563 in losses.
The Sentinel’s efforts to penetrate the incarceration system in which those being pending federal trial are held in order to speak with Elliott were unsuccessful.
Ibarra told the Sentinel, “I don’t know what to say other than that people shouldn’t base their vote on who endorses a candidate nor on who contributes to political campaigns. The voters need to get to know their candidates by doing their own independent research on them. People are too ready to vote for whoever collects the most money, who gets the most donations.”
She said that her remarks following the May/June 2020 riot had resulted in “The police department really wanting to get me out of office. That is why they supported Terry Elliott. They should have at least tried to get a decent candidate.”
The department’s embrasure of Elliott was troubling, she said. Well before the department settled on him as an alternate candidate in the Second Ward, Ibarra said, it had given Elliott “access to their files as one of their chaplains.” The department should have been more discerning about who he was before giving him that title and position, she said, through a more exacting or exhaustive background check.
Once the 2022 campaign was under way, the police unions found out about Elliott’s criminal past and his financial exploitation of his own parishioners, Ibarra said. Still, she said, the unions and the officers did not rescind those endorsements.
“They knew he had a rap sheet,” she said. “He kept the endorsement, though.”
The police unions’ endorsements strengthened Elliott as a candidate, she said, by convincing other deep-pocketed donors to back him and some others with standing and credibility in the community to endorse him. The money that came into Elliott’s campaign coffers as a result enabled what she called a “smear campaign” against her, she pointed out. “He raised more than $40,000,” she said. “I only had $3,000 and no big endorsements.”
Nevertheless, she said, with luck and her track record while on the council, she managed to stay in office.
If there is any lesson to draw from her experience in 2022 and Elliott’s recent indictment, she said, it is that “You have to, as a voter, be careful about how you vote. Who gets into office into office is important.”