Woman accused of embezzling from St. Amelia's pleads guilty to all charges (2024)

Lisa Noble has pleaded guilty to all 11 counts brought in an indictment from the Erie County District Attorney’s Office related to her embezzlement of nearly $1 million from a City of Tonawanda audiology business and a Town of Tonawanda church.

Noble’s charges include four felony grand larceny counts, three felony counts of possession of a forged instrument, a lesser felony grand larceny and three counts of falsifying business records, also felonies, according to a news release from the Erie County District Attorney’s Office.

Noble, who was arrested by U.S. marshals in North Carolina on a fugitive warrant in March, fled the area and was using the name Lisa Wilson while providing child care to a family in Raleigh. She also used the name Lisa Prynn.

Noble stole more than $500,000 from the audiology business between 2016 and 2021 while working there as an office manager. She then worked as business manager at St. Amelia Church, where she stole approximately $465,000 between April and September 2023. The church placed her on administrative leave and then fired her after learning of the missing funds.

“This defendant brazenly stole nearly a million dollars from two former employers to fund her extravagant lifestyle, then fled the area in an attempt to evade prosecution. Today, I am pleased to announce that she has pleaded guilty to the indictment with a commitment from the judge that she will serve a significant period of incarceration,” acting Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane said in a release.

Noble, who faces up to 30 years in prison, must pay the business more than $890,000 and the church more than $465,000 in restitution as a condition of her plea deal.

The allegations against Noble first surfaced publicly in an item in the church bulletin, titled “St. Amelia Fraud Case Update,” which identified the parish’s former church business manager as the person under investigation for the missing money.

“This past Tuesday there was a grand jury hearing to help bring formal charges against Lisa Noble,” the church bulletin item stated. “Lisa was hired in March … and broke protocol following her training which led to her being able to misuse funds at St. Amelia’s.”

In the bulletin item, church officials said they are trying to recover “as much of the funds as possible” through “fraud claims and insurance.”

The probe was mentioned Sept. 29 in the Western New York Catholic, the official newspaper of the Buffalo Diocese.

“It’s very disappointing,” the Rev. Sebastian C. “Sibby” Pierro told The News in February, when authorities were still searching for Noble.

The parish’s former pastor was involved in hiring Noble last year.

“You hire someone, you trust someone, and then when something like this happens,” Pierro said in February. “It’s a real slap in the face.”

When Noble was hired in March 2023 to oversee finances at the church – one of the largest in the Buffalo Diocese – church officials were unaware that she had been in legal trouble repeatedly under the name Lisa Prynn, Pierro told The News.

Prynn’s past legal problems included a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filed in 1999, two small judgments filed against her and – more significantly – a 2009 conviction for grand larceny in Niagara County.

Dr. David T. Nelson, a local audiologist, previously told The News that Noble stole from his Audiology Service Associates business when she was his business manager. Nelson shut down his 30-year-old company because of the theft.

“I hired Lisa. I trusted her,” Nelson told The News in February. “I considered her my best friend. She basically stole everything we had. Because of that, we had to close both of our offices … eight people lost their jobs.”

Hardly any of the stolen money has been recovered, law enforcement officials told The News in March.

Over the past two decades, Noble’s life included a bankruptcy, extravagant spending, casino gambling and an 18-month state prison term after she admitted in 2009 to stealing from four former employers.

Nancy Barrett, Noble’s mother, told The News in March that she had last spoken to her daughter around Thanksgiving, after Noble overdosed on a prescription drug and was hospitalized in Erie County Medical Center.

“She told me, ‘I’ve been to prison, and I’m not going back there again,’” Barrett said. “She also told me that she never stole any money from St. Amelia’s.”

Days after that conversation with her mom, Noble disappeared from Western New York, and a warrant was issued for her arrest.

Noble wound up in Raleigh, N.C., where she began using the name “Julie Wilson” and got a job working as a nanny for a family with four children.

Federal marshals arrested her March 8 after learning that Noble had applied for a job with a nursing home in the Raleigh area.