CLEARWATER, Fla. – Clearwater police arrested contractor William Botelho, the owner of Custom Building Solutions, on Wednesday and charged him with grand theft over $100,000.
Clearwater church fraud investigation
What we know: Church leaders say they hired Botelho for the $4.1 million project on Nursery Road. They paid about $832,000 upfront to cover materials and subcontractors so construction on the new church could begin.
Detectives with the Clearwater Police Department say bank records from Aug. 2023 to March 2026 show Botelho spent only $95,000 on construction. That leaves roughly $736,000 unaccounted for.
An arrest affidavit says Botelho used that money for a range of personal expenses, including his condo association fees, his home mortgage, personal checks he wrote to himself and a Mercedes G-Wagon.
Unanswered questions in contractor case
What we don’t know: Investigators have not said whether any of the remaining $736,000 can be recovered and returned to the congregation.
It’s unclear whether there are more victims. Detectives did confirm that, at this point, this is the only criminal case involving Botelho in Pinellas County.
Unity Church construction timeline
The backstory: In 2022, Unity Church of Clearwater sold part of its property to developers, who built the Discovery Academy of Science charter school. The church planned to build a new worship facility on the remaining land on Nursery Road.
In 2023, church leadership hired Botelho’s company to complete the build.
About six months in, church leaders began to grow suspicious about what was happening with the project.
What they’re saying:
“And there were a lot of explanations. We asked for verification that the funds were still there,” Leddy Hammock, the Senior Minister of Unity Church of Clearwater, said. “We didn’t expect that to be fabricated, which is how it seems now. And the talk was encouraging. ‘We are ready, we’re going to start, we’ll get going’.”
After more than three years with little to no progress, church leaders reported the case to Clearwater police.
“There was always one reason or another why the project couldn’t proceed as planned, after they did eventually jump through all the hoops necessary in order to start construction,” Det. Parker Moody said. “That’s when they were told that, ‘We actually need more funds to start the project, and we need to renegotiate the contract’.”
Detectives say the only physical work done on the property was a fence around the construction site.
Contract dispute claims emerge
The other side: Detectives say Botelho blamed the church. He claimed the church breached the contract, which led to accumulated fees and other penalties, and said he could account for the funds spent on the project.
Church leaders disputed this claim.
“The breach of contract was on his behalf,” Hammock said. “We fulfilled our contract. At the end, he demanded an addendum to the contract, of an additional million dollars plus, with no documentation. That was the part we did not enter into.”
Civil suits cloud builder record
Dig deeper: Pinellas County public records show Botelho is involved in two open civil cases. In one, a client accuses him of breach of contract over storm repair work.
