Clearwater construction fraud: Contractor accused of taking $832K from church

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 for materials and subcontractors to start building the new church.

Detectives with the Clearwater Police Department say bank records from Aug. 2023 to March 2026, show that Botelho spent only $95,000 toward construction, leaving approximately $736,000 unaccounted for.

According to an arrest affidavit, that money was used for a variety of personal expenses, including his condo association, Botelho's home mortgage, personal checks written to himself and a Mercedes G-Wagon.

Unanswered questions in contractor case

What we don't know:

Investigators have not disclosed whether any of the remaining $736,000 can be recovered or returned to the congregation.

It's not clear if there are additional victims, but detectives confirmed that this is the only criminal case in Pinellas County, involving Botelho at this point.

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 its remaining property on Nursery Road.

In 2023, church leadership hired Botelho's company to complete the build.

After about six months had passed, church leaders started to become suspicious about what was going on 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 on the project, 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 claimed that the church was at fault.

He said that the church was in breach of contract, and that's what accumulated fees and other penalties, and that he could account for the funds that were used towards 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:

According to Pinellas County public records, Botelho is involved in two open civil cases, including one case where a client is accusing him of breach of contract over storm repair work.

The Source: The information in this story was gathered from an arrest affidavit, as well as an interviews with a detective from the Clearwater Police Department and Unity Church of Clearwater leadership.