The trials of James Rupard and Frank Silvestry — men accused of two of the biggest financial crimes in Scotland County history — could take years to come before a jury, authorities say.

Rupard, 48, is an ex-pastor accused of embezzling a large sum of money from local firefighters and pocketing money from policies he sold at an insurance business instead of writing annuities.

Silvestry, 75, is a former car dealer accused of swindling his customers by selling cars he didn't legally own.

District Attorney Kristy Newton said she could not speak to specifics on either cases or how long it may take to try either case, but she did say most cases as complicated as these two typically take at least three years to go from the initial charge to a ruling on guilt.

It is not because the justice system wants to delay the prosecution of those accused, but rather because the system tries to meticulously ascertain guilt or innocence based on the weight of evidence, something that can take time.

"When a case originates by warrant and it is a felony offense, jurisdiction is in district court," Newton explained. "There are a number of things that have to occur before the indictment stage, which would include the accumulation of all the investigative report, which includes any reports by experts, which can sometimes take a lengthy period of time for the expert to complete the analysis, records that need to be secured from any financial institutions, phone records, anything from an evidentiary perspective, you are accumulating during that time while the case is pending in district court."

"After that, you have the discovery process, where you turn (that evidence) over to the defense. If you have a case that has a lot of material in it, like the Silvestry case for instance, that can take a long period of time because you are talking about thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of items that have to be turned over, so it takes a long time to accumulate it, it takes a long time to review it, to organize it, to familiarize yourself with it, to make sure that you've gotten all the subpoenas, court orders and so forth that you need to acquire the information and provide it to the defense.

"Then once you've accumulated all that information, you review it to determine legally and factually what crimes are alleged to have been committed, and then you prepare bills of indictment.

"(Bills of indictment are) submitted to the grand jury, and then after that there is a process that takes place where, under the case management plan, there are various settings were arraignment, discovery, pre-trial motions, council, bond, various things have to be addressed.

"Then, cases are generally scheduled chronologically once they go to the trial calendar, but it can take multiple settings fore them to ever make it to the trial calendar because all of these other things are being completed before the case is ever is in a posture to clear arraignment, which is the formal entry of a plea, and move to the trial calendar."

Newton refrained from making specific comments on either the Silvestry or Rupard case.

"I try to avoid commenting on pending cases just because of the rules of ethics, its often not proper to make specific comments about whats going on with a specific case in the pretrial stage," Newton said. "I can say that those cases are porgressing along on schedule.

Rupard

Rupard's case has yet to enter the discover phase as the District Attorney's office is still waiting on an investigative report, Newton said.

Rupard was once considered an upstanding community leader, having served as vice president of the Scotland County Firefighter's Association, assistant fire chief at Stewartsville Volunteer Fire Department, vice president of the Scotland County United Way, political director for the Scotland County Republican Party and a host of other volunteer positions.

Now the former pastor and insurance agent is out on bond await trial for 72 counts of embezzlement, 10 counts of obtaining property by false pretenses and five counts of embezzlement by an insurance agent.

These charges stem from accusations Rupard stole $226,000 in firefighter funds and pocketed money that should have been used for insurance annuities.

This isn't Rupard's first experience with the criminal justice system. He was convicted in 1978 of slaying his paternal grandparents, a charge he still denies.

Silvestry

"I can tell you that Silvestry is currently in the discovery stage and it is rather voluminous and may take a while to complete that."

Silvestry was the owner of Silvestry Chevrolet, Laurinburg's sole new car dealership, and stands accused of buying and selling cars without ever paying off the outstanding balance on loans against their titles.

Silvestry is charged with 26 counts of obtaining property by false pretenses, 23 counts of embezzlement of state property and one count of felony conversion. He is currently being held in Scotland County jail under a $1 million bond, but has a bond hearing scheduled for later this month.