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A Butte pastor is set to plead guilty next week to embezzling nearly $300,000 from the United Pentecostal Church.

Kenneth Emmett Hogue, in his capacity as treasurer of the church's Rocky Mountain District, is alleged to have embezzled $288,757 from the church between June 2012 and July 2016.

On Monday, federal prosecutors in Missoula charged Hogue with wire fraud, which carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence. The same day, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Racicot filed a plea agreement signed by Hogue, in which he agreed to pay restitution of the embezzled amount.

Hogue's public defender on Monday filed a motion to change his plea to guilty. U.S. Magistrate Kathleen DeSoto set the hearing for Aug. 29.

Hogue did not return a phone message seeking comment on Thursday. A message left at the church's Rocky Mountain District was not returned.

An April 1988 article in The Montana Standard reported Hogue began serving Grace and Truth UPC in Butte as pastor in 1982. It's not clear if Hogue is still pastor at Grace and Truth; no pastor is listed for that church on the United Pentecostal Church's Rocky Mountain District website, and a woman who answered the church's phone on Thursday did not comment.