South Hills church congregation targeted by scam artists

GREEN TREE, Pa. — Congregation members are on alert after leaders informed them of a scam targeting the parish of St. Rafael the Archangel.

Several church members have received messages, coming in the form of texts or emails, asking them to donate gift cards or money. The scam artists are pretending to be Father Robert Grecco or other clergy leaders.

“We have so many generous people that are willing to try to help that it’s a shame that those kinds of scams would dampen people’s enthusiasm,” said Father Daniel Maurer of St. Rafael the Archangel parish.

Father Maurer said parishioners would never be asked to give help via text message or email. Instead, they would be approached directly by the clergy office or church leaders. He said there are red flags in these messages, including misspelled words, improper grammar, and other signs.

“Our real emails use the parish name and so forth,” Father Maurer said. “They get very creative on how they – the excuses [they make] not to contact us because they don’t want people to find out it’s not real.”

Channel 11 spoke with some of those who attended Tuesday morning mass at St. Margaret of Scotland church in Greentree. Jim Bittner said clergy leaders warned the congregation about the scam during Sunday’s mass, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to get this text just a few hours later.

“They’re out there everywhere. I mean, this is just one instance involving a church, but I’m sure there are many other organizations affected too,” Bittner said.

“The emails or text messages always say that for some reason, they shouldn’t contact us because we’re too busy or we can’t talk to them – but just go ahead and do something that’s going end up costing them money,” Father Maurer said.

Father Maurer said these scam artists are hard to trace, so if you do get a message, don’t respond. Parish leaders want to hear from those who received these messages, so if you think you’ve been a victim, give them a call.

The parish also posted a screen grab of one of the fraudulent texts on its Facebook page.

It reads, “Do NOT respond to any text that resembles this!” along with a screengrab of the following text:

“Glad to hear from you Erin. I’m currently in a pressing meeting, I would have called but calls are not allowed I need to get an Apple gift card for some women battling cancer at the hospital but I can’t do that right now because of my busy schedule. Can you get it from any nearby store now? I will reimburse you later with cash or check. God Bless.”

A Facebook post from January 26 warns of fraudulent emails that the parish received.

The post encourages parishioners to be attentive to any message that claims to be from the parish staff or clergy asking for money. The parish said it would not ask for money via email or text, the post said.

©2024 Cox Media Group