Former diocesan employee pleads guilty in $150k gift card scheme
A former diocesan employee pled guilty in Missouri last to stealing more than $150,000 from a Catholic scholarship fund by illicitly buying and misusing gift cards.
A former IRS investigator told The Pillar that theft-by-gift-card is a problem on the rise, and requires careful attention to address.
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Jeremy Lillig, a former employee of the Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph, pled guilty in a federal court hearing last week to one count of wire fraud.
According to the plea agreement arranged with prosecutors, Lilling misused his diocesean-issued credit card to purchase between 2018 and 2021 more than $150,000 in gift cards.
Between 2017 and 2023, Lilling was the director of stewardship for the Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph and the executive director of the Bright Futures Fund, a nonprofit providing financial assistance for students to attend three urban Catholic schools in Kansas City.
Prosecutors said Lillig took grant money given to the Bright Futures Fund and used it to purchase more than 400 Visa gift cards, submitting falsified expense reports to hide his actions.
Lilling was indicted by a federal grand jury on October 28, 2025 on one count of wire fraud. He was arrested and pled not guilty.
“Through the execution of this scheme and artifice to defraud, the defendant, LILLIG, from on or about 2017 and continuing until on or about March 2021, fraudulently obtained and activated 436 VISA gift cards worth $155,050,” the indictment said.
In a June 17 statement released after the hearing, the Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph addressed the guilty plea saying, “Our faith teaches us that God forgives us our trespasses as we forgive the trespasses of others, and so we must approach this news with merciful hearts. However, forgiveness does not negate justice or right action in our world. We continue to pray for all parties involved in this situation.
A sentencing date has not been set. Lilling faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000.
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Stealing parish or diocesean funds through gift cards is becoming a more prominent method of fraud within the Church, a retired IRS agent told The Pillar.
Robert Warren, a retired IRS investigator and assistant professor of accounting at Radford University, told The Pillar that:
“I suspect gift cards are frequently abused because it’s so easy to manipulate that system,” Warren said. “You have to control the stored value cards and you have to know who they are being given to and what they are being used for.”
Dioceses, parishes, and social service agencies sometimes use gift cards to help families struggling to pay utility bills or for groceries, Warren said.
But few internal controls exist to monitor the use and distribution of such cards, thus allowing fraud and misuse to potentially run rampant.
“Once you give out a gift card, it’s very hard to figure out who actually got it and what was it used for,” Warren said. “That was the issue here.”
To thwart the potential for abuse, Warren suggested that parishes and dioceses move away from issuing and using gift cards. Instead, he recommends that they pay utility bills directly — not because recipients will necessarily commit fraud, but because it can potentially by perpetrated by staffers as well.
“If there’s a problem with paying rent, can you just make the payment right to the rental company?” Warren asked.
“If you’re going to use stored value cards, whoever authorizes the card has to be different from the person who uses it,” Warren added.
Additionally, Warren recommends that parishes and dioceses review the credit score and other financial information regarding their employees to ensure that employees are not navigating their own financial troubles.
Often, Warren said, individuals steal from a parish or diocese when they are facing their own financial pressures.
“This gentleman spent $150,000 of diocesan money. He must’ve had his own money issues,” Warren said. “Dioceses should pull a yearly credit check. You have to do something to make sure on a regular basis that the persons you have employed in this program do not have their own financial difficulties.”
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The Diocese of Kansas City - St. Joseph discovered the financial abuse in October 2023 through an audit, shortly after Lillig left his position.
Diocesan officials reported the matter to law enforcement, handed over all financial records to the FBI and cooperated with the investigation that followed, Bishop James Johnston said in a November 5, 2025 statement. A full third-party audit was also conducted.
“Importantly, the FBI has assured us that their investigation did not find any individual donor funds which were diverted prior to secure deposit into the Bright Futures Fund.”
In a Nov. 5 statement, Bishop James Johnston, Jr. of Kansas City-St. Joseph called the news “unsettling.”
“I was shocked to learn of such a gross violation of the trust and integrity that is essential to any institution, especially one upheld by Catholic teachings,” he said.
Johnston said that the amount Lillig is accused of stealing is “within the range of what is covered by insurance.”
The bishop said that in December 2023, he ordered that the Bright Futures Fund be brought under standard diocesan policies for fund management.
Among the changes made was to strengthen annual financial audits by an outside firm.
In addition, accounting and donor tracking for the Bright Futures Fund have been integrated into the diocese’s system, and are now overseen by the diocese’s finance office, the bishop said. The Diocesan Finance Officer has also begun attending board meetings for the fund.
“We are fully committed to preserving the long-term stability and financial security of the Bright Futures Fund,” Johnston said in his statement.
Lillig had been a celebrated volunteer in the local community, praised as a ‘Rising Star of Philanthropy’ by The Independent, a Kansas City magazine, in 2015.
That article noted that the average family whom Lillig served through the Bright Futures Fund was “a family of four with an annual income of less than $16,000.”
Lillig told The Independent that he was inspired by Dorothy Day, “specifically her theory that ‘the greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution that has to start with each one of us.’”