Friar fail: Capuchin conman gets 5 years

A New York priest pretending to be a royal doctor stole more than $500,000. He was sentenced Thursday to federal prison.

The Capuchin priest who stole more than $500,000 by pretending to run medical clinics in Lebanon was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday, and ordered to repay the entire amount he stole from people who thought they were donating to his ministry as a physician.

A promotional vocations photo of Fr. Pawel Bielecki. Credit: Capuchin Franciscans. (Editors’ note: The Pillar has elected to use this photo because there are very few photos of Bielecki publicly available, and The Pillar has used the other accessible photo repeatedly in prior coverage. The celebratory birthday theme is not meant to convey disrespect for the seriousness of the situation covered.)

The sentence, which includes three years of supervised release after his incarceration, suggests the sentencing judge was unconvinced when Fr. Pawel Bielecki’s attorneys argued this month that he should not be sentenced to more than two-and-a-half years in prison, and that the priest’s criminal behavior stemmed from childhood abuse allegedly endured in his native Poland.

Bielecki, 48, pled guilty in November to wire fraud, after federal prosecutors said the priest bilked Catholics by pretending to run fake medical clinics in Beirut, Lebanon, pretending to be a doctor, and falsely claiming direct lineage to two European royal families, in an elaborate scheme involving disguises and fake websites.

While his attorneys claim the fraud stemmed from alleged sexual abuse he recently claimed to have suffered as a child, prosecutors said that Bielecki lied to more than 350 victims over the course of a decade, and deceived the Capuchin Franciscan province of New York in which he was incardinated.

“Despite taking a vow of poverty, for almost a decade, Bielecki abused his position as a friar to facilitate a fraudulent scheme and enrich himself,” prosecutors told Judge Vincent Bricetti this month.

“For nearly a decade, Bielecki fraudulently raised money from victims by falsely claiming that he operated two medical clinics in Lebanon and was raising money for medicine, medical equipment, baby incubators, food, and an ambulance for those clinics. To support this scheme, Bielecki told victims numerous additional lies, including falsely stating that he was a physician, vascular surgeon, cardiac surgeon, and/or general surgeon, who had earned multiple Ph.D. degrees,” federal prosecutors explained.

“And Bielecki regularly lied to victims about his whereabouts, including claiming to have been badly injured—and his fake clinics badly damaged—by a widely reported August 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, when in fact Bielecki was in the United States in August 2020 and his clinics did not exist.”

According to court documents, Bielecki used at least some of his stolen money for plastic surgeries, expensive clothing, and vacations.

And “Bielecki’s subterfuge did not stop at aliases, false tax documents, and fake websites and email addresses,” prosecutors said.

“Bielecki also used numerous physical props and disguises in furtherance of his fraudulent scheme. To begin, Bielecki had fake foreign passports for at least two of his aliases—a Norwegian passport issued to ‘Paul Haakon Harald Bielecki (House of Glucksburg),’ and a French passport issued to ‘Paul Son Altessehaakon Harald Bielecki (House of Glucksburg).’”

“Further, after the August 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, in which Bielecki falsely claimed to be injured, Bielecki walked around using crutches—which were later found during a search of Bielecki’s residence at the friary—to back up his false statements about being present for and injured in the explosion.”

“Similarly, when Bielecki was arrested for the instant offense on August 17, 2024, at John F. Kennedy International Airport, as he was about to board a first-class flight to Paris, France, Bielecki had a fake United Nations photo identification card … [and] during a search of Bielecki’s residence at the friary following his arrest, agents found a white lab coat with a patch stating, ‘Dr. P. Bielecki, M.D., Ph.D, NYU Medical Center Transplantation Research.’”

—
While the priest did not dispute the case against him, his lawyers said that his fraud was an attempt “to buy self-worth and acceptance.”

According to the priest’s sentencing memo, Bielecki’s crimes stem from “the damaging psychological effects of his early childhood, abuse, and a life of stigma as a fatherless child” in the small Polish town in which the friar was raised.

A social worker employed by his public defender told the court that after Bielecki was arrested, he claimed that as a youth, he was sexually abused at least monthly for one school year “at the hands of two teachers, a woman and a man” when he was in elementary school.

Attorney Jane White, a public defender from the independent non-profit Federal Defenders of New York, argued that the abuse Bielecki allegedly experienced, along with alleged verbal abuse and violence from his mother, contributed to his fraudulent theft as a friar.

“He sees now how his trauma manifested itself in the elaborate personas he made, of a doctor, surgeon, a descendant of a royal family and selfless humanitarian. His spending and false portrayals of himself were wrongful, misguided attempts to fill a lifelong void,” White argued.

Judge Bricetti seemingly did not find White’s argument sufficiently convincing as to grant the 30 month sentence Bielecki’s lawyer requested. But the judge did order that the priest undergo an “outpatient mental health program,” and pay $563,448.00 in restitution for his crimes.

—
For their part, the Capuchin Province of St. Mary did not immediately respond to the March 27 sentence.

Prosecutors, who noted that the fraud came to light because of an internal Capuchin investigation, claimed that the priest created elaborate schemes to trick his provincial superiors, and also used those schemes to obtain two actual full-time jobs: One as as HR director for “the United States branch of a mid-size international bank,” and one as the HR director and Title IX coordinator for “a Manhattan-based nursing college.”

Earlier this month, the province declined to comment on whether Bielecki will be formally dismissed from the order, or whether it has initiated a canonical penal process against the priest.

In September, a spokesperson for the province confirmed that the priest’s faculties had been rescinded, and that the province was “working with its superiors in Rome to address Fr. [Pawel]’s status as a member of the Capuchin Order.”

Sources close to the province told The Pillar that members had fully believed he was a physician, until Bielecki’s arrest last year.

The province initially referred Bielecki’s case to federal prosecutors, after an internal investigation found that Bielecki had been dishonest about his daily activities, “misrepresented his background and academic credentials, had been making false representations to raise money for overseas charitable projects that did not exist, and used our headquarters and our other offices as conduits for some of the funds raised,” according to a provincial statement.

Because the theft occurred while Bielecki was in active provincial ministry, The Pillar asked the province whether the theft had changed anything in the province with regard to the supervision of friars. The province told The Pillar it had no comment.

—
Robert Warren is an assistant professor of accounting at Radford University, a retired IRS investigator, and an expert in theft and fraud in ecclesiastical contexts.

After the sentence was issued March 27, Warren told The Pillar that “the judge today sentenced Fr. Bielecki to the high end of the sentencing guidelines, which is high compared to other federal cases.”

“For instance, Fr. Michael Fay was in 2007 sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut to [only] 37 months in prison for stealing $1,027,989. And in 2012, Fr. Michael Moynihan was sentenced in federal court to [only] five months incarceration and restitution of approximately $400,000, for setting up a secret bank account in the name of the parish and using funds from that account to, among other things, maintain a one-bedroom apartment which he shared with a close male friend who served part-time as a music director at the parish, while also pursuing an acting career.”

But Warren said he expects that “Bielecki will not serve all 60 months if his case proceeds as normal. First, federal inmates at his risk level will be placed in a minimum-security prison — aka: ‘Club Fed.’ He will earn early release credits which will normally knock off 15% of his sentence. About six months before his release date, he will be transferred to a halfway house for community confinement, assuming ICE doesn't place a hold for deportation. He can also take classes which will knock off some time.”

“I estimate he will serve anywhere between 40-45 months before being released to community confinement,” Warren explained.

Still, Warren said the priest’s sentence leaves unanswered questions.

“This case still has more mysteries than a rosary,” Warren told The Pillar, noting that, in his view, Bielecki’s Capuchin province seemingly failed to supervise Bielecki, verify his claims of being in medical school and then a physician, or to scrutinize donations sent to the province for the priest’s “ministry,” raising questions about whether the province will also make efforts to compensate victims.

“And then, assuming that Fr. Bielecki was going through the naturalization process while committing these crimes, his U.S. citizenship can be revoked. Is the province working with the Department of Homeland Security on that revocation? If not, why not?”

Warren said Bielecki’s immigration status — and the question of his possible deptoration — was especially difficult to parse out.

“It’s like the third secret of Fatima whether he’ll stay in this country,” Warren told The Pillar.

In a release after Bielecki was sentenced, acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said that “Paul Bielecki exploited his position as a friar to defraud hundreds of innocent victims. He faked a charity to rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then used these stolen funds to live the high life. But Bielecki’s days of luxury and lies are over. Let today’s sentence be a lesson to all — if you abuse your position of trust to take advantage of others, you will be held accountable.”