Faith, Fraud, and Forensics: Investigating Financial Crimes at a Catholic Retreat Center

Recently, the Attorney General of Michigan brought financial charges against a Catholic priest who while serving as the director of a retreat center for retired Catholic priests, allegedly committed several financial crimes against residents of the center. The Attorney General’s office turned to Adamy’s forensic accounting team to help uncover relevant evidence and provide expert witness testimony of the findings.

Forensic accounting is broadly defined as the application of specialized knowledge and analytical skills to investigate, collect, analyze, and evaluate evidential matter and to interpret and communicate findings in a legal or administrative venue. While forensic accounting has many facets, it can be employed as a process of uncovering potential fraud or other financial misdeeds in a criminal context. In our investigative process, we employed tracing procedures. A colloquial term for tracing is “follow the money”. Tracing is the process of connecting transactions together as they flow through multiple accounts. As part of our tracing process, Adamy examined thousands of pages of evidence including bank and investment account statements, canceled checks, ledgers, agreements, invoices, and other documents.

After our investigative process, we compiled our findings into a written report which detailed several questionable transactions. These findings corroborated the Attorney General’s claims as we detailed the movement of the questioned funds. The written report contained detailed flow charts outlining the movement of the money as well as account snips or “screenshots” as evidence of each piece of the puzzle. As the final phase of Adamy’s involvement, Strategic Partner Michelle Gallagher provided testimony in the trial of the accused priest. Ms. Gallagher walked the jury through Adamy’s process, explained the transactions, and detailed the movement of the funds. The key to her testimony was laying out the transactions in a simple, easy to understand way. Judges and juries do not have accounting or finance degrees, so making complex financial activity simple to understand is crucial for a forensic accountant. Her testimony, coupled together with the findings from our analysis, contributed to a guilty verdict on all counts for the accused priest.

The convicted priest was later sentenced to 4 to 20 years in prison in addition to orders for financial restitution. As of this writing, the amount of restitution to be paid is yet to be determined by the judge.