Fake priest haunts Dallas trying to burgle churches: report

Call it Roman collar crime.

A wanted man has been posing as a priest to gain access to at least six parishes in Dallas to try to burglarize them, police told The Dallas Morning News.

"Two parishes were in the central downtown area, two in northeast Dallas and two in the southwest part of the diocese," Katy Kiser, communications director for the diocese, confirmed to the Morning News.

The man has been operating under the false name "Father Martin," according to reports.

The man also impersonated a priest in Houston, grabbing cash from a Catholic church on Oct. 27, Houston Police Department told KHOU-11.

The suspect has outstanding warrants in California and Pennsylvania, reports show, and he's also been spotted at churches in California, Oregon and North Dakota.

"Nothing was stolen from the Dallas churches, Kiser said. 'His access was limited to mainly public areas,' she wrote of 'Father Martin' in an email to The Dallas Morning News.

"He was seen going into an upstairs area of one facility that was not for public access but the doors were all locked.'"

In this case, the priest was false, but sometimes even real men of the cloth have been caught in spectacular criminal schemes.

In 2018, for example, Rev. Lenin Vargas-Gutierrez of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Starkville, Mississippi, was busted bilking $33,000 out of parishioners to treat a fake cancer diagnosis.