By Sarah Wallace

Police get tip of scammers using church as front

Oct 7, 2013 | 6:58 AM

paNOW was recently tweeted, “Apparently there are people scamming local businesses claiming they from St. Michael Parish PA. They are NOT. Police called,” wrote Travis Myrheim, St. Michael’s Parish pastor.

“It happened at the [Evergreen] Nissan dealership … two people came in and said they were from the St. Michael Parish and that they were either taking cash donations for a fundraiser because our parish is poor or they would take gifts. The people that work at the Nissan know some of my parishioners, so they called over to the office right away,” Myrheim said.

Myrheim said luckily Evergreen Nissan didn’t give the people any donations.

He said he tweeted the scam to bring awareness to the issue to make sure people collecting donations for agencies are legitimate.

Sgt. Curtis Halcro with the Prince Albert Police said both Myrheim and Evergreen Nissan notified police.

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He said the police received a report from the car dealership that they were approached by these individuals, who had a letter from St. Michael’s that said they were collecting donations for a fundraiser.

“Fortunately the business contacted police and we confirmed that there was no fundraiser taking place for the church and the business was not out anything fortunately,” Halcro said.

“[This is being] held as information and it’s still under investigation, there may be some video surveillance from the business that we could possibly ID this person,” Halcro said.

Anyone who is approached by these people is asked to contact police.

“It’s just sad because it looks bad on our parish because when we do fundraising we try to do a better job of it and not just canvas in a sketchy way,” Myrheim said.

He wants businesses to be aware that the parish isn’t trying to dupe anyone, “our fundraising comes out of our office or done at the church building, stuff like that. We’re more concerned with community building ourselves then we are just trying to raise money. We try to take care of our people.”

swallace@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahthesquid