US Priest Spends $40,000 Of Church Funds On Candy Crush, Arrested
NDTV
During his police interrogation, he disclosed that he was seeking therapy to address his addiction to gaming and gaming-related spending.
A Catholic priest was detained and charged with stealing more than $40,000 from the church to pay for his addiction to mobile games, as per a report in Independent's Indy. It was suspected that Reverend Lawrence Kozak had been using the credit card of the St. Thomas More church on expenses such as in-game microtransactions in Candy Crush and Mario Kart Tour, which led to his arrest at the time of the alleged offences in 2022.
On Apil 25, prosecutors in Chester County, Pennsylvania, arrested and charged the priest for theft and other offences spanning three years. The 51-year-old was removed from his position in 2022 and placed on administrative leave by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia after an accountant checked the church's finances. It is reported that most of the funds were spent on the App Store.
According to The Philadelphia Enquirer, the accountant discovered "an astronomical amount of Apple transactions" on credit card accounts connected to the church. Mr Kozak was the holder of the Apple ID, and the purchases in question had been made continuously from 2019 until his removal in 2022.
