EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis). Helleniscope has long highlighted the dangers of corruption within Church circles when they become entangled with mafia-style operations. The revelations about the Cretan mafia’s schemes—stealing both Church property and the assets of vulnerable elderly citizens with clerical complicity—strike at the very heart of faith, morality, and justice.
Targeting elderly citizens to steal their houses and other property for personal benefit is the older “trick” in the book… There are countless names of priests – and some Metropolitans of GOARCH – yes, Metropolitans !!! – who started their “career” in the Church using this trick… The list is too long… Please make the elderly people around you aware and protect them!… But in Crete, they perfected this practice…
This story underlines once again why transparency and accountability are essential in the governance of our parishes and monasteries. If clergy can be manipulated to serve as intermediaries in mafia schemes, then the faithful are left unprotected and betrayed.
The investigation is still unfolding, with at least a dozen new indictments expected. But the message is already clear: the alliance of organized crime with compromised clerics represents one of the gravest threats to Orthodoxy’s moral credibility in Greece.
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Blackmail and Property Grabbing by the Cretan Mafia – The Nursing Home Scheme and Clerical Involvement
Authorities have uncovered evidence that members of the Cretan mafia targeted the property of elderly people, often with the mediation of clerics tied to the criminal network.
This comes on top of earlier revelations showing how the mafia sought to seize “prime” church lands and sell them at inflated prices. One prominent case concerns 175 acres belonging to the Monastery of Agia Triada Tzagarolon, where the abbot falsely certified that the land was not under the monastery’s ownership—effectively handing it over to the criminal ring.
With new evidence from phone surveillance and analysis of communications apps, police expect 10–15 more indictments in the coming weeks. These will involve fresh cases of blackmail, collusion with police officers, illegal church land sales, and ties with judicial officials.
According to journalist Vasilis Lambropoulos, conversations show that certain clerics—already under investigation for other illegal acts—were helping siphon elderly people’s assets by placing them in nursing homes. Once the properties were transferred to the Church, mafia associates moved to seize control, cashing in enormous sums.
This is a disturbing topic, indeed….
There are some similar stories on the “parish streets” here in North America…
Interesting “soap operas” exist about wealthy, lonely, childless widows that sadly seem to supplant their need for family by entrusting and “adopting” certain members of the clergy “like their own son”, who in turn mysteriously end up owning impressive morsels of real estate (per public online records in the county registrar and MLS database that were printed by those close to one such story) and fancy vehicles….Reliable sources report that there’s at least one GOARCH parish in the USA that is extremely scandalized by such a situation…of course the lonely old Greek lady involved would always insist to concerned members of the parish that she did all this “voluntarily” (so the authorities could not get involved) and never felt “swindled” by the recipient of her “generosity”, but her “state of mind” remained questioned by those closest to this situation, and the equally questionable ethics surrounding the scandal are probably enough to depose the clergyman involved (even if he were to avoid prison at the end of a thorough investigation)…Even when this “fine” clergyman was transferred to another parish 7+ hours away by car (after people learned about the multi-million dollar “real estate transactions”), the old lady would frequently find someone to drive her to the new location and apparently be “hosted by him” for days at a time…what she didn’t know at the time was that there had been other “old ladies” prior to her that had also been “generous” with him, too…
There were also some interesting “reports” by other reliable sources out of Canada about certain Greek-born “career political activists” that had long-been involved (on the payroll perhaps?) in organizing the Greek diaspora on behalf of a certain big Greek political party for decades, suspiciously making / bullying their way into the board of directors of “Greek Community retirement communities”, and “befriending” the elderly (some of whom were known by sources to have significant property holdings in Greece), at times visibly holding folders with “mysterious paperwork” as they entered behind closed doors with them for “private visitations” (board members don’t usually visit tenants like that)…Is it perhaps time that the Greek authorities expand their investigation to include Interpol and the diaspora?
Moral of the story…keep an eye on who is “befriending” grandma & grandpa these days…and definitely “beware of Greeks bearing a folder of legal paperwork”… :)
Just one parish extremely scandalized by huge amounts of money “donated” to the church followed by the priest taking his “cut” without approval??? I suggest there are probably dozens.
I’m not sure the parish got anything because the “priest’s cut” was reportedly “all of it” in that instance…
Is there no fear of God?
All dollar bills have a motto prominently displayed that reads “In God we Trust”… so if these folks already “trust” and “believe” in the “god of Money”, (trusting is almost synonymous to “believing”) why would they fear anything, else, including our real God?