Each message was the same. A deacon of the church was stranded in England without his wallet or money, so he needed about $1,200 or more to get home. There was just one problem \u2014 the deacon was at home in Buckhannon, W.Va. and having a morning cup of coffee.<\/p>\n
The message was another new e-mail scam.<\/p>\n
Members of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Bluefield and other churches in the state received e-mails from a person impersonating a deacon. In each case, the \u201cdeacon\u201d claimed to be stranded and in need of money.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was two days ago,\u201d said Bryan Minor, executive director of communications and development for the Diocese Wheeling-Charleston. \u201cI had an e-mail that hit my mobile phone and many other people in the diocese that one of our deacons in Buckhannon was stranded in England and needed approximately $1,300 to get home. In the message it said, \u2018Many of you may not know that I went to England for a seminar, and while there I lost my wallet.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This plea for assistance, the third of its type diocese members had received, was better than the two previous and very similar attempts, Minor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe message was clearly written, and this was the third message of this type we\u2019ve received in the last year,\u201d he said. \u201c One was a priest of the diocese and one was a high school principal of the diocese, and in those two messages were obvious spelling mistakes and awkward grammar. These folks we know had received a high degree of education, and you wouldn\u2019t expect them to send such a sloppy message.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new message had well-constructed sentences, Minor said. \u201cOne thing I did notice was that there were two or three commas in the subject line.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There’s more at the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’ve all gotten those e-mails from Nigeria. Now, here comes one from a Catholic deacon. (No, it’s not me…) Read on: Each message was the same. A deacon of the church was stranded in England without his wallet or money, so he needed about $1,200 or more to get home. There was just one problem…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deacons","category-ripped-from-the-headlines"],"yoast_head":"\n
A deacon scam? - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A deacon scam? - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We’ve all gotten those e-mails from Nigeria. Now, here comes one from a Catholic deacon. (No, it’s not me…) Read on: Each message was the same. A deacon of the church was stranded in England without his wallet or money, so he needed about $1,200 or more to get home. There was just one problem…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-25T10:13:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A deacon scam? - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A deacon scam? - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"We’ve all gotten those e-mails from Nigeria. Now, here comes one from a Catholic deacon. (No, it’s not me…) Read on: Each message was the same. A deacon of the church was stranded in England without his wallet or money, so he needed about $1,200 or more to get home. There was just one problem…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2009-07-25T10:13:00+00:00","author":"deacon greg kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html","name":"A deacon scam? - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-07-25T10:13:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-25T10:13:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-deacon-scam.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A deacon scam?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10","name":"deacon greg kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","caption":"deacon greg kandra"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/deacon-greg-kandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}