The case against Gregory Allen Madeya, 69, is built on a years-long paper trail of alleged theft, and the range of alleged victims is what makes it striking. Pennsylvania prosecutors say the former Ukrainian Catholic priest stole more than $740,000 from the churches he served, the Knights of Columbus, and his own mother, a woman prosecutors say was unable to manage her own finances because of her age. He was arrested last month in Vero Beach, Florida, and extradited back to Pennsylvania.
The attorney general's office says Madeya fraudulently misappropriated nearly $320,000 from churches and donors during the period he served at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church in Derry Township, with investigators placing the start of the scheme in 2018. Separately, prosecutors say he took nearly $250,000 from his mother. The transactions were documented: Madeya allegedly sold a church's gold chalice to a local jeweler for $19,440 and purchased a $35,000 Mustang for someone living with him using church funds. Investigators found church offering envelopes in his trash. His electronic devices yielded narcotics messages and photographs of bank documents.
The counterargument sits in the procedural posture of the case. Madeya appeared Wednesday in Jeanette, a small town outside Pittsburgh, and waived his preliminary hearing, opting to take the case directly to court. That move has a limited read-through: he declined to contest probable cause at an early stage, which is common practice, and it tells observers nothing about his defense on the merits. Requests for comment sent to St. Josaphat Eparchy, which oversees Ukrainian Catholic churches, and to Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church were not returned as of publication. The charges remain allegations.
On balance, the risk is that the $740,000 figure, attributed by the attorney general's office, becomes the organizing number for the proceedings ahead. Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday said it was "unconscionable to see a supposed man of God exploiting not only the churches he served, but his own mother," and described the victims' losses as "mammoth." Madeya faces charges including felony dealing in proceeds of unlawful activities, theft by unlawful taking, and financial exploitation of an older adult or care-dependent person. The line to watch is whether formal court proceedings produce a fuller accounting of the total, or a defense that contests how prosecutors have characterized the figures.