WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pennsylvania — A retired Ukrainian Catholic priest accused of stealing nearly $740,000 from the western Pennsylvania churches he served and from his own elderly mother has been allowed to move to Florida while he awaits trial, after a court approved a modification of his bail. The Tribune-Review reported on Tuesday, November 10, that Gregory Madeya, 69, may relocate to Florida ahead of his trial in Westmoreland County Court. Madeya faces 10 felony counts, including financial exploitation of an older adult, in an alleged scheme that prosecutors say ran for several years across three western Pennsylvania churches, parishioners and donors. No trial date has been set. All of the charges are allegations; Madeya has not been convicted of anything and is presumed innocent.

Source: Tribune-Review, carried by WHJB

The charges were filed in August by the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office at the office of Magisterial District Judge Joseph R. DeMarchis in Jeannette. They are three counts of theft by unlawful taking, three counts of theft by failure to make required disposition of funds, and one count each of dealing in the proceeds of unlawful activities, financially exploiting an older adult or care-dependent person, and access device fraud. Madeya was arrested on Friday, August 14, 2026, at his residence in Vero Beach, Florida, and was brought back to face the Pennsylvania case.

Source: Tube City Online, reporting the Attorney General's announcement

According to Attorney General Dave Sunday Jr.'s office, the church-side losses centre on three parishes Madeya served: St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church in McKeesport, Allegheny County, where he was pastor until 2024, and St. Demetrius Church in Jeannette and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Latrobe, both in Westmoreland County — along with the Knights of Columbus. Witnesses from across the church community told investigators of numerous occasions when collection money, fundraising proceeds, donations, rent and church-related fees were never deposited into church accounts. The attorney general's office put the amount taken from church or church-related entities between 2018 and 2023 at nearly $320,000 — precisely $319,997.03 in its accounting.

One item in the complaint has drawn particular attention in the parishes: investigators allege Madeya sold a gold chalice belonging to St. John the Baptist to a local jeweller, telling the jeweller the church was selling property to help the parish's finances. The chalice was purchased for $19,440, according to the attorney general's office.

The second half of the case concerns Madeya's own mother, Arlene Madeya. Prosecutors say that, holding power of attorney over her affairs, he took more than $230,000 from her investment accounts. The attorney general's office said investigators determined she was evicted from several nursing homes because bills for her care were going unpaid. In total, police say, Madeya misappropriated funds from multiple sources over several years and failed to pay more than $248,000 in taxes — $248,663.43 in the attorney general's figure.

The family dispute became public in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court in 2024, when Arlene Madeya went to court to evict Gregory Madeya and Marc J. Mowod, 32, from her home on Bettis Road in West Mifflin, where Madeya had been living. Her attorney argued the two men were 'essentially squatting' in the home, paying no rent and holding no lease, while she was in a nursing home. The filings alleged Madeya had liquidated his mother's retirement accounts without her permission, leaving her with a federal tax bill of $239,504 and forcing her toward selling the home to pay those debts. Judge Patrick Connelly granted her full possession of the home in February 2025.

How the case began: a narcotics investigation

The money case did not start with an audit. According to the attorney general's office, in February 2023 its agents and local police — from Grove City, McKeesport and Allegheny County, working with the state Bureau of Narcotics Investigation — opened a narcotics investigation involving money laundering and misuse of funds from religious organisations that led to Madeya. Police obtained warrants to search his phone and computers and found messages and photographs related to narcotics, as well as photographs of debit cards and bank documents belonging to St. John the Baptist. In his trash, agents found empty church donation envelopes; the criminal complaint, as reported by the Tribune-Review, also described more than 100 stamp bags with heroin residue and 22 hypodermic needles recovered from the residence he shared with Mowod.

Prosecutors allege the money went, among other things, on illegal narcotics, on an illicit relationship, and on luxury spending. In the same 2018–2023 period, the attorney general's office says, Madeya purchased a 2018 Ford Mustang for $35,000 in cash and gave it to Mowod as a present, and paid for numerous cruises taken with a former religious brother who had himself previously been convicted of stealing $220,000 from his own parish, according to reporting of the complaint by The Pillar.

The Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy's Eparchy of St. Josaphat, based in Parma, Ohio, which has jurisdiction over the parishes, said Madeya was suspended from priestly ministry on February 8, 2024, and that the eparchy will work to recover any funds entrusted to him that were lost. St. John's parishioners, sources told Tube City Online, were made aware after he left that he was under investigation, but were not aware of the scope of the alleged thefts.

The case has also become a reference point in church-finance debates. The Pillar, a Catholic news outlet, reported that retired IRS criminal investigator Robert Warren, an associate professor of accounting at Radford University, reviewed the allegations and said the red flags were there to be seen — a single priest controlling collections, donations and accounts across small parishes, with no independent check, for years at a time. It is the structural point the parishes themselves now face: the alleged losses accumulated between 2018 and 2023, and were uncovered by a drug investigation, not by any church audit.

What happens next

With bail now modified, Madeya will live in Florida while the Westmoreland County prosecution proceeds; the Tribune-Review reported that no trial date has been set. The next steps are procedural — status conferences and pre-trial motions in Westmoreland County Court, where most of the church charges are centred, with the McKeesport allegations in neighbouring Allegheny County. Court documents at the time of charging did not list an attorney for Madeya, and no defence statement appears in the published reports; if his defence answers the allegations publicly, Awaaz Punjab will add it. Until a jury hears the case, every figure in this report — the $740,410 total, the church losses, the money taken from his mother — remains what prosecutors allege, not what a court has found.