Thieves Belong in Prison
Arkady Areseniev
2004
______________________________
Documents detail spending from fund entrusted to priest… Milwaukee officials investigating
Even after retiring to Florida, Ervin and Margaret Franczak stayed in regular contact with their long-time priest back in Milwaukee. Friends said that especially after Ervin died in 2001, Fr James Dokos looked after Margaret, visiting her on occasion and sending poinsettias at Christmas. Records show that she even updated her will to leave Dokos her condo and her car… part of a charitable trust the couple established whose value topped more than 1.2 million USD (39 million Roubles. 1.25 million CAD. 1.28 million AUD. 900,000 Euros. 760,000 UK Pounds). Documents obtained by the Tribune show that Dokos, now pastor at Ss Peter and Paul Greek Orthodox Church in Glenview IL, wrote cheques totalling tens of thousands of dollars from that trust fund to himself and used the fund to pay at least 32,000 USD (1.04 million Roubles. 33,350 CAD. 33,950 AUD. 23.750 Euros. 20,100 UK Pounds) in credit card bills. Documents also show that as sole trustee of the fund, Dokos also gave several thousand dollars from the trust to a high-ranking official in the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago. Now, authorities in Milwaukee are conducting an investigation into how Dokos distributed the money from the Franczaks’ fund and whether he paid himself more than the trust stipulated.
Officials at the Metropolis of Chicago, the GOAA diocese that oversees dozens of parishes in the Midwest, said that their “initial conclusion” was that the trust fund money was spent in accordance with Margaret Franczak’s will and wishes and with the knowledge of the parish council at Milwaukee’s Annunciation Church, which received the bulk of the money from the trust. Yet, the amounts of the cheques that Dokos wrote to himself from the trust are many times higher than the 5,000 USD (162,300 Roubles. 5,200 CAD. 5,300 AUD. 3,700 Euros. 3,150 UK Pounds) the fund provided him as trustee, according to the documents. Records also show that, over the course of about three years, the priest wrote cheques totalling at least 6,750 USD (219,000 Roubles. 7,050 CAD. 7,150 AUD. 5,000 Euros. 4,250 UK Pounds) to Bishop Demetrios Kantzavelos of Mokissos, the Chancellor and No. 2-ranking official in Chicago. A Metropolis spokesman described those payments as gifts, calling it “traditional and common for honoraria to be given to hierarchs of the Greek Orthodox Church“. He said that bishops might use such gifts might for church or personal expenses and are “duly reported as income. The source of these funds wasn’t questioned”.
Dokos, who declined comment, isn’t charged with a crime, and prosecutors in Milwaukee County said that no decision on possible charges was made in the case. Yet, the matter already brought turmoil within the Metropolis. In September, its hierarch, Metropolitan Iakovos Garmatis, sharply rebuked and removed the parish council president at Ss Peter and Paul in Glenview… a move some council members sought to defy… after the president requested that the bishop place Dokos on temporary leave until the investigation concludes. On Sunday, more than 100 parishioners of the Milwaukee church gathered there to hear an update from the parish attorney. In early October, the Metropolis also posted a message on its website saying that Metropolis leaders “stand together to deplore the use of public media outlets as a means of handling internal issues and conflicts that confront the Church”. The message doesn’t address the Milwaukee investigation directly. Some religious ethicists and observers of the Greek Orthodox church said that the situation also raises questions about whether a clergyman should benefit personally from a parishioner’s will… something one ethicist called “potentially very corrosive of the pastoral relationship”… and whether the practise of priests giving cash gifts to high-ranking superiors truly is, or should be, traditional or common.
Widow Changes Will
From accounts by those who knew them later in life, Ervin and Margaret Franczak remained heavily involved in their Milwaukee church, Annunciation, even after moving full time to Clearwater FL. According to his obituary, Ervin Franczak worked as a supervisor for an electronics manufacturer, and when they first established the trust fund in 1984, the couple, who had no children, decided that Annunciation would receive 25 percent of the fund’s value. Over the years, the trust was revised several times, with the portion earmarked for the church wavering between 20 and 35 percent. After Ervin died, the trust fund’s terms were overhauled significantly, this time setting aside 75,000 USD (2.44 million Roubles. 78,200 CAD. 79,500 AUD. 55,600 Euros. 47,100 UK Pounds) total for three charities and, after the trustee would get his 5,000 USD portion, the “rest residue and remainder” was provided to Annunciation church. It’s in that amendment that Margaret Franczak adds the provision that Dokos personally would get her condominium and car. In the will’s final revision, signed months before Margaret Franczak’s death in 2008 at age 95, the amounts to other charities, including the couple’s Florida church, were reduced from 75,000 USD total to 20,000 USD (649,000 Roubles. 20,800 CAD. 21,200 AUD. 14,800 Euros. 12,600 UK Pounds).
A few months after Franczak’s funeral, which was held at Annunciation in Milwaukee with Dokos presiding, records show the priest sold her Florida condo for 51,900 USD (1.69 million Roubles. 54,100 CAD. 55,100 AUD. 38,500 Euros. 32,600 UK Pounds). Records show that Dokos wrote cheques regularly from the account, including after he left the Milwaukee church and was reassigned to the Glenview church in mid-2012. What appears to be the last cheque he wrote… 300 USD (9,750 Roubles. 312 CAD. 318 AUD. 223 Euros. 189 UK Pounds) to a church colleague in California… bounced, and a 19 USD (617 Roubles. 19.75 CAD. 20.25 AUD. 14 Euros. 12 UK Pounds) overdraft fee was charged, records show. A deposit days later covered the overdraft. By that time, according to bank documents, which include copies of most of the cheques written from the account, the priest had written cheques totalling more than 33,000 USD (1.07 million Roubles. 34,400 CAD. 35,000 AUD. 24,500 Euros. 20,750 UK Pounds) to himself. In addition, records show that he paid at least 32,000 USD in credit card bills with cheques drawn from the trust fund.
Church officials in Milwaukee first questioned Dokos about the trust fund in a 21 March letter. In a 31 March e-mail apparently written by Dokos in response… an e-mail later turned over to authorities in Milwaukee… the priest expressed his disappointment in the “inflammatory letter”. The e-mail states that the money from the fund was distributed as instructed by Margaret Franczak and that Dokos purposely included the church address on the checking account. He wrote in the e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by the Tribune, “Obviously I was not hiding anything. I STOLE NO MONEY … just continued to gift the Parish”. The fund “wasn’t a Will where people could read and request for themselves … it was a Trust entrusted to me! … The Franczaks had all their trust in me personally”.
He also indicated some of the money went for “parish philanthropy”, and some of it paid Margaret Franczak’s medical and burial expenses. He wrote, “I can share with you now that the original wish was that their gifting go to the Greek Archdiocese and I convinced them to change their gifting”. The trust documents give no indication that the GOAA was ever specifically listed as a recipient. Dokos said it was “sad” that he was being questioned “after 22 years as the Spiritual Father and MAJOR FUNDRAISER for those years raising funds in the millions”. The priest himself lived in comfortable surroundings for many of those years. Records show that in February 2012, he sold the five-bedroom, 4,600-square-foot (427.5 square metres) Milwaukee-area home he’d owned since 1998 for 800,000 USD (26 million Roubles. 834,000 CAD. 848,000 AUD. 593,000 Euros. 502,000 UK Pounds), later moving to an apartment in Chicago‘s Gold Coast neighbourhood after he was reassigned to the Glenview church. The address on the trust fund account also changed, from the Milwaukee church’s address to Dokos’ suburban Milwaukee home, and, then, to the Chicago apartment.
Name Blacked Out
Annunciation church leaders in Milwaukee first became aware of possible issues with the trust fund in February, about nine months after Dokos left for the Glenview church, according to a letter written in July by Annunciation’s lawyer, Emmanuel Mamalakis, to Bishop Demetrios, seeking an investigation into the fund. The letter stated that the church received a cheque in the mail that appeared to be a reimbursement of a health insurance premium that was paid with a cheque from the trust fund. Mamalakis wrote, “At first, the interest of Annunciation’s Parish Council was to stop having cheques written with Annunciation’s name on it from individuals no longer associated with Annunciation”. However, when they could find no trust documents, the letter went on to say, “The Parish Council wanted to confirm that they had received the appropriate share and that the accounting was done correctly”. The Milwaukee church’s lawyer stated in his letter to the bishop that he found dozens of cheques totalling tens of thousands of dollars used apparently to pay credit card bills. Mamalakis wrote, “Though we have requested from Fr Dokos an explanation for these particular cheques, we have yet to receive an answer”.
Dokos did apparently provide Annunciation officials with an addendum to the trust that bestowed 1 million USD (32.5 million Roubles. 1.04 million CAD. 1.06 million AUD. 740,000 Euros. 625,000 UK Pounds) to the church, according to the lawyer’s letter. The single-page, typed letter listed both Franczaks’ names, but was unsigned and dated September 2008… nine months after Margaret Franczak’s death and years after her husband’s. In his letter to the bishop, Mamalakis said, “Fr Dokos states that the date on the letter was a computer error”. Another oddity among the trust documents obtained by the Tribune is that at least one version of the final amendment to the trust appears to have been altered, authorities confirmed. Where prior amendments show that Dokos personally was awarded the Franczaks’ condo and automobile, it appears that the name “Father James Dokos” was blacked out in that clause so that it instead reads that the property, car and contents should go to “Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of Milwaukee, Wisconsin”. Annunciation church leaders declined comment for this story. “This matter is with the DA. We have no comment because commenting would only hurt the church”.
The Metropolis of Chicago, in its written response to questions from the Tribune, stated that church lawyers and lay members conducted the initial investigation into concerns over how Dokos handled the Franczak trust. That took place after the Milwaukee church brought the matter to the Metropolis’ attention. In a 7 August letter to the Milwaukee church, Bishop Demetrios wrote, “Based on the analysis of counsel”, the Metropolis concluded that the funds “were used in accordance with the provision of the Trust, for the benefit of Annunciation Church, or in accordance with the wishes of Margaret Franczak”. The bishop doesn’t acknowledge in the letter that he received proceeds from the fund in question. When asked whether Bishop Demetrios should have recused himself from the investigation, the Metropolis responded that the bishop “wasn’t involved in the internal investigation”.
Besides Dokos, the bishop, and two other people with the last name of Dokos, another person who apparently received cheques written from the account was Metropolitan Nikitas Lulias, a former chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago. Dokos sent Lulias nine cheques between 2008 and 2012 that totalled 4,000 USD (130,000 Roubles. 4,160 CAD. 4,240 AUD. 3,000 Euros. 2,500 UK Pounds), according to documents obtained by the Tribune. Metropolitan Nikitas, now director of the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley CA, said that he knew nothing about the investigation into how Dokos spent the trust fund money until contacted recently by a church member, saying, “I have more than enough on my plate. I don’t concern myself with these matters”. He couldn’t remember how he used the 4,000 USD, but he said when reached by telephone, “The money that often is sent to me I give to poor students. We have students who come from overseas who are poor. I teach in graduate school, in a theological institute, and the money goes to students in need”. He questioned a reporter’s “morality” and “the reasons for asking questions”.
Nanno Marinatos, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a specialty in Greek religion, said she disagrees that gifting of high-ranking officials is a tradition in the Greek Orthodox Church. Greek-born Marinatos has been a professor at UIC since 2000, is Greek Orthodox, but said she isn’t actively involved in a church in the area. She heads the university’s department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies. She said that gifting “isn’t part of the culture”.
Experts said that whilst people often leave money to religious institutions without question, it’s also unusual that a priest would benefit personally from a parishioner’s will. William Schweiker, a University of Chicago professor of theological ethics, said, “It becomes very potentially corrosive of the pastoral relationship. That relationship should be structured so that … the state of (the parishioner’s) moral and religious life should be the sole concern of the pastor. Knowing the temptations of the human heart, if one were to think there was a pot of gold at the end of the day, that could corrode the priest’s serving of the dignity of a parishioner”, adding that Jesus in the New Testament told his disciples to take nothing with them when ministering to others.
In Clearwater, former neighbours recalled how a priest visited Margaret from time to time after her husband died. EdnaMae Jordt, 91, said, “She always said, ‘All my money will go to a priest’. He’d visit, if she got sick”. Delroy Bruss and his wife used to play cards with the Franczaks and recall how they often talked about their church and the priest from Milwaukee who kept in touch with them. Bruss said, “It was a fairly frequent part of the conversation. They were very much involved in that church”. Gene Wright, amongst the Annunciation parishioners who gathered Sunday to hear about the investigation, said that he’d been happy with Dokos whilst he was Annunciation’s priest. Now, Wright said, “It’s uncomfortable for everyone”.
29 October 2013
Alexandra Chachkevitch
Lisa Black
Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/suburbs/glenview/ct-met-greek-orthodox-church-controversy-20131029,0,1671052,full.story
Editor’s Note:
Note well the clerical stonewalling. This isn’t a good sign. It means that the “black wall of silence” is up and functional in the GOAA. That’s why it’s so important that two OCA priests DID testify in the Storheim case for the Crown. All the Glenview parishioners want is for the priest to be on leave whilst the investigation is underway. They don’t want him suspended… only on leave. That’s what the OCA should’ve done with Ray Velencia during his legal wrangles, but his First Family and SVS pals protected him. It led to a great deal of internet kafuffle, which was not only nasty and unedifying, but also harmful to the Church’s general reputation (not to mention the hurt brought to more than one private person). Quite obviously, the Glenview parishioners wanted to avoid such a stink, and we should commend them for their prudence.
Money talks and bullshit walks. Dokos had enough gelt to own an 800,000-dollar house. I wouldn’t be surprised that’s why the bishops protect him so fiercely… he’s a moneyman, after all. Excuse me whilst I hurl… sometimes, the stories that I cover sicken me… this is one of them. God save us from crook clergy (no, I won’t be silent “for the good of the Church”… I won’t abet evil)…
BMD
Filed under: Christian, church in society, Ecumenical Patriarchate, Greece and Greeks, legal, moral issues, Orthodox life, religious, USA Tagged: Chicago, Christian, Christianity, Eastern Orthodox Church, EP, Florida, Glenview, GOAA, Greek, Greek Archdiocese, Greek Orthodox, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Greek Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Chicago, legal affairs, Milwaukee, Orthodox, Orthodoxy, Religion, Religion and Spirituality, United States, USA