Audit says priest paid $300,000 to coin dealer facing lawsuit

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Palm Beach Post
Michael LaForgia
Staff Writer
June 22, 2007
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DELRAY BEACH — One of two Catholic priests accused last year of misappropriating more than $8.7 million in collection plate money paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Texas coin dealer that uses unscrupulous sales tactics to prey on elderly investors, a Texas lawsuit alleges.

The Rev. John Skehan, 79, former pastor of St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church, was arrested on a grand theft charge along with the Rev. Francis Guinan, 64, in September.

Among the allegations that emerged as a result - Skehan and Guinan used offertory dollars to keep girlfriends, take gambling excursions and finance limo trips and nights on the town, police said - was that Skehan used parishioners' money to buy rare coins for his collection. The priest, whom church employees described as an avid coin collector, paid at least $300,000 from 2001 to 2003 to a coin dealer based in Beaumont, Texas, according to a forensic audit described in local court documents.

The coin dealer, First Fidelity Reserve, is among the defendants listed in a civil lawsuit filed in February in Jefferson County, Texas. The suit claims that First Fidelity Reserve used high-pressure sales tactics to push elderly customers into making bad investments in coins, among other allegations.

First Fidelity's attorney, Bruce Partain of Beaumont, said Thursday the claims outlined in the suit were "baseless."

"To say that we're somehow searching out individuals to defraud them I think is utterly ridiculous," Partain said, noting that the coin sellers advertise in collector magazines and leave it for customers to contact them.

Also alleged in the suit: The coin sellers routinely charge customers' credit cards without permission.

In a deposition last summer, Colleen Head, a former St. Vincent employee and close friend of Skehan's, told investigators that Skehan, who is not a plaintiff in the Texas suit, once inadvertently charged a large sum to his American Express card for coins from a Texas dealer. The audit identified that dealer as First Fidelity.

"He asked me to help him out with it, and when I helped him out with it I found out that he had spent $275,000 on coins," Head told investigators last August. "I helped send back some coins because he said it was over his budget."

In a safe in Skehan's house on church grounds, investigators in September reported finding, among dozens of rare and foreign coins, receipts for purchases from First Fidelity Reserve.

"He had this lady that was always trying to sell him coins, and he's been dealing with her I guess for a while," Head said.

The saleswoman, Stacey Hernandez, eventually quit and gave a deposition for use in the civil suit against the coin sellers, said Houston attorney Jason Gibson, the lead attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case.

Incidentally, the lead plaintiff in the civil suit is Maureen O'Neill, a Palm Beach Gardens widow who was pressured out of part of her inheritance by an unscrupulous First Fidelity seller, Gibson said. O'Neill, 73, paid about $195,000 for coins worth a fraction of that amount, Gibson said.

Skehan, he added, is only one of several victims nationwide. The Texas lawsuit lists 10 elderly plaintiffs from Florida to California.

Skehan's attorney in the Florida criminal case, Scott Richardson, declined comment.
Assistant State Attorney Preston Mighdoll, who is prosecuting Skehan and Guinan, could not be reached because he is out of the country, the state attorney's office said.

Skehan's next court hearing is scheduled for July 10.