BishopAccountability.org
	Former Business Manager Spared Worst in Church Thefts Kozlowski Blames " Gambling Addiction," Ordered to Repay $58,000 By Matt Gryta Buffalo News June 13, 2008 http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/369084.html Randall Kozlowski stole nearly $400,000 from his church, a crime that could have put him in prison for 15 years. Instead, a judge Thursday sent him to a local jail cell for no more than a year and ordered him to repay about 15 percent of what he took. A tearful Kozlowski, 49, told State Supreme Court Justice John L. Michalski he was "very sorry" that, because of his "gambling addiction," he took the money while he kept the books for Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Cheektowaga. Kozlowski's lawyers turned over a bank check for $10,000 to begin the court-ordered restitution. Michalski ordered Kozlowski, the church's former business manager, to pay $400 a month for the next 120 months, the amount that John C. Doscher, chief of the Erie County district attorney's White-Collar Crime Bureau, sought. Doscher said the total of $58,000 was the most prosecutors could expect to get back from the defendant. The church will be reimbursed for the remaining money through its theft insurance. Doscher unsuccessfully urged the judge to impose a "significant" state prison term after Kozlowski pleaded guilty April 4 to second- degree grand larceny. The judge scheduled further proceedings next June 1 to check on the status of Kozlowski's repayments. Doscher said that if Kozlowski was coming up short or reneging, he could face another year behind bars. Kozlowski, of Fordham Avenue, Buffalo, was charged with stealing $378,484 in church funds between November 1998 and April 2007, when he was fired after a routine diocesan audit uncovered his thefts. Doscher said church officials played no role in the prosecution of the case. Doscher said Kozlowski, who has been held since January and is likely to be released from custody in about three months under the state's good-time sentencing provisions, routinely would write checks to himself to pay off gambling debts, confident that no one was was monitoring his control of parish finances. The case was one of the five thefts totaling about $1.7 million from four local Catholic parishes and a Catholic school since 2004. The Catholic Diocese of Buffalo has set up a panel of local business leaders to find ways to deal with the problem. mgryta@buffnews.com
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