Man Pleads Guilty To Swindling Priests
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
A Manhattan man pleaded guilty yesterday to defrauding 60 priests, scamming them of more than $200,000 in total.
Robert Riggio, 60, contacted priests from across the country, “making sympathy-inducing but bogus requests over the telephone for money purportedly to help the caller’s mother address time-sensitive difficulties,” according to court papers, which did not disclose the religious affiliation of the priests. The calls were made between March 2004 and September 2006.
