Posted on: March 28, 2025 11:55 AM

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Manhattan Franciscan Friar sentenced to five years in prison for fraud related to fake medical charity in Beirut Lebanon

Matthew Podolsky, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that PAUL BIELECKI, a/k/a “Paul HRH Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,” a Manhattan-based Franciscan friar, was sentenced to five years in prison for perpetrating a multi-year scheme to obtain donations for a fake medical charity purportedly operating in Beirut, Lebanon.  BIELECKI previously pled guilty to wire fraud on November 11, 2024, before U.S. District Judge Vincent Briccetti, who imposed today’s sentence.

BIELECKI is a friar in the Capuchin Order, a Catholic order of priests and brothers, based out of a friary in New York City.  BIELECKI engaged in a fraudulent scheme related to fake medical clinics he claimed to operate in Lebanon.

Specifically, for nearly a decade, BIELECKI fraudulently raised money from victims by falsely claiming that he operated two medical clinics in Lebanon and was raising money for medicine, medical equipment, baby incubators, food, and an ambulance for those clinics.  BIELECKI also lied to victims by falsely stating that he was a physician, vascular surgeon, cardiac surgeon, and/or general surgeon, who had earned multiple Ph.D. degrees, and by falsely claiming to have been badly injured—and his fake clinics badly damaged—by a widely reported August 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.

BIELECKI reached victims by fraudulently soliciting donations at church masses and through other church events, by appearing as a guest or through advertisements on radio programs and online podcasts, and through various other means, including campaigns on crowdfunding websites.  Through his scheme, BIELECKI fraudulently obtained more than $560,000 in donations from more than 350 victims for his fake medical clinics.  Despite taking a vow of poverty as a friar in the Capuchin Order, BIELECKI used the donations he fraudulently received to fund lavish personal spending, including first-class travel, a $334.40 per month membership at a luxury gym chain, multiple trips to the Hamptons, numerous meals at high-end restaurants, and aesthetic plastic surgery costing thousands of dollars.

If you believe you are a victim of fraud perpetrated by BIELECKI, please contact Special Agent Sean Smyth, U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, at (914) 993?1900 or by following the instructions available at https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/report-crime.

In addition to the prison term, BIELECKI, 48, of New York, New York, was sentenced to three years of supervised release, ordered to pay forfeiture of $563,448, and ordered to pay restitution.

From DOJ