NEW JERSEY
NJ.com
By Mark Mueller | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on October 01, 2015
He called them his grandmas.
The Rev. Alex Orozco befriended the elderly women shortly after his assignment to St. Rose of Lima parish in Short Hills.
Orozco was a new priest, charming and kind and afire with enthusiasm.
And always, it seemed, willing to accept money, parishioners said.
For a car. For a big-screen TV. For a house in the Poconos. For another house in his native Colombia. For credit card bills. For a second car. For plane tickets. For furniture. For dental work.
From 2013 through the end of last year, Orozco allegedly took more than $250,000 in cash and goods from women in the wealthy parish after telling them hard-luck stories about the financial woes afflicting him, his family members and his friends.
The case has sparked a criminal investigation by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and has raised broader questions about the limits on what clergymen should accept from generous parishioners and whether some of those transactions rise to the level of fraud or theft.
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