Priest Allegedly Uses $40,000 Of Church Funds To Play Candy Crush And Mario Kart

thegamer.com:

Mario Kart Tour and Candy Crush are built to be addictive, giving you slices of gameplay and nudging you ever so slightly towards their premium currency to keep the fun going, whether it be through lives, characters, or in-game items. They can tempt even the most unlikely of people into throwing away mountains of cash, which is allegedly what one Catholic priest from Pottstown, Pennsylvania managed to do over the course of three years.

According to an article by The Philadelphia Inquirer (thanks Kotaku), Rev. Lawrence Kozak allegedly managed to rack up a whopping $40,000 bill buying "power ups" in Candy Crush and Mario Kart, boosted by expensive gifts to his goddaughter. That wouldn't be an issue if it was his own money he was spending, but it's been claimed that Kozak paid for these expenses with his church's credit card, and was charged on April 25 with theft and other related crimes, according to an affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

Kozak has since been released after his $250,000 bail was posted, and his attorney - Joseph Poluka - is currently reviewing the charges made against him, with the plan to soon contact prosecutors about the case soon.

These charges have been a pretty long time coming, as The Philadelphia Inquirer explains that Kozak was actually removed from his position at St. Thomas More Church back in November 2022, and was placed on administrative leave after an accountant found an "astronomical amount of Apple transactions" linked to Kozak's Apple ID on the church's credit card statements.

When being interviewed by detectives during that time, Kozak revealed that he was in the middle of getting help for his spending habits in online games, and denied that he used the church's credit card intentionally. With the card already connected to his mobile device to pay for church streaming services and office software, Kozak later admitted that he could have accidentally used the card as he's not "a details guy."

Kozak told detectives