Malin Rostas is not a saint, authorities say, and he is not even a priest.
Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies arrested the 45-year-old New Yorker on Thursday, April 10, after learning he was wanted nationwide for posing as “Father Martin,” accused of break into churches and steal money.
Rostas had just attempted to burglarize a church in Moreno Valley when deputies spotted a black Porsche sedan with Virginia license plates around 11 a.m. Thursday in the 10000 block of Pigeon Pass Road that matched the description of the car used in several burglaries, according to a press release. . He was arrested on an arrest warrant issued in Pennsylvania.
Rostas was being held without bail at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside.
Church officials in Southern California were searching for Rostas.
“He was on our radar. He certainly visited some parishes in our diocese last year,” John Andrews, a spokesman for the Diocese of San Bernardino, which oversees Catholic churches in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said Friday.
Rostas gained access to St. Catherine of Alexandria Parish and St. Francis de Sales Parish, both in Riverside, Andrews said. Rostas was unable to steal anything from St. Catherine and Andrews was still trying to get information about what happened in St. Francis.
Andrews said notices were sent to churches across California.
“It’s a good thing in the Catholic Church that a priest can’t just show up at a parish and say, ‘I’m here to help celebrate Mass,'” Andrews said.
He explained that a priest must present documents called faculties that detail who he is and the purpose of his visit.
“That’s the kind of guarantee that’s probably an advantage in a situation like this.” It’s hard to get there,” Andrews said.
Bradley Zint, a spokesman for the Diocese of Orange, said its security department recently sent an alert about Rostas to its parishes. Zint declined to say whether Rostas had been seen in Orange County.
In the Pennsylvania case, according to the Gettysburg Times, Rostas was identified from a home surveillance camera recording as the person who took $15,500 from a locked drawer. The recording was uploaded to a law enforcement database and British authorities put a name to the face, according to court documents cited by the Gettysburg Times. History does not explain what connection he had with the United Kingdom.
Rostas is Romanian and also goes by the name Moyse Lingurar, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department said.
The sheriff’s release included a photo of Rostas that was also distributed to the media following the theft of $900 from the American Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Queens, New York, in March. There, according to ABC/7 in New York, a man introduced himself as Father Martin and said he was from Rome. A real priest invited the alleged impostor to his rectory, where $900 then disappeared.
“He’s a vulture, a gypsy, he knows what he’s doing,” father Peter Rayder told the television station.
Sheriff’s investigators believe there are more victims nationwide and encouraged anyone who thinks they encountered Rostas to call local law enforcement.
California Daily Newspapers
