Along with a good number of other churches, we've noticed a number of email scams that allegedly come from one of our priests.

Please do not send money or gift cards to our priests if requested to do so over email or text message.

The email addresses used typically look like they could be real. One recent one was sent by "frephraim" from an account "@yahoo.com". They may ask for a favor, simply ask if you're busy, or directly ask for iTunes gift cards.

If you receive a message asking for help like this from one of our priests, either contact them directly (e.g. by phoning the parish office, or by the email address listed on our website) to verify that it is really coming from them, or just ignore the message. Do not reply to it. Do not send money or gift cards.

Our official email addresses all end in @holyfamilycathedral.ca or @rcdos.ca (the official site for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon). Our priests will not use email accounts from Gmail, Yahoo, or any other providers for official communications, nor will they randomly ask you for money or gift cards.

Here are some other examples and news articles about these scams:

• ‘Phishy’ scam targeting Catholics across Canada
• Scam Alert: That's not your priest asking for gift cards!
• Fake priests target Alberta Catholics in email phishing scam
• Peterborough police warn of fake priest scam targeting parishioners

[Originally posted Sept 17, 2018. Updated August 20, 2019]