Pennsylvania priest accused of rigging church's Corvette raffle
Search warrants reveal Rev. Ross Miceli’s alleged scheme, lavish spending, and a winner who never bought a ticket
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A priest in Pennsylvania is being investigated for allegedly rigging a church raffle that involved an expensive Corvette.
(I usually don’t cover stories of Priests Behaving Badly because there are just so many of those stories every day, but this one stands out for the sheer audacity of what the priest appears to have done.)
Last year, as it had done for several years, Saint Jude the Apostle Church in Erie held a big raffle for its annual fundraiser. They would sell $50 tickets and start announcing winners in December during the 12 days leading up to Christmas. How did they pick winners? By piggybacking on the state lottery’s Pick 4 numbers. If your raffle ticket matched the winning Pick 4 numbers, the prize was yours.
Winners received anything from $500 in cash to $1,500 in cash and gift cards, with the runner-up receiving a Norwegian Cruise to the Caribbean (or $5,000 in cash) and the grand prize winner getting an orange Corvette Stingray 1LT worth $82,000 (or $50,000 in cash).
It was a huge moneymaker for the church. They hoped to sell about 10,000 tickets, in-person and online, which would bring in a total of $500,000.
The Grand Prize winner last year was Martin Anderson from Detroit, which the church revealed on Christmas Day. Their Facebook post also noted that Anderson “chose the cash option” instead of the car.
But as the Erie Times-News points out, there was just one problem:
Anderson, however, did not hold the winning ticket in the car raffle.
He never bought a ticket at all.
It appears that “Martin Anderson” was nothing more than a fake name put forth by Rev. Ross R. Miceli, the leader of Saint Jude Parish. And there’s now reason to believe Miceli had a direct hand in the raffle deception in other ways, too.
We know all this because of search warrants that were filed earlier this year:
The allegations and details of the investigation are included in a series of search warrants that detectives with the District Attorney's Office served on St. Jude's offices starting March 14.
One of the warrants states that, in an interview with detectives on March 14, Miceli "admitted to publicly falsifying the results of the grand prize winner."
The only reason this probe arose is because Miceli apparently told an employee what he did, and that unnamed employee informed Bishop Lawrence T. Persico.
Miceli, according to the affidavits, told the employee he made up the winner's name because "there had been a problem with the raffle system, so the winning 'Pick 4' number, '5851,' didn't have anyone assigned to it."
After the employee reported the admission to Persico, according to the affidavits, "Bishop Persico confronted Father Miceli about this allegation, and Father Miceli admitted to fabricating the grand prize winner's name but insisted the prize money was still in an account."
So he made up a fake name that would be extremely hard for people to Google, presumably to avoid the shame of having a non-existent winner for a raffle the church had been hyping all year long. While previous Grand Prize winners have their pictures on the raffle’s website, that would explain why “Martin Anderson’s” picture was nowhere to be found.
At that point, things looked bad, but at least Miceli didn’t steal the money, right?
Except his confessions didn’t end there. Miceli apparently told that same employee that the Pick 4 lottery numbers didn’t correspond to winners on some of the earlier dates either—for the $500 daily prizes—so he just picked the names of “favored parishioners or family friends.”
It was no longer about saving face. Now he was purposely manipulating the results. If that’s true, it’s a crime.
And yet this situation somehow got even worse.
In a follow-up story, the Erie Times-News found that there were additional search warrants filed in this case because Miceli had made some costly purchases in the time since he began working at this church.
Payments the church made to cover American Express credit card bills exceeded a total of $300,000 between January 2024 and March 2025, according to new search warrants. The sole person in charge of the church's bank accounts, according to the warrants, was Miceli, known as "Fr. Ross."
…
The new warrants show that the employee told the detectives on Feb. 26 that "Father Ross had recently purchased a new Tesla, owns numerous high-value personal items, including designer clothes, sneakers, electronics and collectibles, and frequently travels domestically and abroad. All of these behaviors appear inconsistent with his reported modest income and living expenses, which are largely covered by the church."
When detectives searched Miceli’s office, they also found “three high-end resort cards” and membership cards for 12 different casinos.
Life is good when you’re a priest with no oversight, apparently.
All of this is happening while Miceli is in the middle of what was supposed to be a six-year term as priest at Saint Jude. After getting hired in 2022, he was recently moved to two smaller churches elsewhere in the Diocese. He announced his resignation to parishioners a couple of weeks ago with little fanfare:
… One other announcement this morning… I have to read it. It's… a little bit complicated, but I just want to take a moment to share this from myself.
After prayerful discernment, I have decided to submit my resignation as pastor of St. Jude the Apostle Parish and St. Steven Parish. And Bishop Persico has accepted my resignation. And I've been assigned to serve as sacramental minister at St. Timothy Parish in Curwensville and St. Bonaventure Church in Grampian.
And I'm deeply grateful for all the years that I've shared with you and for the many blessings we've experienced together. And please know my continued prayers for you as this transition unfolds.
He didn’t mention the investigation or his spending habits.
As of this writing, no charges have been filed against Miceli. But on Thursday, the Diocese announced that Miceli would not be moving to those two smaller churches. He would instead be placed on administrative leave while the investigation continues.
The search warrants, however, pointed to three possible crimes: Rigging a public contest, tampering with records, and theft. It’ll be up to the district attorney to decide whether or not to file charges.
But based on the investigation so far, it’s possible that the exposure of Miceli’s raffle scheme may have uncovered a much deeper rot. No matter how this plays out, what’s incredible is that, even if Miceli is charged with any crimes, it would still be one of the least awful things a Pennsylvania priest has ever done.
On a side note, reporter Ed Palattella of the Erie Times-News, who first broke this story and has covered every aspect of it, also found that Miceli preached against greed earlier this month. Because of course he did.
I went to mass for the last time as any kind of believer when I was about nine months into my tour in Vietnam, and in a very dark place. Not sure what I was looking for but certainly wasn't the 'Kill a Commie for Christ' pep talk we got. My faith was dangling by a thread, and that idiot priest took a blow torch to it. I walked away, never looked back, and never regretted it for a moment. The problem isn't this priest so much. It's his enablers in the pews who make him possible.
Now I've got "Little Ped Corvette" for an earworm.