UOC-KP priest barred over in USA for extortion allegations

The Rev. Nicholas Chervyatiuk, a UOC-KP priest, is accused in civil court of improperly taking about $500,000 from the accounts of the 93-year-old parishioner Bridgeman, who has dementia, reports 2000.

The Rev. Nicholas Chervyatiuk has ministered to followers who arrived in Chicago as refugees after surviving Nazi Germany's prison camps.

Now the Cook County public guardian is accusing the priest of improperly taking more than $500,000 from the savings of one of those displaced persons, a 93-year-old former church secretary diagnosed with dementia.
Chervyatiuk has not been charged with a crime, and he denied any wrongdoing during a sworn probate court examination.

He says Nelly Bridgeman wanted him to have her money, which he saw as payment for the care he provided as her health and mental faculties failed.

"It's for my work," Chervyatiuk testified during the court examination. "It was for 14 years and I think it was time for me to get paid. ... Nelly wanted it that way." He estimated those services were worth "about $25,000 per year.

Chervyatiuk, 55, allegedly used Bridgeman's money to support two restaurants he ran with a convicted drug dealer, his Brash & Sassy Inc. hair salon and his portfolio of Chicago-area rental properties, according to probate court papers and separate land, business and court records.

A North American church leader, the Rev. Victor Poliarny said it was "not acceptable" for a priest to take a parishioner's funds in a private transaction. Church authorities are seeking "official documents substantiating the accusation," Poliarny said. "Once we secure the official documents regarding this matter, the higher authority of the Kyiv Patriarchate will ensure proper punitive measures for the alleged behavior."

A native of Ukraine, Bridgeman had been a German World War II prisoner, and Chervyatiuk in his court examination acknowledged signing his name to her reparation checks from the German government. After coming to America in 1950, Bridgeman married a U.S. service member and would serve for more than two decades as secretary of Chervyatiuk's church, court records show. Her husband died in 2004 at 79. The couple had no children. Chervyatiuk has held power of attorney over Bridgeman's affairs since March 2015, when she was diagnosed with dementia and moved into a nursing home, records show. Chervyatiuk used his legal status to control Bridgeman's accounts, worth at least $540,000 and perhaps as much as $625,000, according to the public guardian.

Suspecting fraud, a bank official in December contacted the public guardian's office. In March, Associate Cook County Judge Shauna Boliker authorized the office to gather financial records and determine how much of Bridgeman's money Chervyatiuk spent on her care and how much he allegedly converted for his own use.

The agency, which now is Bridgeman's legal guardian, says it will seek court permission to recover any funds wrongly converted by Chervyatiuk. As the probate case proceeds, Boliker has ordered financial institutions to freeze $170,000 of the priest's personal and business bank accounts.

Chervyatiuk's Holy Patronage Church, at 900 N. Washtenaw Ave., is part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate, one of three major Orthodox groups in that country.

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