ABBOTSFORD, BC-John Haycock sees little difference between his day job as a hospital chaplain and his evening occupation-alerting local congregations to the threat posed by con artists who are bilking churchgoers out of millions of dollars. As he sees it, both tasks offer pastoral care to the vulnerable.

"People [who have been scammed] are hurt so much, so bad, that it takes them 10, 20 years to recover from it," he says. "If they are seniors, they never recover."

These scam artists are also damaging entire churches. When people within a close-knit community are victimized by one of their own, the South African-born Haycock says, "things really go bad. The trust is lost and people leave. Our strong point here becomes our weak point."

With $86,000 in funding from the B.C. Securities Commission (BCSC), Haycock and Chilliwack chaplain Seamus Mackrell are visiting churches throughout the Fraser Valley to raise awareness of the growing threat from this so-called "affinity fraud."

The fraud involves a con artist who worms his way into a group of people by pretending to be one of them. Once he gains their trust, he persuades members to invest heavily in a purported chance of a lifetime-and then flees with their money.

Haycock says Christians are especially targeted, because these fraudsters are adept at tugging at their heartstrings. "One pastor told me he had a lady who came back from the missionary field in Africa and someone said to her, ‘If you really want to help the poor kids in Africa, invest in this wonderful deal.’"

B.C.’s worst case of affinity fraud occurred in the mid-1990s, when Gary Stanhiser fleeced 300 Abbotsford churchgoers out of $14 million through a bogus investment scheme. By the time authorities were alerted, he had fled the country.

"What Stanhiser did," says BCSC spokesman Mike Bernard, "was sell some stock. A few people made pretty good money. But that would simply be the honey that lured others into the scheme.

"The vast majority lost a lot of money-sometimes all of their life savings." Most of it has never been recovered.

The BCSC agreed to a proposal from Haycock and Mackrell last year to represent them to the province’s "Bible Belt" in an attempt to prevent such massive frauds in the future.

"We needed people who had credibility and legitimacy-and clearly our two fellows do," says Bernard. "They’re smart, intelligent, learned people and are doing an excellent job of getting this message across."

To date, the pair has taken its presentation to 17 churches-and each time the response has been the same. "We have people saying to us, ‘It happened to me,’ or ‘I know someone who has been scammed,’" says Haycock.

But it remains a sensitive subject. ChristianWeek attempted to contact several churches that have hosted the presentation, but none of the calls were returned.

Many victims of alleged affinity fraud are also reluctant to come forward, making it difficult for the BCSC to investigate complaints. "This is natural," says Bernard. "People don’t like to admit that they made a mistake or that their trust in someone was misplaced."

But he insists that Haycock and Mackrell are not "spies" out to uncover criminal behaviour.

"Our hope and our goal," he says, "is just to alert people that…there are people out there who seem to have no integrity or morals and would part you from your money as quickly as they possibly can."

Yet despite their best efforts, Haycock is afraid the problem will only worsen, as Canada’s population rapidly ages.

"The older people get, the lonelier they get-and the easier it gets to manipulate them and to put some pressure on them," he says. "The con artists can even get them to invest just by speaking to them on the telephone.

"These people are 80, 90 years old. It’s very sad."