A well known Samoan pastor in California is facing charges of stealing more than $100,000 from a mentally challenged US war veteran.
The defendant, Pastor Misipouena Tagaloa, is the Senior Pastor for the Second Samoan Church Congregational Church (under the United Church of Christ U.C.C.) in Long Beach California.
Better known in the local community as Pastor Misi, he was born in Samoa in 1965 and moved to California in 1984.
The Long Beach Post News reported the victim, the late Phillip Campbell, disappeared for almost two decades and the search by his children and family led them to Pastor Misi of Second Samoan Church.
“Phillip Campbell had disappeared almost 20 years earlier in a fog of mental illness that abruptly drove him from his sister’s home in Georgia,” the newspaper reported.
A trail of letters, the final ones postmarked from Long Beach more than a decade ago, was his family’s last clue to his whereabouts.
The family did not give up trying to find Campbell and were rewarded when a Google search came up with the pastor’s name.
Campbell was found living in a home next to the church’s sanctuary.
“Inside the conditions weren’t ideal, according to his family, who said he was sleeping on a couch in the house with several other homeless men. But at least he was safe,” said his daughter.
They were relieved to discover that their long-lost father was under Pastor Misi’s care.
Their gratitude towards Pastor Misi soon turned sour after the Long Beach Police Department produced a 14 page report which implicated the popular pastor in theft from the veteran.
“Tagaloa’s crime, the report alleges, spanned years with the pastor gaining power of attorney over Campbell, a schizophrenic man in his 60’s who had lost the ability to properly care for himself.”
The California Attorney General’s Office charged Tagaloa in August with felony counts of grand theft and theft from an elder dependent, but the case has remained largely out of public view.
Tagaloa has been released on $70,000 bail as he progresses slowly toward trial.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Photo: Long Beach Post
