3 Jailed After Costa Mesa Pastor Checks on Their Charity Story

Three transients arrested in Costa Mesa are suspected of soliciting money from hundreds of Southern Californians by posing as representatives of a charity, police said Friday.

They were arrested after the Rev. Paul E. Thomas, pastor of Costa Mesa’s Church of Christ, received a telephone call Wednesday asking for a donation to help an “abused and destitute young woman” return to her home in Northern California. Thomas agreed.

The caller said he represented the Christian Volunteer and Service Alliance of Orange County and said it was affiliated with United Way. The caller, who said the money was for his sister, asked that a check for $40 be made payable to Robert Berg.

Thomas later did some checking. “I work with a United Way agency, and I am conversant with the way the agency works,” he said. He found that the Christian Volunteer and Service Alliance of Orange County was bogus and phoned police.

Officers were waiting at the church when Robert Tracy Berg, 24, and his wife, Jana Beth Berg, 20, arrived to get the check, Costa Mesa Police Lt. Rick Johnson said.

The couple led police to Thomas Lee Parker, about 23, at the Sandpiper Motel in Costa Mesa, Johnson said. Police said Parker was the person who had called the church.

Held in Jails

The three were booked for burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary, Johnson said. Robert Berg and Parker were held in the Costa Mesa jail in lieu of $10,000 bail. Jana Beth Berg was held in Orange County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail, police said.

There is “evidence indicating that several hundred people in Southern California” may have been solicited by the three, Johnson said.

Police asked anyone who had contact with the suspects to call police.