Former follower: The Catholic Church has had scammers for 2,000 years.
You have the audacity to call me a con artist?
Jonathan Brady: We hate to break it to you,
but your mother’s been taken over by a cult.
Former follower: He can be cunning,
charming,
angry.
It was very clear that Ryan was not actually a priest.
[suspenseful music playing]
Former follower: He’s not been ordained.
[music playing]
Former follower: He had her sign on as a nun
and sign over everything she had.
People described being really impressed by him.
They felt that God was in the room
while he was up at the pulpit preaching.
Former follower: He was moving around every few years.
It would depend on how much trouble he was getting into.
Father Ryan did this for about 30 years,
traveling the Midwest, opening different churches.
Did our Lord give all the apostles a piece of paper with a raised seal?
I don't think so.
[Music playing]
My name is Alex Schuman.
I’m a journalist who spent a couple of years
investigating Father Ryan.
I came across an article from a woman saying,
“I lost my mother to a cult.”
One of the first things I found when I googled his name
was this photo of him in the ’70s
with this huge, almost porn star mustache.
And I thought, “How is this guy a priest?”
He’s not a priest at all.
[music playing]
We only had one abbey, but we moved.
—You want the rundown? —Yeah.
We started out in Brockway, Wisconsin.
From there, we went to Eastman, Wisconsin.
From there, Independence, Iowa, to North Dakota.
Galesburg, Illinois. Buchanan, Iowa, to Missouri.
Father Ryan did this for about 30 years,
traveling the Midwest, opening different churches.
It’s not like he shows up in town and hides himself.
He always just shows up and lets everybody know he’s there
and attracts so much attention that I think a lot of people think,
“You would never do that if you were not a real priest.”
He showed up at the town council meetings.
He meets with mayors.
He goes to the local newspapers.
He likes attention.
[religious music and singing]
People described being really impressed by him.
They felt that God was in the room
while he was up at the pulpit preaching.
I want to just take a minute here.
Alex Schuman: Absolutely.
Because my priesthood has been questioned.
The impression that I got from people who had interacted with him
was that he was this incredibly cunning, charismatic guy
that was very impressive.
That’s why people were falling for him.
And then when I met him,
that wasn’t the impression that I really got.
I have ...
my parchment from Rome.
These are the different papers that he showed me
to prove that he was a priest.
This ended up being something that you can just buy
and order online from a gift shop that's right outside the Vatican.
[music playing]
My name’s Jonathan Brady.
I am the biological son of Ryan Scott.
The simple fact that I exist, that I live and breathe ...
wipes out any legitimate claims to ordination
that he has in the eyes of the church.
So what do you do?
[music playing]
If you’re a con man trying to edit and create a story ...
you get rid of the evidence.
[music playing]
And I’m the evidence.
[music playing]
I was adopted at right around the age of eight.
[music playing]
As far as the rest of the world knew,
I didn’t exist.
[Loud clap]
I was a nun in Father Ryan’s church.
When I met him,
everything seemed OK at first.
But then, little things add up.
[Religious music and singing]
Once he’s burnt out in an area,
he moves on, sets up somewhere else ...
finds a new set of victims to pull in.
He was able to get money from a lot of the elderly group of women
that became devout followers of his.
He tricked people out of several million.
He would have appeals to fix his abbey’s roof, the heating,
the equipment appeals.
And he would go and buy these valuable Catholic artifacts.
Like, how many statues of Jesus do you need?
He started dealing in religious artifacts,
rare religious manuscripts, religious items.
And we’ve been able to track all those
on various websites that he’s been selling on.
Former follower: There seemed to be a lot of stuff on eBay.
Inevitably, the police or the local Catholic diocese
would start alerting people,
and he would get run out of town.
One of his abbeys was in Galesburg, Illinois.
And this is probably the time period
when Ryan would have been the most successful.
That’s also where he had the llama farm.
[Latin American music playing]
And they are not just regular llamas.
They are very expensive, rare llamas
that end up fetching quite a bit of money.
So some of the money that he was getting from donations,
he was also using to buy llamas that cost like $3,000 to $6,000.
And Father Ryan also opened a business
while he had these llamas.
There was a petting zoo,
where he was also selling the fleece
under the brand name Monastic Fleece.
So people would be under the understanding
that they were supporting this priest
and a group of nuns.
And it gives you the idea that you’re doing something good,
when in reality, Ryan is not a priest at all.
Jonathan Brady: Galesburg is where we caught him.
And that’s when the attorney general’s office
really got involved with it.
He jumped state, went over to Missouri ...
when he was told not to.
He just leaves everything behind.
And they leave overnight, pack up what they can,
and part of what they leave are 19 llamas.
It’s just so weird.
[music playing]
[Religious music and singing]
I ran up against his temper one day.
I had asked to leave at that point,
and he would not let me.
And then, two days later,
he decided it was his choice to let me go.
One of the families that had fallen out with him
had given me his actual name.
And then, when I ran it through a computer,
it had pulled up things like his arrest record.
Well, I'm realizing he's not a priest.
Alex Schuman: She starts to uncover who Ryan really is.
And she’s mad.
I did tell people,
but a lot of them didn’t believe in me.
His biggest moneymakers were Roseanna and Sheila.
Ryan was in his 50s when Roseanna allegedly adopted him.
[music playing]
Jonathan Brady: She had entered the following as a nun.
She was a highly religious woman
looking for the peace that usually comes from
somebody joining the church and living that kind of lifestyle.
“This is the last bit of my life.”
“I’m dedicating it to God and my faith.”
Alex Schuman: He claimed that she adopted him as an adult
so the abbey would inherit some of her land and money.
I cannot see any ... any reason ...
why somebody at that age would adopt a grown man.
To me, that just cemented his grips on any inheritance
or any financials that he could pull out of her
other than what he had already done.
The level of mental control you would have to have over somebody
to get them to go along with that
is beyond my understanding.
Sheila was another victim of Ryan Scott.
Former follower: He had her sign on as a nun
and sign over everything she had.
He ended up convincing her to give him more than $100,000.
But to her, it was a loan, and to him, it was a donation.
So when she and her family tried to come and get it back,
Ryan refused and said the money was gone.
When you’re talking to Roseanna’s kids
or Sheila’s children,
you’re dealing with people that
were trying to get their parents out of a situation,
and they couldn’t reach them.
That's how far his brainwashing of these folks went.
Not only does he take people’s money,
he takes their connection to God.
People think that they’ve been
absolved of all their sins in confession.
They’re married in the eyes of God
and come to find out that,
well, hey, guess what, you got to go do it again.
All of that was void
because he was not actually a Catholic priest.
There’s a much deeper crime happening
in terms of people’s spirituality.
[religious music and singing]
Ryan was in jail for a short period of time in Missouri.
[religious music and singing]
But because a prosecutor is scared to say,
“Your version of Catholicism is not true,”
or, “You are not truly a Catholic priest,”
prevented him from ever facing real consequences.
Any time you strap the word “church” to law enforcement,
they back off.
It's like a magic wand.
“We’re not going to touch it with a 20,000-foot pole.”
[religious music and singing]
The American justice system has shown me that
there is no such thing as justice in this country.
[religious music and singing]
Alex Schuman: From the evidence I’ve seen,
we have not seen the end of him pretending to be a priest.
Every few years, I’m either contacted by a victim,
a reporter, law enforcement.
I recently caught him attaching an address to accept donations
to a church in Portugal.
So he’s gone from targeting people just in the Midwest
to communicating and portraying himself as a priest worldwide.
There's still people getting hurt.
He’s always going to face justice somewhere.
If not in this life, well, there’s the afterlife.
[religious music and singing]