PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A man says he was nearly scammed by someone who claimed to be the pastor of his Portland church.

It started Tuesday morning when Steve Ihrig got a text message from a person claiming to be the pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church.

The message said that the pastor needed Ihrig’s help to purchase eBay gift cards for patients who were battling cancer at a hospital.

For Ihrig, the request didn’t raise any red flags, so he drove to a Fred Meyer, went inside and bought 2 eBay gift cards, each worth $100.

After scratching the foil on the back of the cards to reveal the pin numbers, Ihrig texted pictures of the cards to his pastor — using the contact from his phone, not the number from the original sender.

The response he got was anything but expected.

“Immediately, I received a text back from her saying ‘what are these?’ and I thought ‘what did I do. I must’ve really screwed up.'”

It was a lack of tech-savviness that ended up preventing Ihrig from completing the scam since he didn’t send the images of the cards, with the pin numbers, to the original number that messaged him.

Even though the scam didn’t end successfully for the unknown culprit, Ihrig said the ordeal left him feeling foolish and like he’d been taken advantage of.

“It also makes me even more pessimistic of how I might deal with something in the future that might really be an emergency,” he said.

Ihrig said a few other people who also attend the church also received the same scam message but from a different number. The secretary of the church filed a complaint with the FCC.