Nov 28 2006
Sports Associations Equal Easy Money
It’s tough work being involved in a youth sports association. You try hard to gather enough money to build fields/parks/courts, outfit the kids in uniforms, hire quality officials, develop and maintain websites, pay the legal fees to keep the IRS from circling, and still managing to conduct actual games while fending off glory-crazed parents. And the best part, most associations are run by volunteers.
Apparently, the president of The Southwest Youth Athletic Association in Springfield Illinois decided the association owed him for his trouble:
According to a Springfield police report, the youth baseball league’s former president, Gary A. Gaulding, wrote 80 checks to himself totaling almost $147,000 between August 2003 and last April. That’s more than $1,800 per check. Prosecutors say the amount could reach as high as $165,000.
Not bad work if you can find it.
What makes this case even worse; ten years ago the association was almost bankrupt and about to close. The fact that they pulled this association out of the red and built a highly successful organization. I guess you could say it was a little too successful…
