Police investigating missing funds
By Jeff Gallatin
Bay Village
Published April 15, 2009

City police are investigating allegations that a former officer of the Bay Village Soccer Club had allegedly taken more than $160,000 from the organization during the past year.

Other officers of the club went to the police station the evening of  March 30 after they discovered the financial problems.

John Riess, registrar and spokesman for the club, said the organization only discovered the problem themselves in the last few weeks.

“It was a bounced check that alerted us to what was going on,” said Riess. “We had a check go bad that shouldn’t have, so we began looking into it.”

David Campbell, the club’s attorney, said the organization has recovered the money since the club and police began investigating.

Lt. Mark Spaetzel, commander of the city police detective bureau, said it was a relatively large amount of money taken for a community organization.

“You’re talking in excess of $150,000,” he said. “That’s a pretty big amount for any organization like that to not be able to account for.”

The Club sponsors the annual Bay Challenge Cup tournament, which brings in a wide range of soccer teams from around the country annually. It sponsors a wide range of teams for players at all levels and also has a travel program for more advanced players. Riess said there are 1,270 city youngsters and more than 1,000 city families involved in the club.

“It’s been in existence for 30 years and does a lot in the community,” Riess said. “Although it’s independent of the school system, in some ways it’s a feeder program for school teams when the players get old enough. This will not affect the club programs, travel teams or the Challenge Cup. I know a lot of people were worried about that.”

Riess said once other officials began looking into the matter, the problem seemed to pointing toward one member with access to club funds.

“At that time, we isolated the funds and the individual,” he said. “We took that person out of the club activities, like coaching and areas pertaining to money.”

Riess said the other club officials went to the police so law enforcement officials could look into the matter.

“We wanted to make sure that there weren’t any other problems going on” he said.

Spaetzel said the initial investigation by the department focuses the investigation on one person, a former officer of the club.

“It appears that only the one individual was involved in this at this point,” said Spaetzel.

He said the money was apparently taken over the course of several months.

“We’re still investigating different aspects of this,” he said.

Riess said he sent an e-mail to club members about the problem.

“We wanted to let people know we had been dealing with this,” he said. “We didn’t want a lot of rumors to start flying around.”

Campbell said the club is already taking additional safeguards.

“There will be an outside audit and reviews annually. They are taking additional safeguards with people and members to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” Campbell said.

Neither Riess or Campbell wanted to speculate on why the money was taken.

“That’s for the investigation to determine,” Riess said.

Spaetzel said the investigation is still going on, and that a decision about whether a person will be arrested or an indictment sought from the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury when the investigation is completed. He said that would not be for several days at the earliest.