THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 1996 TAG: 9610300400
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: 93 lines
Robert A. Gurkin Jr. took over as treasurer of the Indian River Baseball Organization in December 1994. By the time he left the Little League job 14 months later, there wasn't enough money left to buy trophies, hold a banquet or award an annual $1,000 scholarship.
Early on, Gurkin began embezzling money from the Little League, made up of 350 to 400 Chesapeake children. By the time he was caught, thousands of dollars had disappeared.
On Tuesday, Gurkin, 32, pleaded guilty in Circuit Court to embezzlement for stealing funds that an auditor estimated could be as much as $18,000. He faces up to 20 years in prison. A sentencing hearing is set for Jan. 6.
``He's very sorry it happened,'' his lawyer, Larry Wise, said in an interview after the guilty plea. ``He was desperate financially. Every penny is going to be repaid.'' Wise said $2,000 will have been repaid by mid November.
Gurkin declined to be interviewed.
``I'm mad,'' current league treasurer Cathy Dalton said after court. ``You see these kids sell these raffle tickets and sell these candy bars and play their hearts out, and then he takes it away from them . . . He lived quite lavishly while this was going on. It's infuriating.''
For a while, there was even a question about whether the league would be able to offer baseball next season, she said.
The theft put the league about $10,000 in debt, said Jeff Crossland, president of the organization.
``It left my league in bad shape,'' Crossland said. ``There were a lot of kids who couldn't understand because they finished in first place and didn't get trophies.''
Gurkin had been an effective T-ball coordinator the year before - even arranging for the youngsters to play a game under the lights, Crossland said. Something happened when he became treasurer. Crossland discovered Gurkin's scheme in February 1996 after Crossland tried to place an order at a sporting goods store and store employees complained they hadn't received payment on a bill that had been past due for months.
Gurkin insisted he had paid the store $3,000 or $4,000 each month, but when Crossland confronted him and demanded to see the checks, Gurkin could not produce them.
Gurkin summoned Crossland out onto the porch of Gurkin's home and explained what had happened.
``He gave me a sob story about the rent being due,'' Crossland said. ``He said he didn't know what to do, so he borrowed the money from the league.''
Crossland then got copies of the league's canceled checks from the bank that showed payments to one store that sells riding lawn mowers and another that sells metal sheds, he said. None of those was for league-sanctioned expenses, Crossland said.
``His sob story about not being able to pay the rent didn't cut it when he'd been taking money ever since he started,'' Crossland said. ``I was extremely mad. Of all the years I've been giving up my vacations to do repairs (on concession stands and other buildings), and then for him to take advantage of a situation . . .''
After Crossland caught him, Gurkin appeared before the league's board of directors at a March meeting and admitted to taking $5,400, Crossland said. An independent auditor later put the figure at between $17,000 and $18,000, according to prosecutor Douglas Ottinger. Gurkin eventually admitted to police that he had taken $10,000 or $12,000, Ottinger said.
He was charged with embezzling in an August grand jury.
``I think he got greedy,'' Crossland said. ``It was nickel and dime when he first started out. It was $50 here and there. Then he got into writing $2,500 checks to himself.''
In some cases, Gurkin forged signatures on the checks, Crossland said. In other cases, he said, Gurkin misrepresented the purpose of the check, convinced another official to sign it and then erased and rewrote the check for his own purposes.
The missing money forced the cancellation of a year-end banquet and made it impossible for the league to offer its usual $1,000 scholarship to the student at Indian River High School with the highest grade point average, Crossland said. Planned repairs to a playing field and to buildings also had to be cut.
``I had a lot of people upset at me because they didn't understand in order to run the league next year, I've got to pay off this sporting goods store,'' Crossland said.
Little League is big business. The Indian River League, which Crossland said is the city's smallest, has about 30 teams and costs about $25,000 to run. Its season runs from about the third week of April to the end of June.
Umpires alone cost about $7,000, uniforms and equipment another $3,000. The 70 dozen baseballs the league uses cost $30 a dozen. Insurance costs $2,500 and trophies another $1,000.
Just to break even for the 1996 season, the league needs about $10,000, Crossland said. Overdue bills include $8,000 to a sporting goods store, $300 in phone bills that Gurkin never paid and $500 to the umpires' association. ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Robert A. Gurkin Jr. was the Indian River Baseball Organization's
treasurer for 14 months from December 1994.
KEYWORDS: EMBEZZLE GUILTY PLEA YOUTH SPORTS by CNB