Swim Team Treasurer Admits Embezzling $175,000 From Organization in Ohio

Has the cost of chlorine shot up that much in the past few years that you wouldn’t notice nearly two hundred thousand dollars missing from your team bank account? Either Lynn Gottschalk was one of the biggest con artists to ever walk the streets of Ohio or, as we suspect, parents of the Sycamore Flying Fish club were so glad someone was watching their little ones that they just kept writing bigger and bigger checks without asking for a full accounting of how the funds were being spent.




Lynn Gottschalk admitted Wednesday that she stole as much as $175,000 when she was treasurer of a swim team. Gottschalk, 50, of Montgomery, became a convicted felon when she pleaded guilty to theft, a crime that carries a maximum prison sentence of 18 months. She stole the money from the Sycamore Flying Fish swim team when she was treasurer from September 2004 to August 2009. “The theft began almost immediately upon her taking the position of treasurer,” said Mark Seger, team president when the theft was discovered. Financial records, Seger said, show Gottschalk used team money to pay for items that included car payments, summer camp for a child, a vacation cruise and theater tickets. Those expenditures were some of the spending that left the team nearly bankrupt by the time Gottschalk’s five-year tenure as treasurer ended in August 2009.