Big bucks unaccounted for at Fern Creek High booster club in Kentucky

FROM WAVE3.COM  -
Almost a half-million dollars is unaccounted for at a local high school booster club. That has the IRS investigating and criminal charges have not been ruled out.




Big dollars and big questions. Fern Creek High Schools athletic booster club is being audited by the IRS for $485,000 that is unaccounted for between the years 2005 and 2009.



Current athletic association president Tim Fries confirmed the IRS is in the middle of a 16-month audit of the non-profit booster club that raises money for the Tigers sports teams through bingo and other fund raisers. The audit started in 2010, a year after the dates in question. Fries said the Fern Creek Athletic Association is still waiting on the IRS final report, but said the IRS has told him no decision has been made on whether to turn its findings over to criminal investigators.



Fries said he was asked to take over the booster club after the audit began and that he and the rest of the current board were not a part of the booster club during the dates being audited by the IRS.



Troy Johnson, the current Fern Creek athletic director, was president of the booster club during the years the IRS is now auditing. Jarrad Durham, the current Fern Creek baseball coach, acted as a director for the athletic association over that same time period. Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Johnson said it is not as big a deal as people think it is, but would not elaborate.



Chuck Adkins, an attorney hired to represent the Fern Creek Athletic Association, said it's unclear if any laws were broken.



"We don't know whether that money was embezzled or just book keeping errors," Adkins said. "We'll have to wait and see what the audit says.



Watkins said Fries and the board have been following all state and federal laws since the problems came to light.



In addition to the possibility of criminal charges, the Fern Creek Athletic Association is in danger of losing its non-profit status and having to pay a six figure tax bill.



I spoke to the attorney hired to represent the Fern Creek Athletic Association and he gave us the following statement:



"It's unclear if any laws were broken. We don't know whether that money was embezzled or just book keeping errors."



Lauren Roberts, spokesperson for Jefferson County Public Schools, released the following a statement to WAVE 3 that she has "never known of any booster club to have that kind of money."



Roberts said JCPS does not manage booster funds and the school district has no authority in it.



The WAVE 3 Troubleshooter department was unable to reach a spokesperson with the IRS for comment.